Stage Management — Running the Room

Well, welcome to the Stage Management course from Easy Stagecraft. It's Daniel Gosling here, and through my time working in entertainment industry, I've had the pleasure and the privilege of being both a Stage Manager and a Touring Stage Manager and a Production Manager. So it's kind of like three levels of management in a theatre process, but the Stage Manager is really the core individual or team of individuals that make up the everyday runnings of how a production processes and runs smoothly. So in this course, we're going to look a little bit about the roles of a Stage Manager, the terminology that we use as Stage Managers, the hierarchy of the Stage Management team and how a Stage Manager fits in the overall production process.

And then we're going to look a little bit about the rehearsal process outside of theatre, the theatre process once we're in there, and then we're going to talk about how to call the show, what calling a show is about, and then how to mark up your script as part of that process overall or further marking up the script a lot, and I'll get some excerpts of different scripts that I've done and different scripts that my colleagues have done and we'll go from there and talk to a whole bunch of different Stage Managers in the interview hub as well that you can review. So let's jump straight in, we're going to look now at Stage Management. It's a great topic, I love it, because you get to be the boss and we'll go from there.

So welcome to lesson one in stage management where we're going to talk a little bit about some of the terminology that we use in stage management. Now as stage managers we are wholly responsible for the execution of a show. And once the show begins nothing happens without the stage managers explicit instruction or direction. And the reason for that is because the stage manager needs to have control of the production. So all the departments and the cast and the orchestra all listen to the call of the stage manager and the stage managers team. So what you'll see is that one of the main terms is the SM or the stage manager.

But then there's also two or three other individuals that also make up that team. Often you'll have the DSM or the deputy stage manager, the ASM or the assistant stage manager. And then you have SMC or stage management crew or these might also fall under the category of floor crew. And the floor crew are the general stage hands and stage crew that move sets on and off and things like that. Gather props etc etc. You'll also hear the stage manager use a lot of acronyms because when you're calling a show often there's not much time to say I'd like the lighting department to come here. So every department has an acronym.

The lighting department is LX. The sound department is SX. The mechanist department or the flies are called flies. Follow spots are called domes or spots. You've also got floor crew which are just stage hands or hands and then you've got the cast. Now in an operatic or musical theatre world stage managers are both very informal and very formal at the same time. And a beautiful sense of terminology comes from the way that they introduce and call different people to the stage. Calling people to the stage means over the public address system or the addressing room paging system. Stage managers will give you calls such as beginners call.

Beginners call is a call that a stage manager will give to get everyone who's opening the show in Act 1 to come to this artist stage and get ready. Then you've got places. Places means you need to take your place because the show's about to start. So beginners call first and then places. We've been just standing there ready to go ready to walk on stage. You'll also hear over the comm system which is the communication system caused like standby. Standby means everybody be ready to execute the next task. It might be standing by for a scene change, standing by for a lighting cue, standing by for a fly cue.

It means that during a standby all communication stops and everyone is listening for the stage managers go. And the go cue is a command that the stage manager gives to execute a moment of the show. It might be a mechanical cue, a lighting cue, a sound cue, a special effects cue, a pyro cue which is fireworks and things like that. But the go command is the command that everyone acts on and no one does a cue without that go. So have a look at the list below. That's a little bit of some of the terminology that we use. I'm sure as I go through the course I'll add some more down there because as I start to write things out I'll think about more and I'll add them back to terminology as we go through.

But have a look at the list and if you have any questions always jump into the forum and ask us there or ask your peers or colleagues and we can go from there. So now we're going to look at lesson two in stage management so I'll see you there.

So, in lesson two of stage management, I want to talk about what is stage management? Well, stage management is the, as the title suggests, management of the stage. Once the production moves into theatre, there needs to be individuals responsible for the coordination and management from everything from the moment the loading dock opens at bumping to the moment that the last truck door closes at bump out. And that includes everything from scheduling, organising rehearsals, organising stage access, organising maintenance, checking through things and managing the requirements of every individual department that there is.

That's wardrobe, props, lighting, scenery, sound, vision, projection, pyro, orchestra, musical, dancing, the dance captains, the cast rehearsals, the vocal teams, everyone needs to report to the stage manager with their requirements. And the stage manager and his or her team will put all of those requirements out into a schedule for the day, for the week, for the month, for the season. Now, predominantly, stage managers are female, which is great, because we need more girls in the industry, so girl power till all of you. But there are an occasion, a male stage manager, I was one of them, I've been a few, and a couple of my colleagues have also been stage managers in their own right.

And there's a difference between a theatre stage manager and a festival stage manager, for example. A festival stage manager will be in charge of making sure bands get on stage and get off stage at the right time, and that all of their band equipment is set up on rises that get rolled into position, and the festival starts and runs smoothly. Whereas the stage manager and the theatre is very much the matriarch and often the mother figure or father figure of the company, and that's of the theatre company, not so much a commercial company, the theatre company, the theatre family. And the stage management role is for the care and protection of all of the performers and cast and crew and their health and safety, and also to maintain the director's intent throughout the whole season, and also to ensure that the show runs smoothly from a technical perspective.

So there is a lot of pressure on the stage manager at times, but often it's all done with so much love and passion that they really do take it in their stride. So if you like organising things, because you have to be super organised as a stage manager, if you like communicating openly, being able to take command of a situation, instructing others and being efficient in your planning and your execution, and also understand the whole process of being the go-to person to answer any questions about organisation and execution of the show, the stage management could be for you. So let's have a look now at the roles in stage management in Lesson 3.

So, as I mentioned before, there are a number of roles within the stage management team. Now, the stage manager themselves, or the SM, is at the top of that pinnacle, and they sit alongside the director from basically the entire rehearsal process from the very beginning until the very end. And through that rehearsal process and moving into the theatre, they'll bring in other members of the stage management team. But the stage manager is responsible for upholding the director's vision when the director isn't there anymore. There is often a quiet handing of the baton, once the first rehearsal starts in theatre, where the director hands over the show to the stage manager, because then it's then onto the stage manager to deliver that show night after night after night after night to the director's intent, and to uphold the flow and integrity of all of the rehearsals that have been done thus far.

So, if you're a great note taker, you're a great stage manager, because the stage manager has annotated everything from the position of chairs and tables on stage, to the entrances and exits, to the way someone walks around the back, to the time it takes them to do a costume change, to the time it takes for that piece of music to run out, for the time it takes for that piece of set to fly in, all those sorts of things. That's the stage manager's role. Then you have the DSM, the deputy stage manager. Now, this is the person that is often responsible for calling the show. In some smaller productions, the stage manager will call the show as well, but in larger productions such as operas or larger musicals, the deputy stage manager will do the calling of the show.

And they are the person that sits with the stage manager's script or the Bible, as they call it in theatre. And over-the-com system calls all of the cues systematically as they go. They follow the script, they follow the score, and as different cue points appear in that, they will call those cues. There might be lighting cues, standby lighting go, standby flies, it might be for set change, things like that. Then under the DSM, you also have maybe two, three or four ASMs, and they are the assistant stage managers. And they are the ones responsible for doing things like pre-show checks of all the props, ensuring props are in the right spot, ensuring that if an actor needs to hand something off into the wings or get something from the wings, they are there at the right spot at the right time to handle those props.

They are responsible for making sure cast out of the way of other set pieces that might be moved by the set crew. Sometimes they move set pieces themselves, they push things on, takes things off in black outs and scene changes as well. They are the general hands of the stage manager. And under them you have stage crew, who are under the control of the stage manager, the DSM, or the ASM, depending on the task. And they are just there for general assistance in moving scenery around. They will push sets on and off, they will help to stack things out in the loading dock, they will help to get the big pieces of set in and things like that, reset things, and assist as required.

So they are the three main levels of the stage management hierarchy, the SM, the DSM, and the ASMs with the stage crew underneath. And so I have fused into this a bit of the information about the hierarchy and the roles all in one, because the hierarchy of the stage management department is that. And under the stage management department sit all of the creative heads or the creative, the creative designer, the lighting designer, the costume designer, all sort of sit with the stage manager and discuss their requirements. But when it comes down to an execution, everyone goes through the stage management channel to have something done on stage.

So you don't just bring in a lighting bar to fix something. You check with the stage manager, is it clear for me to bring in lighting? They say yes or no, they then instruct the flyers to bring the lighting bar in and you do what you need to do and you send the lighting bar out. Or, stage management, can we run that scene again please, I need to do something with the band and they say yes or no, they check their time and yes, we're good to go or no, we can't do that tomorrow. They put that on the schedule for tomorrow. They are the book keepers, the gate keepers if you will. So that's a bit about the roles in stage management and now we're going to move on to listen for.

So I just wanted to talk a little bit now about the role of the Stage Manager in the rehearsal process. Now I mentioned earlier in lesson 3 that the Stage Manager is there from the beginning. And often that means that they are there through the casting phase, through the audition phase, and through all of the offsite rehearsals. So that means that they have seen the show develop from nothing, they've seen the directorors intent from the ground up, and they've annotated basically everything in their script. The Stage Manager's script is sacred turf as far as anyone in theatre is concerned. If you are not the Stage Manager, you do not touch the Stage Manager's book because the contents of the entire show are contained within that.

And that can include things like small diagrams of crosses and circles of where people are standing in different scenes. So perhaps we're plotting a lighting session and we go, "Where's John's standing?" Stage Manager refers to their notes and goes, "Oh yes, John is downstage OP next to the second leg." And you go, "Great. I can put a special there." Or we get our walker to move over there or whatever it might be. They are in charge of all of the scheduling, in charge of putting out rosters for crew, putting out rosters in call times for cast and principal performance to come in and do their rehearsals.

They are responsible for running the rehearsals. If we're starting at 9 and we're having a break at 9.40, the Stage Manager will call a break at 9.40 and they'll start you up again at 10 o'clock and you'll go to a lunch and they run the roost. Even the director often will say, "Do we have time to do that?" Yes, we can run that scene again or do we have time? Nope. Stage Management says, "It's time for a break, we're stopping there and we'll come back and pick it up." Or in the break the director can run some individual scenes with people if they need to. So that is the rehearsal process. If you enjoy being part of the nuts and bolts of a production, not so much directing and not so much acting, Stage Management might be down your alley because it really is a role of organisation, attention to detail and a real care and passion for the show that is putting it on successfully every night and knowing where things go at all times.

And often there's so much stuff happening in the director's head they forget so you basically become the director's right-hand man or right-hand woman in that capacity. So now we're going to move on and look at a little bit about moving into the theatre world and moving out of that rehearsal process into our time in theatre.

So, now we're moving into theater. We've finished our time in the rehearsal room. We've been involved with the set designers, the lighting designers, the sound designers in all of our pre-theatre planning. We've discussed our scheduling for bump-in for production week. We know when our rehearsals are, we know when everyone's doing everything. So now we're moving into theater. So your role as a stage manager and with your team now from the moment you enter the theater as a stage manager, you are basically the bulldog that commands where things go and who's doing what. And you might work in association with a production manager or a technical director to help manage the flow of that, depending on the scale of the production.

But you are the one in charge of, again, scheduling, managing the access to stage, who's doing what? What time is the truck arriving with the set mid-day? Okay, so that means between eight and mid-day, the lighting department has access to the stage. From mid-day to two o'clock, we are unloading the first truck and we are setting up the flies or the floor panels for that section. So while you're doing that lighting, you have to move off to lunch and then do your workout in front of house. And then from there, while they're doing that, the orchestra is arriving with instruments. So we're going to drop the pit and put our barriers up and then the orchestra and the sound department are going to start setting up and spacing the pit.

And then at three o'clock, we're all going to have a toolbox talk because we're starting cast walkthroughs at four o'clock. And then between four and six is cast walkthroughs and between six and ten is rehearsal. And we call it a day at eleven o'clock after notes. And so you know, down to the minute, who's doing what, where things are happening, and you need to be able to answer those questions for everyone. At the same time, once you're into either you then deploy your team of DSM's and ASM's to start doing all of the stage management setup. So that includes things like setting up the green room, making sure that there's cups and sauces and plates and crockery and things for people to eat and drink from.

Making sure that all of the dressing rooms are clean, tidy, have mirrors, have coat hangers, have signs on the door and signage around the venue so people know where the stage is, where the toilets are, who's in what dressing room. You need to make sure that your team are putting out props, marking up props tables, preparing props tables. You need to oversee things like masking. You know that people are going to be running off in a certain area. So is that Drake going to get in the way or is that table or that flat in the wrong angle? How can we fix that? As you see the set crew put it in, you need to think ahead and say that's going to be an issue because I know in scene five we're bringing a big scene cart through here, a big prop through here.

So that's not going to fit, so we need to swap that for a drape or things like that. You're all about forcing issues because you know the show inside out better than anyone. The cast know what they're doing, the lighting department know what they want to do, the sound department know what they want to do, the set department know what the set is, but no one knows how it all goes together except the stage manager and the stage management team. So your job really is forecasting issues and being proactive and finding out how to best circumnavigate problems as they arise, and then if something needs to be somewhere figuring out the best way to do that.

So if that means a set piece needs to go here, you need to get those cast members, walk them through the changes. Okay, we've had to add extra stairs here. This means you're going to have to go this way and left when you've always rehearsed it to go this way and right. So you need to just figure out that in your own heads and understand that's how we're doing it now. And you add those extra instructional variances with you know consultation with the director, but you make those decisions and get those plans updated. So when you start rehearsing everything's good to go. Once you're in theater also you start the rehearsal process in production rehearsals.

That means you start adding elements like lighting, sound, AV, flies, seating changes. You're working in the dark more, all these different elements. So you need to do things like spike the stage. Spiking the stage means you get small pieces of tape in various colors and you mark different elements of the set. So you know that the stage crew always have a mark to put that set back on. You might set deads. Setting a dead in a fly system is setting a position of that bar. You might have an in-dead which is of a window frame and you like it there. So that's called the in-dead and the fly department set that on their ropes or recorder in their console.

And then the out-dead is when it's out of view but it's not all the way out. So you're setting deads. So you might have three deads for that window might have a high dead, mid-dead, low-dead depending on what scene it's used in. So as a stage manager you then set those deads because you know in scene four you'll be calling for line seven at dead two and then in scene nine you'll be calling for line seven at dead three for example. So you set all of these things and it's adding all those final touches, updating the book, getting the flow right and having your your stage management team work the flow and work all the cues and call all the cues and watch and adjust the show flow as you go.

So then by opening night when the director hands over to you it's your baby. You look after the show and so often stage managers get that hierarchical you know matriarchal figure because they are the ones that everyone goes to with questions about access times, rehearsal times, call times, show times. All of the front-of-house staff talk directly to the stage manager. When all the audience comes in the front-of-house staff give what's called clearance to the stage manager so that the stage manager knows that they can start the show and nothing happens without the stage manager. So without that we're all lost, we're all doomed.

So that's part of the theatre process of being a stage manager.

And then there's the process of calling the show. And what I've done below is I have, with a couple of colleagues of mine, put together a bit of a mock-up of a show call on comms. It's very hard to record comms chatter, but what I've done is done a bit of an example of a stage manager, a lighting operator, and a follow-spot operator, and a few other people. And you can start to hear a little bit of the jargon and the discussion that happens on comms. And we're just reading through some scripts that we've had in the past. And as a result of that, I just wanted to do that so you can understand about what it sort of sounds like to call the show as some of the flow and some of the unspoken respect that we have as theatre practitioners for that process.

So on a standby, nobody talks. We don't do anything until the stage manager calls the go. You don't question it. Another day, all responsibility falls with the stage manager, so you're always protected in that sense that unless it's drastically unsafe and you say no, and the stage manager calls a show stop in that situation, the stage manager is making those calls on safety and timing and decisions. And there is a trust and an expectation that when they call go, you go, because they are looking ahead at all of the other things that need to happen. And if they know that a piece of scenery takes eight seconds to come into the ground, then they might be seeing someone walking up stage and they know it's going to take them three seconds to get there.

So as they call the go, they walk up at fours behind them and everyone is safe. So by delaying or hesitating and not listening to the stage manager can actually cause more damage and accidents than following the stage manager's instructions. So it's really important to follow that show call process. So have a look at that below and see what you think.

So, I just wanted to wrap up our stage management course by just talking a little bit about having the correct attitude as a stage manager. As with all of our other sound design and lighting design philosophies, you know, being a stage manager is all about being a people person. Yes, you need to have some determination and some strong will behind you because you do need to make tough decisions and you do need to make those decisions firmly and succinctly. But you also need to be an empathetic person. You are the person that is in charge of a whole theatre, worth of people and their safety and their scheduling and their lives and their balance of their lives.

So, yes, we understand that as stage managers and as theatre practitioners, there are long days but it's all about keeping everyone in the loop, keeping everyone relaxed and calm and informed and just doing it with a smile on your face. We all get stressed, everyone does. That's the theatre, but having that responsibility of a stage manager really is a crucial role in a theatre family and being able to do it with the correct attitude and being humble and respectful and to do it with dignity and respect across the board, no matter if it's male or female, young or old, no matter the race or the background or the culture background or the social, economic background or the demographic background, doesn't matter.

You are just accepting of everyone and their role within the show and you're not afraid to tell people to pull their socks up and do the right thing if necessary, but you're also very encouraging and supportive of people that might be trying new things or experimenting with theatre for the first time or working with old sea dogs who have been in the theatre for many years and think they know best when in fact your way is the correct way in this situation. So, I hope you've enjoyed this course. If you have any questions, as always, please jump into the forum. I look forward to seeing you there and thanks for joining us in our stage management course and bye for now.

See you later!