Topics

1

Stage Management: Other / first time SMing ballet

« on: May 22, 2012, 02:35 pm »

I got an email yesterday from a director I worked with four or five years ago looking for a replacement SM for a ballet that goes up next weekend!  I have never SM'd ballet before and only ASM'd one Irish dance show several years ago (and did not call the show).  What do I need to know about SMing ballet?

The director has sent me a scene list plus some links to the ballet on YouTube.  I will be meeting him one night this week to pick up a CD of the music.  Our first rehearsal is on Saturday, and we have rehearsals nightly until the first performance the following Friday.

I was sort of taking a break from SMing as I sort out my priorities and then suddenly this landed in my lap!  They are even paying me more money for a week of work than I made in the entire three plus months SMing the extremely successful show at the community theatre I did earlier this year.  In fact, the pay for this one week of ballet is more than a week of take-home pay at my "real" day job!  I am really wanting this to go well, so throw any tips/pointers you have my way!  In the mean time, I will go read old posts and see what I can find out that way.   

2

Employment / time to ask for a raise?

« on: Apr 13, 2012, 05:09 pm »

I am way out of my depth here, so I know I might just be way wrong on this one so that's why I'm asking for advice.

I SM for several non-profit community theatres in Western North Carolina.  A few years ago I stopped SMing for one company (let's call them Company B) because they did not pay stage managers (though they did pay directors, LDs, etc).  I continued to SM for another theatre (my main theatre, Company A) which paid me a stipend of $200 per straight play and $300 per musical.  Well, the first company started paying SMs $200 per show (this company only does plays, no musicals) and so for the first time I have turned down a job offer at my main theatre to SM for the other company.  I did this for a variety of reasons, but primarily I have missed working with Company B.  Most of the actors and staff are closer to my age (20's and 30's) vs. Company A which is mostly older people.  I have zero social life as it is (working a full time M-F desk job plus theatre will do that to you) and so I was wanting the social connection I have with the folks at Company B.

Well, I just closed a hugely successful show with Company A.  It broke all previous box office records that this company had.  I then turned down an offer to SM their fall musical to take a show with Company B because frankly, $100 difference is not enough to sway me either way and again, I miss working with Company B.  Well, I am currently doing a different show with Company B and is reminding me of the things I didn't like so much about Company B.  SMs also function as Marketing with this company, so I have been organizing the recording of radio commercials, radio interviews, promotional photo shoots, head shots, etc.  I also had zero help in getting a crew for this show, which has been extremely frustrating.  Company A handles all this stuff for me, gets me a crew, and they pay me $100 more. 

So today I got a card from the MD of Company A thanking me again for my work on the hugely successful show and saying how much they miss having me in the building.  I currently have no shows on the books with Company A for the remainder of the year or in 2013.  I am just at a loss how to interpret the card.  Do I ask for a raise and then work only with Company A again?  Obviously they value me and wish I would come back to work with them again.  I can see my friends from Company B outside theatre.  But OTOH, a year or so ago I approached Company A with the idea of becoming a resident SM and they said no.  So now I am just really confused.    

3

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / SHOWS: Chicago

« on: Feb 08, 2012, 09:59 am »

Hi all, I know I've been absent for a while, but now I'm back!   

I'm getting ready to open a production of Chicago a week from Friday.  We have two more rehearsals, dry tech on Saturday, and cue to cue plus a run on Sunday.  I will admit I am slightly nervous about tech for this show because I have seen zero info about light cues so far and I get the feeling that there will be A LOT of them.

But my question is actually about sound.  For those who know the show, Chicago has a lot of "announcement" type things usually done by an Emcee.  Originally our Emcee was going to be the band director, as the band is onstage, so the announcements would be read live by the band director.  However, this was nixed a few days ago by our director because a) the band director is not comfortable with memorizing lines and he has enough going on and b) he will be missing two performances anyway and we'll have a guest conductor. 

So the new plan is to record these announcements and play them as sound cues.  However, currently the sound guy is lobbying to just play the announcements from a CD at his position.   Now, in this theatre I'm in the booth with my light board op.  We typically don't get a sound board op for sound cues, I just play all sound cues using a computer in the booth.  The live sound guy is located in the house and he is typically not on headset.  In an emergency I can reach him via one of my spot ops (one of the spot towers is directly over the live sound position) but it's not optimal.  EVERYONE (sound guy, director, assistant director) seems to think that sound guy playing the cues from a CD at his position will make things easier for me.  I don't know yet, but I fear that it won't because then I will be unable to coordinate the light cues with these announcements.  If there were only one or two of them, it might work, but there are A LOT of them and they pretty much open almost every musical number in the show.  Now, having me run them would add a lot to what I've got going on (again, already nervous about lights) but I'm willing and able to do it if it will make the performance better.

Sound guy isn't planning on miking actors until Tue of tech week, so now I'm concerned about me learning light cues on Sun, calling only light cues Sun and Mon, and then suddenly having him try to run sound cues Tue and all of us going "huh, this isn't working" and then I have ONE NIGHT on Wed to call both sound and light cues before we get our first preview audience on Thursday.  I don't want to come across as a controlling diva and I also don't want to give the sound guy the impression that I think he's incompetent or anything like that.  I've worked with him before and he's by far the best sound guy I've worked with (this is community theatre, but still).  I am just getting nervous about trying to add sound at the last minute and everyone going "oh wait, this won't work" and then I have to change all the cues the night before the first preview.

Thoughts?  Advice? 

Thanks,

Beth

4

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / COMMUNICATION: Communicating Who is Called for a Rehearsal

« on: Aug 02, 2011, 03:56 pm »

Hi everyone -

I am getting ready to start rehearsal as a stage manager for a community theatre production of Guys and Dolls.  Cast is around 40 people, with teenagers up through seniors.  I am working with a director I have worked with before, who is very great but also pretty controlling.  In some ways this is great, as he makes my life easy because he's already created the rehearsal schedule, the contact list, scene lists, transitions, etc etc etc and we haven't even started rehearsal yet.  He can produce more paperwork in a bat of an eye than I can rationally explain. 

Anyway, I've done shows with him before and we always run into this problem when we start rehearsal where no one knows whether or not they are called for rehearsal.  The schedules he makes are very compact with lots of abbreviations, which may or may not be consistent.  For example, the day we are doing the Crapshooters Ballet it says "Gamblers Exc S/J/N" which means Gamblers excluding Sky, Big Jule, and Nathan.  So of course the actor playing Big Jule emails me and says "am I called that day?" because it's not clear to him.  And on the night we are learning music for Oldest Established it says "Gamblers Exc Sk/Ju" which also means Gamblers excluding Sky and Big Jule, but it's not consistent with the other abbreviation. 

Issuing a new expanded rehearsal schedule is not really an option, nor is editing the existing one and re-sending it out again as he always does them in PDFs.  So, I guess what I am looking for is if anyone can suggest a way to minimize this thing I always go through where I am bombarded by emails/phone calls from actors wanting me to interpret the schedule for them.  Often I end up having to ask the director anyway what his abbreviations mean, which takes up time and also makes me look dumb and/or not informed/in the loop. 

Should I make like a key and send it out?  Or a list of songs/scenes and who is in what song/scene?  So they could just look at what song we are doing and then look at the list and realize they are not in that song?  Part of this is just training people to read the schedule; a lot of times they are lazy (sorry, but it's true) and just want me to email them a list of dates they are called, which obivously is prohibitive with a cast of 40 people.  But I've run into this problem before with this director (with Oliver it was a nightmare, there were so many kids and all of them were "orphans" and "pickpockets" except the ones that were "little orphans" and oh they all have different costumes for Who Will Buy and ARGH) and I'd just like to head it off as much as possible.

Thanks,

Beth

Edit to subject line-Rebbe

5

The Green Room / gaining new perspective

« on: Jun 27, 2011, 09:52 am »

So this summer I am actually volunteering as an assistant director with the local company that does Shakespeare in the park.  I have pretty much stopped SMing for them as they do not pay SMs (but they do pay the director and the designers).  But I had a free month this summer in July, and so I am working in my volunteer gig as an AD on a Shakespeare production inbetween my SM shows (last show closed June 19th, next one begins rehearsal August 8th). 

We haven't even started rehearsal yet, but it has been really interesting so far seeing things from a different perspective.  I have really enjoyed getting emails from the SM and seeing how they are handling things, dissemination of information, finding rehearsal locations, etc.  I think because I have no formal training as an SM (again, I do have a degree in theatre but there were no SM classes at my university) and sort of just jumped into it without really ASMing at all, my perspective can be a little limited.  My methods are the things I have worked out that work best for me, but I have so little exposure to other methods that I find it really interesting to see what other people do and how they handle things.  One of the reasons why I joined this board was to get more exposure to other SMs and how they do things!

So.... what is your favorite way of gaining some new perspective?   

6

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / RUNNING: Harmful line-throughs?

« on: Jun 17, 2011, 09:07 am »

So I am stage managing a straight play right now with a small cast (5 actors).  I was on book for them pretty much up until tech week, but they had the lines down very well and I only gave line notes once or twice because they really did not need them and my director was sort of indifferent. 

The show has been open for a week now, and the lines have gone steadily downhill.  I was confused by this, because my ASM was telling me that the cast frequently does line-throughs in the dressing room prior to the show.  Well, on Wednesday night we had a photo call and afterwards they said they wanted to stay and run lines.  I had to stay too, so I set myself up in the dressing room with the ladies (cast of all women) and my knitting and let them run lines.  I did not have my book with me as I leave it in the booth after the show opens and I wasn't aware we were doing a linethrough until I got all the way backstage to the dressing rooms.

Well, sitting in on that linethrough I now know exactly why the lines are all over the place.  I realize I am not an actor and thus can't really speak to one method vs. the other when it comes to helping remember lines, but to me as a SM there is a difference between running lines with the intent to remember them and just running them haphazardly, going through the scene as fast as possible with no tone or inflection or even throwing in phrases that aren't in the script with the intent to be funny.  I realize it can be harder to run lines than running the scene because there are no visual cues, and whenever they would get to a point like that they would all jump in at once, only to sort out who had the first line after whatever the visual cue was.  No one was referring to their script at all.

So... we have three performances left.  Has anyone dealt with something like this before, and if so, how do you stop it?  I mean, on the face of things running lines is a good thing, right?  But it seems to me that the type of linethrough they are doing is damaging to the performance, especially since apparently they are doing more linethroughs than they are actually doing the scene onstage and so what is coming through in performance is the haphazard linethrough.

I will fully admit that my weakest facet as a SM is the ability to put my foot down, so I'd be interested to get other SM's take on this and a course of action.  It might be too late to fix the damage for this show, but it's something I'd like to know how to handle in the future.

Edit to subject line-Rebbe

7

Students and Novice Stage Managers / What is SM Paperwork?

« on: Jun 13, 2011, 10:14 am »

Mod Note:  This topic split from thread SM: P&M:  Gratuitous Paperwork-Rebbe

Paperwork is one of those things I think I missed out on, never having had a formal education in stage management (I have a degree in theatre but there was no SM class at my university so I am pretty much self-taught).  I often wonder what people mean when they talk about all this "paperwork".   

For every show, I create a contact sheet with actor's info and another one with the contact info for the tech crew.  I email out rehearsal reports and performance reports (one theatre I currently work with had never had a SM do this before and they were floored when I sent daily emails - and now they require all SMs to do this!).  But that's really about it as far as things I create for every single show I do.

If we have a strong props person/crew, I usually let them handle props paperwork.  If not, I might create a preliminary prop chart and let them embellish/edit as needed.  Ditto for running crew re: set changes.  If there is no running crew (yes, I have done shows where it's me, the actors, and a director - I run lights/sound and there is no technical staff backstage) I will often create a set change list for the actors and post backstage.  If the show is long/complicated/with a lot of scenes, I will also post a scene list backstage for the actors.  Other shows I've found this isn't necessary (like the one I'm doing now, with five actors and four scenes and they are all onstage the majority of the time) and so I skip the scene list.

Obviously I get cue sheets/channel listings etc from my designers and store those in my book, but there is very little I create for every single show. Soo..... what is all this paperwork that everyone else is creating?   

8

Employment / lighting design?

« on: May 31, 2011, 11:43 am »

If this post needs to be moved, please do so, I wasn't exactly sure where to put it...

So in my quest to support myself full-time doing theatre (or at least derive a greater part of my income from theatre vs. my day job) I was emailing back and forth with a gentlemen in the next town over about his theatre project that he hopes to get off the ground this winter.  I have actually never met this person, but he was a connection from a few years ago and he emailed me on the off chance I'd be interested in his new project.  I am, and we started talking schedules, time committment, etc...

And then he says most of the work they could give me would be in lighting design.  And I had to reply back and say "um, sorry, I'm not an LD, I'm a stage manager."  I honestly don't know why he thought I did lighting?  But this is something I've run into before.  Sometimes I feel like I say "stage manager" to prospective employers and they hear "lighting designer" and then we waste a lot of time going back and forth until I realize the misconception and spell it out for them in black and white - I am not a lighting designer.  And interest drops off, and I don't hear from them again.  I think in my region stage managers are largely seen as a luxury, especially for smaller start-up theatres and theatre groups, but everyone needs a lighting designer.

So.... anyone ever worn the LD hat?  Is it worth my while to try and learn lighting design just to get more work, even when what I'd rather be doing is calling the show?  There are basically two or three LDs in my geographical area and I know all of them fairly well (one of them also directs and I have stage managed for him several times).  It should be pretty easy to ask one of them if I could assist with a hang/focus/etc and see if I can get some training that way.  But even if I "apprenticed" on a few shows I'm still not sure at what point I'd be comfortable being hired as a lighting designer. 

Thoughts/comments/advice?