Author Topic: The Stage Manager's Nightmare  (Read 19448 times)

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leastlikely

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #30 on: Jun 14, 2014, 01:28 am »
Doing a very bloody show and we're developing a little bit of a bug problem. Last night I dreamed that the blood effects were bug effects instead. Like IV bags filled with bugs, enemas filled with bugs, strawberries filled with bugs, sponges with bugs crawling through the holes.... :( If I never see an earwig again I'll die happy.

Michelle R. Wood

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #31 on: Jun 14, 2014, 01:46 pm »
There's a "nightmare" I've only had twice as a stage manager. The first time was my senior year in high school, when I stage managed for the first time. I was super stressed on Monday, having little to no idea what I was doing, completely unsure of how to make the transition and work with my crew. That night I woke up, but in the dark of my room I thought I was backstage. I freaked out: "Why am I lying down? What is this bed doing here? We've got to get a HOUSE through this entrance: there's no room for a bed!" I started to fumble around, reaching for my headset, searching for a crew member to help me get my bed out of the way. After a minute I realized it was 2am and I was not in the theatre. I took a deep breath and realized I needed to stop letting the show stress me so much (it did get better and we had a wonderful opening.

Flash forward about eight years. I took an ASM gig with a two-part new original musical. We didn't get a music director or accompanist until halfway through rehearsals. Many of the cast members had other shows they were doing and so dropped in and out of rehearsals repeatedly (I had to fill in multiple times with many different people). We'd known from the beginning the show would have a revolve, but when we got to the space on Monday we suddenly found out that it was built differently than we'd been told, forcing us to reexamine how to stage certain numbers. I let myself get talked into serving as the virtual ME since the poor LD had almost no one to help him finish hang and focus. After the first (very, very rough) stumblethrough, I stumbled home and fell in bed, only to wake up a few hours later. I again assumed I was backstage, the show was about to start, and again, I flipped out. I couldn't understand how I'd fallen asleep backstage, why I couldn't find my crewmembers, where the actors were, and most importantly: why was there a BED in the way? How had it gotten on the revolve in the first place? Fortunately I came to before I woke up my roommates, but it was a sign of just how stressed the show had made me.
"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." -- Thomas Edison (Harper's Magazine, 1932)

kcarp_04

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #32 on: Mar 30, 2015, 12:57 am »
In my school we have two directors. One of them knows a lot about the tech side of things so during musicals, he's on headset and works with the crew while the other works with the cast. So I stage managed the musical this year (Anything Goes). About a week after closing I had this terrible nightmare:
The show is starting but for some reason I'm in the catwalks still and we have all of our chairs and small set pieces on ropes to pull up and send down. So I'm trying to get down but there are no ladders and then I see my parents sitting in these chairs at a table offstage so I pull a chair up, sit in it, and somehow make my way down that way (there was literally 0 logic in that part of the dream). I run to the booth and my director is sitting in my seat and he suddenly had hair again (he had recently cut it all off) so I sit in my chair but I don't have a book for some reason so I have to use his but I can't read it because of the way its organized. Then I look out onstage and we're doing Loony Tunes? No clue as to why or how.

dallas10086

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #33 on: Apr 10, 2015, 08:46 am »
Not a nightmare, which is a welcome change of pace...

I had a dream recently that my theatre hired Lea Salonga for a show, and during rehearsals she insisted that I drink a shot every time the director gave her a note.

I woke up so freakin' happy.

MandalynM

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #34 on: Apr 14, 2015, 05:52 pm »
I have a recurring dream before every opening night. I can't find my headset! I get to the booth (the booth for whatever show I am working with) and its just not there. No way to communicate at all to anyone! Funny thing is, I usually wake up to my bed in complete disarray as I must be searching for my headset in my sleep!

It happens EVERY opening night.


workinhard853

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #35 on: Apr 19, 2015, 09:07 pm »
I started my professional career doing Outdoor Theatre, but even before that, I had the nightmare that I had to explain to two tornadoes that they would not be able to fit into the theatre. This started when I was doing an indoor show and continues to this day, I have it at least once a year.

Q the Snake

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #36 on: May 21, 2015, 12:26 am »
Every show I have the same type of nightmare: everything's going great, then it all falls apart. Props go missing, scene changes don't happen, suddenly the entire stage is set up differently, actors aren't where they should be, I'm SEEN by the audience...*shudders*...and it usually happens during tech, when the only thing I need is more stress...
Though I have had dreams where my director suddenly announces that we're redoing a show from five years ago, that night, and I'm supposed to be ready and remember everything...spoiler alert-I don't.

Alli

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #37 on: May 25, 2015, 07:59 am »
Probably related to my two year hiatus from theatre post college, but all this year I've had a recocurring nightmare where I show up to SM a dress rehearsal or performance (show varies, the director is always the same director, one I worked with in college) and realize I have NOTHING prepared and have completely "forgotten" how to stage manage. I don't have a calling script prepared, I don't know what page we're on, nothing, yet everything is happening without me.... the director is calling all the shots, board ops are taking their own cues and someone else is calling breaks, I don't know which actors are late, EVERYTHING all at once.

Hopefully things won't be THAT rough when I get back into theatre.

kdshort1

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #38 on: Jul 07, 2015, 07:30 pm »
I always have a dream/nightmare (depending on the show) that the director has decided that I should not only stage manage, but also act in the show.

For example, we just had the first rehearsal for Hairspray, and I had a dream last night that the director decided I needed to dance in "Nicest Kids in Town", only during the performance he came on stage and told me I could only do one job and that I should probably stick to calling the cues.

I also usually have the pre-opening night nightmare that no one knows what's going on.  At all. 

TheWiseTurtle

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #39 on: Jul 25, 2015, 11:30 pm »
The only real nightmare I've had is a recurring one where it's the first wet tech and I don't have a prompt book at all. Like, nothing. It's so awful.

Around techs, I generally start calling cues in my dreams but it's not really a nightmare thing, just overtrained.
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SMMeade

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #40 on: Jul 27, 2015, 02:01 pm »
The only real nightmare I've had is a recurring one where it's the first wet tech and I don't have a prompt book at all. Like, nothing. It's so awful.


I actually had that happen to me for real, but during I think our second performance- long story. I printed out the scripts from dropbox, re-wrote the cues from memory sans #s, asked the board ops to trust me when I said go, and we were off to the races. Luckily it was an evening of about 5 short one acts so it was fairly low-pressure but it still worked out- still the scariest moments I've had SMing though.

Elizabeth Allers

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Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare
« Reply #41 on: Aug 10, 2015, 10:56 am »
The most vivid dream I had was that our building had burned to the ground (either right before or during tech) and the producer and I were standing amidst the rubble trying to figure out how to do a show.  This was coincidentally how the entire process felt.

The weirdest on that I had was when I was in college.  Another show that was teching was having all sorts of problems - they lost one of their leads, multiple cast/crew had deaths in their families, there was food poisoning, etc.  I wasn't involved in the show at all.  I had an nightmare during THEIR tech though - that I hadn't realized the whole time that I was supposed to be SMing, and opening night someone broke the news to me.