Happy Election Day, USA!
I voted early last week since I knew today would be a long work day. I’m on the Metro on the way to work again, and let’s see if I can again finish this post before I get to my stop.
I often get asked how I came to be a stage manager, since it is such a specific profession. Well, here’s the story.
Like many good Asian kids, I went to university telling my parents I wanted to go to med school. I don’t really think I wanted to go to med school. In my heart I wanted to be an opera singer, but I realized that I lacked the talent and personality to do that.
I did, however end up studying music- not performance, but rather composition and history. I also sang in the Glee Club, took performances classes and did a few recitals. In addition, part of my financial aid package was a work study job in the scene shop of the theatre department. There I helped build sets and labelled tools and sorted buckets of screws.
At one point, I was talking to a theatre student and she said, “Have you thought of being a stage manager? The student groups are always looking for stage managers.”
I kind of dismissed that because I wasn’t really a theatre kid, I was a music kid. The scene shop job was just to get me through and earn some spending money.
So I went through school very involved in the music department and not being very interested in technical theatre. And then I graduated and decided I wanted to work in arts administration because I wasn’t going to be a performer, but I liked being part of the process of bringing shows to life. So I applied to basically every theatre internship program I could find. Opera companies didn’t have internships in arts admin, so I figured I’d start in theatre. This was back when the internet was a new thing for me, so I while I found some of these internship programs online many I read about in trade publications liek ArtSearch. Everyone still sent paper resumes and cover letters. I sent out so many resumes.
I ended up getting an internship in Company Management at a theatre in the same town where I went to school. Company Management is the department that deals with travel and housing for actors, directors, designers. I cleaned a lot of apartments and did a lot of driving to the airport.
The Company Managers and the Stage Managers shared an office, so I often got to see the stage managers coming in and out, arms fill of binders and papers and tape measures. During tech week, company management was always on call, so I would hang out in the office or in the theatre watching tech. I remember thinking, “Boy, the stage managers always look so busy. If I have to be at the theatre til midnight, I’d rather be busy than sitting around waiting to drive people home…”
… and now I’m at my stop. So I’ll leave you on that cliff hanger and write part 2. of Diane’s career epiphany another day.