I recently interned on the Victorian State Schools Spectacular (
http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/events/pages/spectacular.aspx), and while I'm sure someone else on here was involved at a much higher level, I'll give what details I can.
Most importantly,
Spec involves ~3,000 cast. All of them students under 18. And somehow, it still works. A lot of it comes down to "divide and conquer":
- "Principal Cast" consists of ~240 dancers and singers. Within this corps there's further designation of principals/ensemble/etc., but for SMgt purposes they're all one group. This lot are the skilled, trained performers and soloists, and are managed by a group of ASMs, who are almost solely responsible for making sure the kids appear on the field of play as required. The 60+ piece student orchestra and maestros are handled by this department.
- "Mass Dance & Choir" are the remaining 2,700 or so kids, who are unauditioned and are either part of a huge choir or a dance ensemble who come on for certain items. Curiously, these kids are managed like event attendees rather than performers, and are the responsibility of the Mass Cast Movement Team - another few ASM, most of whom have a fair bit of event management experience. They also come with teachers, who are responsible for their students; ASMs are really there to instruct the teachers, who are to marshal their own students.
If you haven't guessed, the SMgt team is huge (over a dozen, from the SM to the lowest intern ASMs), but they really rely heavily on the Operations team, who deal with a lot of the SMgt stuff like making sure there's enough water, dressing rooms are maintained, manages first aid staff, etc. They keep everyone going, and it leaves SMgt to focus on facilitating what's happening on the field of play and generally working to give the director/choreo staff what they need from the cast.
Re blocking: As far as I know, choreographers are responsible for knowing the choreo for their numbers. Mass cast movement is heavily planned by SMgt and is carefully organised by the Mass Cast Movement Team, and anyone curious about how they notate and arrange 1,200 kids' choreo should message me. In short, it involves a huge "Dance bible" unlike any other choreo document I've ever seen.
Sign-in/sign-out is electronic, dressing rooms take up every single spare space that can be found (fortunately it's an arena, so there's a lot of rooms). Production schedules are massively complicated and managed by a complex computer system so every child and adult receives a customised schedule; eg. orch kids only find out about orchestra calls, but a dancer will see their dance rehearsals and the sitz probe... but not the bump-in.
The other big one I do is
Melbourne Gang Show - 125 performers, all age 11-25. This one seems more like what people face with big dance schools and the like.
Onstage:Blocking is notated by the numerous Assistant Directors, who are each responsible for a scene or two. SMgt take no notes at all on blocking unless it is related to the leads and is relevant to cues... which means almost never.
Choreography is similarly the responsibility of the choreographer who did that number. There are also several dance captains, particularly for the dance breaks.
Backstage: As it's a Scout show, we have the fortunate boon of having Scout management structure already drilled into the kids, so we use it! The 125 cast are divided into 12 patrols of ~10 Scouts, ranging from 25 down to 11. Their patrol is their primary working group when they're not on stage, and each is led by a Patrol Leader and their Assistant Patrol Leader; usually older cast members who have done the show for a few years and are over 21. Their Patrol Leader (PL) is the person to talk to if they have questions or problems and they don't know who to ask. PLs are responsible for handing out schedules/news/information to their patrols members after being provided with it by Production Management. PLs meet with the Director and ADs frequently and are somewhat like Dance Captains on regular shows. It's the patrol system that lets the show have so many cast without excessive stress, and I recommend it to anyone working with large casts (anything from 40 upwards and you can do it).
The rehearsal room is divided into two with pipe and drape, and costume racks are provided for each patrol, turning it into dressing rooms. (Patrols are same-sex, not mixed, so each patrol can stay together). With 75 boys and 75 girls in there, it's pretty hectic, so it's expected that they'll look out for each other. The older cast take on a lot of responsibility for everything from pre-show nerves to lost socks. Patrol with the cleanest area wins a bag of lollies each show, so there's a bit of competition to keep it tidy. (Although they all need to use more deodorant. Always.) The actual dressing rooms are occupied by makeup, costume and turned into offices for the various administrative staff (having said that, we wish we had more rooms so we could divide them up more).
There are almost no ASMs on the show. The few who exist are more crew chiefs for the mechanists (team of 20+), and report to the TD. The SM themselves is really a showcaller, as the TD, LD and Master Carp head up almost everything. Before you're appalled, I'd like to say that it's a remarkably efficient system, and I doubt it would work any better if we did introduce an SM with broader responsibilities and a DSM. Instead of ASMs to manage cast, the show uses a group of Cast Supervision; volunteers who are mostly mums of cast and who make sure kids are on stage when they should be, dry tears and help find lost socks. Cast Supervision have no clue about the technical or creative aspects of the show, and are solely there to keep the cast alive. The Head of Cast Supervision is about the closest you'll get to a Company Manager.
Backstage calls are not given. Ever. Instead, we provide video and audio relay to every single room in the theatre. The video relay has a bottom third added which gives instructions such as "Vocal warm up on stage in 5 minutes", "All cast for Finale to wings" etc. As it's so noisy backstage (125 excited kids. Go figure.), it was decided that calls would just add to the noise, and most of the cast know their movements already; the text is a good reminder to the kids who aren't sure.
Backstage, there's a lot of signage; "Do not sit on this side of the corridor" "BEWARE OF MOVING SET" etc. We also mark up the wings until they look like an airport runway; lots of blues (far more than most shows) and fluoro tape marks out zones which are reserved for set/walkways/safe to stand in/sightlines. When necessary, we'll get the cast to only walk between the blue/green/whatever tape so as to avoid messing with scenery moves.
Sign-in is handled with a huge board with every single cast and crew member's name on it. When they arrive and check-in, a sticker is put next to their name - a different colour for each show. It's a really easy way to manage it, as the cast walk up, point at who they are and the coloured dot gets put on. No scribbles, no forgetting who people are and you can see instantly who isn't there because they have yesterday's dot colour still next to their name. To get into the theatre, cast and crew
must be wearing their show-issued name tag. These vary each year, and I've seen everyone from tiny chorus kids to the TD turned away because they didn't have their tag.
After the show, the kids go out to the foyer where they are picked up by parents. Adult cast are allowed to leave via stage door.
The massive advantage of this system is that it runs remarkably well with a small team of professionals (who are volunteering our time) and an immense, often changing crew of volunteer parents; everyone has grown to understand that they'll be told what they need to know and not much more, and while questions are welcome, not everyone will get to know everything. The senior crew/dept heads are 99% the same each year, and communicate freely, but having the show set up as it is means we can have parents come and help out with no prior experience of how theatre works and it causes no extra stress.
There's also a big element of placing trust in every cast member and the show has developed a culture which is on the verge of cult-like (but we love it!) regarding respect, positive attitude and caring for each other. This, more than any organisational trick or good stage management, makes the show as painless as it is.
If anyone here is handling a similar show, feel free to message me; I'm sure I've left out details which would be useful.
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) but the Petzl has been perfect. Runs off AAA batteries - chews through them at the start but if you don't mind it being a little dim they then last forever. Only issue is that they all seem to have a very wide throw... not sure how you would fix that.