Onstage > Stage Management: Other

Creating a Handbook

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jayscott:
I am now the resident stage manager at a professional company and also the production coordinator and one of my extra duties is to create a handbook for other stage managers, because I can't do every show.
I was wondering if anyone had to do this before and if they had a basic outline. I'm just not sure how to organize/approach this manual.

Thanks,

BKrynicki:
You could organize it along the timeline of a show, ie what you need to know, do, fill out during prep week, followed by rehearsal weeks including any forms or formats that the company might use or be accustomed to, and continue for performance weeks.  Start by including obvious tasks, that might inpire or cause you to remember other less obvious ones.  Include routines the company is used to (first day is always a production meeting with these people, followed by a read through, etc.). 
Extra sections for special performances - speeches before Opening, school matinee routines, Holiday performance traditions.
If you work with other unions a cheat sheet on their rules is helpful, not all of course, but the ones the SM will most frequently encounter, break times, when the orchestra can tune, how many hours in a day...
Callboard layouts, room set ups, etc.
If you are calling the first show make notes as you go on everything you do as you go along and use that as the beginning of your handbook.  If it's your first show with the company make a list of all the things people tell you..."oh we always have this and that...", "remember so and so needs to have this by such and such time".  My first handbook started as a collection of stickies I was giving to visiting Stage Managers.

Thespi620:
I created a "handbook" of sorts my senior year in college, it wound up being a word document of week-by-week tasks, from pre-production through strike.  Each week I'd start a new entry and take notes as the week progressed, on things as basic as who comes to production meetings or where to get the paint cans to set the SM table on when the risers are up, to specific directors' quirks, etc. Then, after the show closed and I had time, I went back and edited, added in references to specific forms, etc. We gave our most experienced ASMs our forms at the end of the year, and they will hand down an amended handbook, along with their forms & ours, so we cumulatively build on each others' notes.

I found it to be quite helpful to create the document in conjunction with working on a show, because things would pop up that I wouldn't recall as notable in a post-mortem handbook draft, but were commonplace and tricky enough to warrant a quick line or two.

missliz:
My last theater had a great little handout that counted down to opening: what should be accomplished by the monday before opening, 2 weeks before, 3 weeks, etc...I found it very helpful.

ejsmith3130:
I created a handbook for a Company/Stage Mangement postion I held one summer. A lot of the information I included had to do with set ups of spaces, contact people for anything and everything, and forms I had used that the company liked.

I am a really visual person, so in addition to just listing things that need to be done, I like to see diagrams and information laid out in tables- I think it makes it easier to reference during the course of the job.

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