Messages

46

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Shadowing La Nouba

« on: Jul 19, 2008, 12:37 pm »

I'm going to Disney World in September on a very much belated honeymoon. My husband and I have planned on getting tickets for La Nouba one of the nights we're there, since working for Cirque has always kind of been one of my "dream jobs."

It occurred to me yesterday that I should look into shadowing while I'm there, instead of just getting tickets. Has anyone shadowed a Cirque show, or know if they do it? I've never shadowed a show before, so I'm not quite sure how to go about it!

47

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Help! Beastly show and actor!!!

« on: Jul 18, 2008, 06:13 pm »

There's huge differentiations in types of "yelling towards," too.

IE, the night after the final music rehearsal for my current show, when some of the cast just wasn't where it needed to be, and my director spent a good hour after they'd left yelling in my/the music director's general direction about how he was going to recast the entire show, why hadn't we all done a better job, etc, etc, etc. It was obvious that he was worrying and letting off steam, so we let him do it and the next morning got emails apologizing and reconfirming that no, he wasn't going to take everyone off the show, etc. That kind of yelling towards is acceptable in my book, because it's obvious that it's not really a personal thing/your fault.

The other kind of "yelling towards" isn't cool, though, when it's all done in a very "yelling at" style, IE when my artistic director got mad at me during a tech's 'intermission' break because she wanted another half hour to give notes to the director that we simply didn't have (some of the actors had a specific time they had to be done that evening and it was a difficult tech), and she spent a good deal of the evening making comments about how I "had misled her into thinking we had a good relationship" and that I "needed to remember where my paycheck came from." That kind of thing I don't think you can just ignore-- even though it was obviously symptomatic of another problem.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Help! Beastly show and actor!!!

« on: Jul 18, 2008, 09:13 am »

I'm totally printing that post out and taping it in the back of my clipboard to flip to when actors get rowdy.

"Talking prop"!! hehe

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Dressing For The Part?

« on: Jul 17, 2008, 01:06 am »

In college they always told us to wear a suit for interviews, so I was a good little student and did just that... and felt ridiculously out of place when in my interview for my internship I was in a suit and black leather pumps and one of my interviewers was wearing cargo pants and a tank and the other one was wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Since then, for interviews, I go with a nice button-down top and tailored pants, and flats (I'm 6'1, so shaking hands with a 5'3 interviewer is already awkward without the heels.)

For rehearsals, I generally wear nice jeans, flats or nice looking tennis shoes, and a dressy-casual top if it's a weekday, or a good looking t-shirt if it's a Saturday rehearsal. I also always make sure that I look decently turned out with hair/makeup-- I once had an ASM who used to come to rehearsal with her hair still wet just thrown up in a ponytail on Saturdays... which I think sends totally the wrong message. I always look in the mirror and make sure I look like I've been sitting staring at the script or something for 3 hours before the rehearsal-- to admit to the cast that you were asleep an hour ago just feels disrespectful to me, I'd be mad at any actor who showed up like that.

For performances, I always go with nice looking black stretch jeans (I buy a new pair every show or two at walmart-- keeps them from getting faded), black belt, black tennis shoes, a black tee or tank top, and a long sleeve black men's dress shirt. I always get the dress shirt one size up from what I'd normally wear-- it's not so much bigger that it looks baggy, but it gives me freedom of movement. The booth where I spend most of my time during shows isn't very well air-conditioned, either, so having a loose thin material is better than wearing something that won't let you breath!

For opening nights, I take the time to blowdry my hair, wear studs and a necklace, and sometimes change out the tennis shoes for black flats and the jeans for trousers, if there's no set changes or anything that require me to do major physical work every night.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Help! Beastly show and actor!!!

« on: Jul 17, 2008, 12:47 am »

Ouch. And having both of those in one night, double ouch.

I've had similar confrontations, but they were while in college, so it's easy to write them off and move on.

One good thing to remember with stuff like this: Everyone else sees who's being the reasonable human being and who's being a crazy monster. At the end of the day, at least she'll be gone eventually.

51

Stage Management: Other / Re: Orchestra Stage Management & Unions/Pay Rates

« on: Jul 16, 2008, 07:26 pm »

Just to give an update, in the end I handed the artistic director for the orchestra a copy of the IATSE pay rates I could find, and she's going to pay me based on the rate I'd be getting for IATSE work. (I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop... who ever heard of an employer asking if she can pay you more than you agreed to at hiring?) In a month or two when my current show winds down I'm going to contact my local chapter about membership and this particular situation-- I had planned on trying to get onboard with IATSE just to do some income-filling crew work as I could, so joining was already on my to-do list.

Thanks for all the great feedback!

52

Tools of the Trade / Re: What's in your bag?

« on: Jul 15, 2008, 02:05 pm »

A small stack of white typing paper, pencils, pens, a sharpie, a couple colors of spike tape, a multitool, and some gaff tape.
Then maybe other stuff depending on the show and its specific needs.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / PROFESSIONALISM: When you ought to have experience but you don't think you do...

« on: Jul 14, 2008, 05:02 pm »

So what I'm posting reflects relatively badly on my current/past employer, so I'm hoping that there's an understanding on here that one can tell it like it is to a certain extent...

I've been out of school for a year now, and during said year I was an intern at a mid-size theater in my area. At this theater, intern doesn't really mean intern-- everyone they hire is an intern, and if a job needs filling it's filled in-house, they never bring in anyone who isn't fresh out of college. Everyone from the Managing Director down came to this place as a 22 year old with stars in their eyes... and nobody ever, ever leaves for another theater as far as I can tell. (So most people's opinions from this company aren't going to count much from a networking point of view as far as I can tell.)

Of course, my stars got washed out relatively quickly when their PSM left, and I, one of a whopping 3 stage managers left in the place, and definitely one of the more experienced SM's (which should tell everyone something), got left with the entire mainstage season. No ASMing, nobody to ask questions of or help me with mistakes. It got interesting when 3 of my 5 shows were done with the Artistic Director as either cast or director... a painful place to be in at a company where the 83-year-old Artistic Director is also regarded as something akin to a god, and she also loves arriving for performances sometimes as close as 10 minutes to curtain time... and you can't say anything to her about it... But it was pretty much fine... I've learned a lot this year. But it's all been learned via falling flat on my face.  

In college I was always the SM and never had an ASM (I always got picked to do the smaller shows that "didn't merit" an ASM), and then I did this internship, where I SM'd 5 shows and had ASM's who either had never done any theater whatsoever before coming to this company fresh from highschool, or were from other departments donating their employees to Production for a show.

So now I'm wrapping up my final performance at this theater. I almost quit at least twice, but I decided to live out my contract nomatter how stressful things got. I could have stayed on for more seasons if I'd wanted to, but the atmosphere there is incestual at best and downright abusive at worst, and the pay works out to about $2.15/hour, so I decided to take my chances. I've got a part time gig with an orchestra that pays decently, but I also want to keep doing theater-theater.

So my question is... how badly is all of this going to hurt me? I think I look pretty good in my resume, but I know I just don't know much about stage managing beyond my own weird little style I've made out of trial-and-error and various books. I'm really worried that I'm going to end up falling flat on my face and making a fool out of myself since I've never actually worked with another SM who had any level of experience!

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Cast Gifts/Thank Yous?

« on: Jun 30, 2008, 06:43 pm »

I -always- do something for my cast and crew for opening night, and something for crew on closing.

I do find myself less and less willing to spend a lot of time on it, though, recently, since I've realised that I've only ever gotten one or two reciprocal gifts from cast members, and never anything from anyone on crew. It may sound a little petty, but it does kind of hurt the feelings when people leave you out.

I don't do cards, though. I don't like anything where I might be seen as giving/writing more for one person than for others.

55

Employment / Re: Stage Management Salary

« on: Jun 30, 2008, 06:39 pm »

I make a $250/week salary that pays for SMing plus a 9-5 job in the box office (we're all required to fill administrative jobs in addition to production positions...) Our pay is pretty cruddy... $1000/month isn't that bad straight out of school, until you look at it as the $3/hour that it generally works out to.

The job I start in September I'll be getting more like $350/week for just part-time hours... which will be rather more to my liking.

56

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Posting contact sheets on the call board?

« on: Jun 30, 2008, 06:30 pm »

I work out of a theater that has only once this season cast outside of the company-employed actors, and even then we don't post our contact sheets. There is a company contact list that all of the employees are given, and then I hand out show-specific lists to everyone involved in each show for the season, but I would never post the list. We get a lot of weirdos and lost patrons poking around, and I've got a lot of actors who might not want their cell phone number given to the whole company...

That said, my own personal cell number is posted on the call board and on my computer monitor (my desk is in a public area) so that I can be contacted in an emergency. Everyone knows that if they need others' contact info, they can come to me.

57

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Spike Marks on Carpet

« on: Jun 27, 2008, 06:56 pm »

The last show I did we were using borrowed rugs, so we couldn't do anything permanent to them.

We were lucky enough that the pile on the rugs worked really well with velcro... I took a photo straight down so I knew exactly where they went in relation to the pattern. It held better than spike tape, especially if it was just being walked on. Not so great when the chairs were moved across them, but still, better than tape.

58

Tools of the Trade / Re: The Blackberry

« on: Jun 27, 2008, 11:38 am »

I would certainly agree that a blackberry/similar device can be a useful tool for an SM.  I would say though, that saying a device like this is needed for an SM is going a bit too far.

I agree. My husband's got a blackberry for his job, and watching the change between before he had his corporate leash and afterwards, I don't know that I'd want that kind of connectivity. His company purchased it for him, and since he has it he's expected to be on-call 24/7, answering emails at 3AM if they come just because that's when his boss felt like working.

IMO, if something's happening that's that urgent, and I'm not there, and it requires my attention that badly, call my cell phone. During the times of the day when I'm not present for things and it would be appropriate to email, I check my email about 30 times a day anyway... having your email on 24/7 just invites situations that make it so that you can't ever leave work... which makes for mental breakdowns, which is definitely not what an SM needs!

59

SMNetwork Archives / Re: Aging in stage management (those late 20's)

« on: Jun 25, 2008, 12:52 pm »

Absolutely true. I thought in college it was just because the actors were also in college, but at my current theater I work with some actors, and even directors and designers, who have decades in the professional world and still can be SO disrespectful.

(I would say "unprofessional," but I hate throwing that word around... people always use it when what they mean is 'not doing things how I want them done.')

60

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Please Help

« on: Jun 23, 2008, 06:56 pm »

Wrap something in red/orange tissue paper with streamers, etc? Make it just big enough that she could hide it up her sleeve, etc.