Taking on the role of Stage Manager for WOMENSwear is very exciting, I am just in the process of writing my book for the final time, after months of re-writing cue sheets. In this blog post I want to discuss the need to be sustainable as a Stage Manager. Especially in my scenario as a performer, lighting designer, producer, set design along with props and costume, and developing the soundtrack with Sam and Lauren. I have begun to realise just how important preparation is.
On the tech day and the performance day, the role of running the show falls out of the directors hands and into the stage managers hands, quite a daunting experience, particularly for our director who also wrote the show, so it has become almost her left arm. It became a collaboration at the start, making the director feel comfortable in the knowledge that I know what I am doing. Offering reassurance. One of the best ways to reassure any body is to be prepared, I learnt this when I first started doing stage management for a performance of Hamlet on the Shakespeare module. If you know the answers to the questions people are asking you, they feel reassured. It’s about foresight, understanding what is expected of you and being prepared enough to talk about it. I had ideas about set design and lighting from the start, and these really helped ease the stress situation.
We are about to go into our tech for our performance in just a few short days, as a part of this I am making sure that all of our sound and video cues are inputted into Q-lab, with the help of Sam our director, to make sure that she is happy with the finalised decisions. This extra preparation will also allow for a smoother tech, as we have a shortened time of just two hours, the more preparation the better.I have also taken on the task of making sure that my lighting cues are formatted so that they can be easily programmed, by splitting the stage up into three sections, and including any repeated lighting states in my notes so that they can just be copied and pasted when they are programmed into Q-lab during the tech.
It is important to be prepared, and with a company as small as ours, it is difficult to not include all of our company in the performance, as the story called for at least three actors. The question arose as to what would happen if I were to not call the show. Inevitably a technician from the venue could call the show for us, but he would of course not be available for rehearsals, and would therefore almost be running the show blind. The second question the focused on what a professional would do, Speaking to Darren in our last production meeting, he made me aware of the following policy: At the Lincoln performing arts centre, and the same with many other venues, two technicians are provided as standard, any more are to be paid for at a fee to the company. This made me realise that in order to act as a professional company, we must employ someone to call our show for us. After speaking to the technicians in more detail at a later date, it became evident that many companies employ a stage manager to call the show for them, whilst they act. Out of Joint for example, employ 7-8 extra technicians for their performance of Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage. (Out of joint, 2015)
We then made the decision as a company to use nearly a quarter of our budget to employ a second year, who has had mountainous experience to call the show for us. She will sit in on our tech rehearsal and follow the book to make sure that everything is clear for her to understand. Further to this she will sit in on a four hour rehearsal, as well as the performance day. Overall I am very pleased with the decision we have made to employ a technician to call the show for us, and believe that we have justified our decision for doing so, along with our arts council application, that explains in more detail how we will use this model we have created, for the future, and how we intend to secure funding for this. (The arts council application is featured in the Documents tab, Under pages).
Out of joint (2015) Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage. [Performance] Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre 2015.