The Life and Times of a Stage Manage

If things are going right, an audience never sees the stage manager. You may catch a glimpse of them through the booth glass, or see their picture up with the rest of the company, but that’s about it. And even if things start to go wrong, you may not even notice us. We can be pretty sneaky when the need arises.

The cast, on the other hand, sees their stage manager everyday, from the first rehearsal to the closing performance. We are at every rehearsal, every production meeting, and every performance. Our job is to make sure everything runs smoothly, and we coordinate with all kinds of people to make this happen.

The view from the stage manager’s table.

First, there is the director. We are the director’s right hand in rehearsal. We make sure they have everything they need to run rehearsals, such as music, rehearsal props and set pieces, and of course, coffee. We keep track of things the director needs and we communicate these needs to other departments, like additional props we may require or how long a character has to finish a quick costume change.

We also coordinate with the various design and production departments for fittings and meetings and to check in on progress. We talk to front of house and publicity so we are all in the loop in regards to photo shoots, promotional events, and any kind of warnings that may need to go in the program. As you can see, my job entails a lot of communication with the various departments involved in producing the show, a lot of emails about meetings and costume fittings and what we’ll be doing in the next rehearsals, and a lot of note taking.

But wait! There’s more! In rehearsals, a stage manager and their team, which in my case involves my two lovely assistant stage managers, Linda and Somerville, keep track of where the actors move on the stage (called blocking), as well as where props and furniture move, and specific technical requirements of scenes – like lights, sound, and projections. We also keep an eye out for the safety of the cast.

Right now, The Clean House is in the early stages of rehearsal. In each rehearsal, I record blocking and technical requirements, and I watch as a beautiful piece of theatre comes to life before my eyes. I watch the actors discover things about their characters, I see the look in their eyes when something clicks, I see their excitement when they look at the drawings of what they will be wearing, and it is all magical.

In a few weeks, it will be tech weekend. At that point we will integrate all the technical aspects we’ve only been talking about for weeks and my job will be more complicated. I will have a dozen more things to keep track of, and I will be running solely on caffeine and sheer force of will, and it will still be magical.

I’ll let you all know how tech weekend goes once we get there, but until then I have actors to wrangle, notes to take, and theatre to make.