Stage Managers Do Make Coffee

Preparing for Tech Week

Your technical analysis of the script has helped you to anticipate where cues will be placed. You have made light pencil marks throughout your script where you believe these cues will occur. Your attentiveness to the director�s comments in rehearsal has given you an understanding of the use of the set and properties. You have also developed a feeling for the desired pacing of performances. The extensive notes that you took at production meetings and in rehearsals have given you an understanding of both the director and designer�s conceptualization of the production.

Now that you are armed with all of this knowledge, the next step that I would recommend is a �Paper Tech.� About one week before entering tech, I try to set aside about a four hour block of time in which I can meet with the director, technical director, my assistants and all of the designers. We slowly talk through every technical element of the play, from the overture to the exit music. Sometimes we attempt to actually number the cues in this meeting. We discuss what order things need to occur in and how many crew members each task will require. The goal of our discussion is for everyone to have a crystal clear understanding of what is required to execute each series of cues and why each step is taken.

Many times, especially with a complex set, it is helpful to have either a scale model with movable parts or a floor plan with cut outs of each set piece so that you may �play paper dolls.� You can talk through each change, moving the model pieces around to simulate the set change. This will help you to determine traffic patterns backstage and storage of set pieces in the wings. It also helps you see what might be in your way before you try moving the real set pieces and end up running over a leg or punching a hole in the scrim. Most importantly, do not rush through these discussions. Make sure you understand everything that has to happen and everything that could go wrong.

If you will work from a tech table in the house beside the lighting designer, request that it be placed in the house early so that you can get used to the working space and sightlines. I like to place a piece of lumber over the chair arms and sit on this so that I am slightly elevated. It not only helps to simulate my view from the light booth, but it also keeps my focus on-stage instead of in my production book. If you will work from backstage, make sure you have enough room and enough light.

If your props tables haven�t been set up yet, request them now. Determine the locations of backstage quick change areas. Make sure that costume racks and mirrors are made available for these backstage dressing areas. Ask for gelled run lights and work lights backstage.

This is also a good time to communicate how many headsets you will want and where they should be placed. If it is possible, ask for a �god mike� so that you can communicate with everyone in the theatre space without yelling. Be sure that you will have control of turning this mike on and off so that you can communicate quickly.

I learned the value of having a god mike during Guys and Dolls. Dress Rehearsal was the first time we used a break-away bottle for the fight scene during the Havana scene. After the fight scene was over, one of the actors playing a waiter was to sweep up the mess. Because the crew had not taken the time to wrap the bottle with clear packing tape, it broke into lots of little pieces and he didn�t get all of it swept off stage.

The actress playing Miss Adelaide made her next entrance and fell flat on her back. The performer playing Sky looked at her and said, in character, �Miss Adelaide, are you all right?� She replied �No� and I sent the entire crew into action over the god mike.

�Paul, please help her off stage left. Stage Left, someone clear a path and get her chair and a glass of water. Stage Right, I need someone to take an ice pack and some pain killers to Stage Left,� I calmly instructed. Most of the crew had not even seen the accident happen, but the actress was instantly taken care of because I was able to coordinate the entire effort over my god mike. It really is a wonderful tool to have in an emergency situation. (Once again, I can't stress enough how important First Aid training is for Stage Managers. Knowing what to do and doing it quickly is very important.)

After the paper tech, I will begin to draw up cue sheets for the deck and rail cues. I will make sure that the flys have been spiked to trim and the set pieces are spiked and glow taped. I also make sure there will be plenty of spike tape, glow tape and clear packing tape available during the tech rehearsals. (Clear packing tape works great to keep spike and glow tape from coming up.) I will finalize the properties plots that I have been creating from my rehearsal notes. I will work with my assistants to assign crew members specific shift tasks and produce plots for the storage of set pieces, as well as Backstage Tracking Sheets. I will go over the changes step by step in my head and with the paper dolls every chance that I get. The specifics of these moves need to become second nature to the SM team before the crew ever sets foot on the stage.

Run For Your Wife Preshow Checklist

Arrive one hour before house opens. Get two wireless headsets from light booth. Place fresh batteries in both. Place my headset on SL podium. Place Chad's headset on SL prop table. Get Mike's camera and my kit from Mike's office (Joel has keys). Place flash on camera and put it on SL HALL prop table. Place kit on SL prop table. Do any dishes not washed prior night. (tea cups, tea pot, plates, water glasses, coffee cups) While washing dishes, boil water for tea. Boil eggs if necessary. Set breakfast try on SR prop table. (2 plates with bagels & eggs, 2 brown coffee mugs on flat silver tray) Set tea tray on SL GREEN prop table. (tray with wooden handles; tea pot, 3 tea cups on saucers, sugar bowl) Lay pink apron over tray. Set tea kettle full of tea on SL GREEN prop table. Make sure soda, ketchup and vinegar were reset on SL GREEN prop table. Also, make sure dish brush is set on SL GREEN prop table. Lunchbox, 4 water glasses, milk jug, 2 cakes on plates, notebooks, clean bowl, large sponge, newspapers and 2 white coffee cups on SL HALL prop table. Check set: Make sure both sets of blinds are closed. Has SR Door been reset? Straighten tables and dressings. Coil phone cords behind tables. Make sure waste basket is empty. Check terrace lights. Check run lights. Charge glow tape. Check water pitchers and cups on SL. Check quick change costumes. MARY: blue robe, blue dress, black stay-up stockings, black shoes, blue clutch handbag. BARBARA: long red dress.

Run For Your Wife Backstage Tracking Sheet

Act I

At Joel's Places Call: Carissa SR & Chad SL Cues from Joel @ Top of Act: SR cues BARBARA on; SR dresses MARY in blue robe; SR cues Mary on; SR & SL cue BARBARA & MARY at windows. At LQ6 Carissa moves SL and changes Breakfast tray to Cake Tray (2 plates of cake, milk bottle) and sets it on SL GREEN prop table. Move struck props into hallway. Chad goes off headset. Bottom of Page 23: Carissa pours MARY's water and places it on ledge of SL masking flat. Top of Page 39: Carissa moves SR to prepare for MARY's quick change. Make sure Eric is there to help. Chad cues BARBARA and PORTERHOUSE on USC on Joel's cue. Carissa & Eric dress MARY. Carissa: blue dress over head (top three buttons undone), set shoes for her to step into, hand her blue clutch purse when she is buttoned up. Eric: puts her black stay-up stockings on. (She will button dress herself.) Bottom of Page 54: Carissa should be SR for John's fast change. Get shirt ready, top half unbuttoned, sleeves unbuttoned. "Tease ourselves" Carissa: put John's shirt on and button it. Help him step into pants. Give him Barbara's long red dress. After change, move SL. Bottom of Page 65: Carissa takes cake and milk jug from BOBBY on SL. End of Act: Carissa lights stairs for exiting actors, give Joel all clear, turn on terrace lights at Joel's cue.

The day before the first tech I will inquire about any set pieces that will not be ready for rehearsal. I will be sure to eat well, take my vitamins and get a good nights sleep. It is very important to start tech week well rested and in a positive mood. Take bubble baths, have a professional massage, meditate, do anything that relaxes you and helps you focus.

I will also be sure that I allow enough time to position myself and my materials at my calling station. I make sure that my headset and pilot light work and check the �god mike� for fresh batteries. I spread any supplies I might need out above my production book and make sure that I have lots of sharp pencils and big erasers. I place a large poster that lists the running order of the show to the right of my book and possibly a list of goals for the rehearsal. I also find a safe spot for my water bottle that is convenient for me, but no where near the production book.

Make sure that you Assistants have several colors of spike tape and lots of glow tape. Something might have been missed when the stage was marked before or added for the first time in this rehearsal. The Director may change his mind about an old spike mark, or an actor might need a spike mark in order to find his light. Also, be sure that the Assistants and crew chiefs, etc. have complete lists of the crew, lots of pencils with erasers, and current versions of the cue sheets and preset lists. They will assist you in distributing this information to their crews.

By the time that I have prepared my personal space, the crew should be arriving. I will greet each crew member and introduce them to the deck managers, department heads and ASM�s who will explain their duties.

In my experience, first techs rarely start on time outside the professional theatre. (There is much more pressure to start on time when the various unions are involved or you will actually lose the rehearsal time.) It is the crew�s first time to join rehearsal and the cast is often dealing with the appearance of new props or scenic elements. The goal should always be to begin the rehearsal in a reasonable amount of time, but be sure that all of the departments are prepared. You will find that over the next few days, the words you will use the most are, �Quiet please!�

When everyone finally gets on their headsets, it isn�t unusual to suddenly discover that the spot operators can�t hear the lighting designer or vice-versa. As always, if anything goes wrong or throws you off schedule, stay calm. In the words of Rudyard Kipling, �Keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.� Get things fixed as quickly as possible and don�t let the cast and crew wander off while it is being done. Give them a realistic estimate of how long they will be waiting.

If there is something productive that you can do while you wait, by all means do it. Have the musical director run a song while you talk through the next scene shift with your crew. Try to make every second of the rehearsal productive and keep everyone focused on the goals you have set.

You should be responsible for the pace of the technical rehearsals. It is ultimately your decision when you are ready to start and if you need to hold to correct an error. If you do hold, it is up to you to determine when everyone is ready to proceed or has reset to repeat a sequence.

The Stage Manager should do her best to stay attuned to tension, conflicts and the general morale of the production. Tech week is always a stressful period in the production process. Sometimes, if the Stage Management Team is being overwhelmed by the technical requirements of the production, they forget to make themselves accessible to the company. Make sure that the company knows they can still come to you with their problems or concerns.

You should work very hard to ensure that the cast knows that the entire Stage Management Team is there to support and assist them in solving problems or conflicts. This is essential in order to achieve the best performance possible from each and every member of the production. You will never know if a personality conflict is occurring backstage between a performer and her dresser if you distance yourself from the cast at this time. Being a communicator also means being available to listen.

Rehearsal is just as important to the Stage Manager�s role in a performance as it is to an actor. Each company member should think through their scenes, songs, movement and lines every day that the show is in production. It is helpful for the Stage Manager to think through the show in the same manner, calling each Standby and each Go as if a performance were actually in progress.

I tend to do this a lot in my car on my way to and from the store, the theatre, etc. When I am stage managing a musical I will keep the soundtrack or a tape of a rehearsal in my car and call the cues as I listen to it. I try to run through the more complicated scenes two or three times on my own before I arrive at the theatre for each rehearsal or performance.

During a first tech, I prefer to work the more complicated scene changes three times. The first time I want full work lights and no actors in the way. The crew will execute the change slowly in full light so that they learn how the set piece moves, where they are going and what is in their way. Next we will run the change at half speed with actors in place and the actual stage lighting. Third we will try for running speed. If everyone seems to have a basic understanding of what they are doing in the shift, I move on.

There is no need to exhaust everyone by executing a change again and again for speed at a first tech. It's like the first read through for the actors, you don't expect performance quality yet. The crew will build up to running speed as tech week progresses. Make notes of changes that are clumsily executed or too long. Talk to your ASM or Deck Manager about what can be done to make these changes run more smoothly. If they do not improve after a couple of rehearsals, you can set an early call or ask the crew to stay late to polish them.

My tech week for Peter Pan was an especially rough one. The show was technically complex and I didn�t get enough prep time because I was working two shows at once. The shop was behind on the build, the cast and crew were plagued with illness and we had many absences due to some nasty snowstorms.

By the time that we got to Act III, the scene on Captain Hook�s ship, we were just speeding through things as quickly as possible. I didn�t insist that we take the time we needed to work the most complicated shift in the production. I ended up asking the crew to stay after rehearsal one night to work on this scene change.

Our pirate ship was nearly 30 feet in length and had to move offstage in one piece. Before it could move, the legs had to be dressed, lighting battens had to be flown out to clear a path and the sail and Pan�s flight line had to be unhooked. Once the ship started moving, the third legs, scrim and sic were to go out and the nursery was to move downstage. Nana�s doghouse was to come on from down right. Once the nursery unit was clear, the legs were to come back in, along with the cyc and black scrim. All the while, the dry ice foggers should be going full force.

The following disaster is what happened in front of an invited audience on Preview Night. The ship started moving first, while the legs and lighting cables were still in the way. The radar cloth on the Neverland side of the set got tangled around the castors and made it almost impossible to move the huge, heavy ship. The crew couldn�t control it and the ship hit the proscenium wall.

At the same time, the black scrim started flying in instead of out. The batten almost hit the deck because the operator didn�t have a headset and was taking cues from someone on the opposite end of the rail. I chanted �The scrim needs to go the other way. The scrim needs to go out,� so many times it felt like a mantra.

The scrim and cyc finally went out and the ship got off stage. As the nursery started moving downstage, the cyc started back in. Once more, it took time to relay to the operator to stop the cyc because he didn�t have a headset. With fog still pumping, the nursery finally found it�s spike and the flys were all reset. I asked for a visual on the actors waiting to enter upstage. There were no actors present. It turns out that the Darling children couldn�t get around the ship to get upstage of the nursery window for their entrance.

What a mess. This all happened in front of an audience and it felt like the longest moments of my life. I hadn�t insisted on the time we needed for everyone to learn this shift. I calmly said, �I want to see the entire crew on-stage after the show.� We went on with the performance as I tried to focus on what was still ahead of us.

After the show, I went backstage to find the crew waiting on-stage, lounging about the nursery. They all had glum faces because they did know how bad the shift looked. I dismissed the light and sound people and asked everyone else to reset the pirate ship. They asked where my ASM was at and I said that she was probably having a well deserved cigarette and they could reset without her help. I collected my own thoughts and moved my production book and cue sheets onto the apron.

Once the stage was reset, the ASM and I talked the crew step by step through the change. We emphasized why each thing had to happen in a certain order for the shift to work correctly. We determined that the rail crew members who had to move multiple linesets were assigned to the correct lines. We decided that there was no reason that the Darling children couldn�t enter from the opposite side of the stage to avoid any further traffic jams. We also discovered that it was necessary for someone on the deck to give a �Clear� when the leg and lighting cables were out of the way so that the crew could begin muscling the huge ship off stage left.

Now that the order seemed to be clear in everyone�s minds, I sent the fly crew back to the rail. The deck crew all sat and watched the linesets move. We talked through what should be happening on the deck as this happened. After the rail crew had correctly completed the shift, they were asked to reset. The deck crew took their places and I called out the cues for the entire shift. The crew successfully completed the scene change and assured me that they would indeed remember everything we had discussed the next night.

What did I learn from this fiasco? Insist on the rehearsal time you know you need. Do not rush through scenes just to get through them. Make sure everyone understands not only what must happen in a complicated shift, but why it must happen in a certain order. The crew did learn the shift after our extra rehearsal time. The director was pleasantly surprised to see the improvement the next evening.

Remember that everyone's safety should always be the Stage Manager�s chief concern. In order to ensure the safety of the cast and crew, you must remain alert and focused on the action on stage. The cast and crew are all part of the same team and must be able to count on one another in order to ensure the safety of everyone involved.

During technical rehearsals for Into the Woods I was calling a complex scene change near the beginning of the show. The characters were all to step downstage of the show drop and the tabs that represented the three houses were to close behind them. I called the cue for the tabs to close, counting on Jack�s Mother to make her cross at the point she had been blocked to do so. I glanced down at my book to see what was next in the sequence. In the few seconds it took me to find my place and look back up, the tab was inches above her head. Before I could do anything, Jack�s Mother had been smacked on the head by the heavy drop.

Thankfully, she was not badly injured and we were able to go on with the rehearsal. She simply had a headache and I was a bit frazzled by what had happened.

Three people could have prevented this accident from occurring:

• The Actress (Jack�s Mother)
• She could have executed her blocking as instructed.
• She could have been more alert to the moving scenery and realized she needed to move sooner.
• The Operator (Fly Rail Crew)
• The flyman could have had his eyes on-stage instead of on the ropes.
• The Stage Manager (Me)
• I should have executed the sequence in work lights first with the actors watching so that everyone understood when and where things moved.
• I should have had my eyes on stage the entire time and been able to call a hold before the drop hit the actress.

Even though there were two other people who could have stopped this accident from occurring, I regard it as my fault. I was the person responsible for the safety of everyone on that stage.

It took a few more rehearsals to work this change out smoothly. The actress had never moved at the same point in the music and was robbing the crew of precious time to execute a major 30 second scene change. After she was injured, we discussed the change and made sure that she understood how important it was that I could depend on her to move in the same measure during each performance. The problem was solved, the change began to run smoothly and the actress was not injured again.

To ensure everyone�s safety, you should also be sure that all run lights are working for every performance. Before a performance of Angel Street, the ASM didn�t check the backstage run lights one night. The light on the escape stairs upstage had not been turned on. Trusting in the crew and her Stage Managers not to put her in a dangerous situation, the actress playing Bella attempted to exit down the escape stairs in a blackout. She fell and turned her ankle. Luckily, she was not badly hurt. The ASM learned a valuable lesson that night and the run lights were religiously checked before every performance for the rest of the run.

During technical rehearsals, the Director and Designers may make changes regarding the execution of technical effects. They may also wish to give you notes on roughly executed sequences. When you are given notes or changes, write them down immediately. The Stage Manager should also be responsible for ensuring that everyone else is recording any changes or adjustments on their own cue sheets and preset lists. Taking the time to do this will almost certainly save you time and headaches later. This is why I make sure that everyone is provided with a pencil before the first tech rehearsal begins.

As I am working through the rehearsal, I will take any notes from the director or designers regarding my calls on Post-it notes and stick them on the appropriate script page. They pop out of the script, serving as a great reminder the next day that I need to adjust or change my calling of a cue.

Never forget that to improve, you must learn from your mistakes. If you are given a note, be sure that you understand it. If possible, repeat the note to the director or designer in your own language to make sure you are on the same wave length. If you don�t understand a series of cues, ask the designer to explain them. What are the cues supposed to do? How should the timing feel? You should never be afraid to ask questions.

Keep in mind that if you are receiving a lot of notes from your designers, maybe it is time to try another format for your calling text. Learn to get your head out of the book and your focus on the stage because that is where all of the magic takes place. The most important this is to not only have an understanding of the functions of the individual cues, but to also have a feel for the flow of the entire production. No matter which method you choose to assemble your production book, remember that calling a show is an artform, not a science.

More SM�s need to learn to think of the lighting design as one of the actors or as another musical instrument. The accurate calling of a performance contributes to the overall effectiveness of the production. A well-called show helps give focus to the appropriate action on stage and intensifies the emotions felt by the audience. If you�re doing your job right, the show should run so smoothly that the audience won�t even realize the tech staff exhists.

Above all else, remember not to take any notes that you are given personally. Everyone is working towards the best production possible. As the Stage Manager, you are the chief element in the execution and artistic presentation of many peoples hard work. The Designers are Monet creating a canvas on the stage and in many cases you will find that you are the brush which completes the strokes.