PROMPT SCRIPT: Receiving a Mess

[SMLois]

I am stage managing a production of Seussical and my prep officially starts tomorrow.  This is the second remount of this production, my first with the company, and will be having an entirely new set of leads (Horton, Cat in the Hat, Gertrude & Jojo).  I happened to be in the office today and was handed the prompt book that the former stage manager had "cleaned up" for me.

It is a mess. The blocking is illegible and cues are inconsistently annotated at best.

The former stage manager did both of the previous productions and is still a good friend of the director's.  I don't want to offend anyone my first day on the job, but I am going to need to make substantial changes to the book in order to make it effective for me.  What is protocol here? Do I need to ask someone before I start making substantial changes because the book is the property of the company?  Am I free to ask for a copy of the archival video to make sure I understand the blocking before I start giving it to actors?

Would love some advice on this - it's not something I've run into before.  On the plus side, it makes me feel really good about my books....

[MarcieA]

I believe, and I may be wrong or misunderstanding here, that the previous SM's book is not for you to call or work from but to use as a point of reference. Even with a remount, things sometime change and it's a wise idea to have your own paperwork.

[bex]

I agree with MarcieA- I've never run into this personally, but I think that if I did, I would ask for a clean copy of the script and to borrow the archival video and make my own set of blocking notes with a combination of the video and whatever notation I can decipher from the old book.  Good luck!

[MatthewShiner]

on the flip side, if this is a second remount, the entire creative team is going to want the SM to be up to speed on what was done . . . they may make changes, but they are probably going to have reference the last production (or first production).

The best is to play sort of an archeologist with the paperwork and the video, and spend your pre-production basically recreating the production script to your liking.  If you are unclear where a cue went, book the cue, but add a question mark - it may become quite apparent where that cue goes.

But create your script, your production book, everything from scratch - if someone seems upset by that, just say it your's way of learning the show.  I have handed over a lot of shows, and watched an ASM rewrite the cues, and one of them just explained, that's the quickest way they learn.

Make it easy for you, and don't worry about offending anyone.

[SMLois]

Thanks guys.

The assumption on their end has been that I would work from the script I've been handed, but telling them I'm re-doing it to help me learn the show will be both accurate and will keep it clearer in my script. 

I've asked the GM for the archival video and am moving forward.

[Balletdork]

Even when the archival script is not a mess it's still not always written for you to interpret! I remounted a show (MOONLIGHT & MAGNOLIAS, Marcie A) that has a perfectly adequate archival script- which didn't mean that I could interpret Marcie's notes-- because we're different SM's trained in different ways, with different notation styles~ it's not Marcie's fault I couldn't interpret her blocking notation!