Today another micro blog post as I ride the train to work:
Okay, so last I left the story of deciding to be a stage manager, I was working as an intern in Company Management at a theatre in the town where I had gone to college. Because I was still around, I still sang with the Glee Club and saw my professors often.
One day, one of my Professors said, “We’re doing an opera, and I need a stage manager.”
I said, “I don’t know what that is, but sure!”
They were doing a production of Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea. It’s one of the first operas ever written and rarely done, but there was this hot shot freshman countertenor and the opera has a great role for a countertenor (a countertenor is someone who is male but sings in a female vocal range). The guy actually has become quite opera famous since then, so I get to say he was in the first show I ever stage managed.
Anyhow, since I didn’t know anything about stage managing and since at my Company Management job I shared an office with the stage managers, I asked the head stage manager of the theatre where I worked- “What am I supposed to do?”
She was so excited to talk to me about it and showed me all her production books and showed me how to mark my score up with “standby” and “go” for the cues and how to page people to stage. The biggest thing, she said, is to tape down your Post Its because there is nothing worse than dropping your book and all your Post Its falling out. (I do not do this because I now mostly use stickers instead of Post its when I mark my score.)
Now to be clear, when my professor asked me to stage manage his show, he was actually looking for a show caller- someone to come in and call all the light and tech cues and page people to stage. There is a whole other part of stage managing which is about running rehearsals and facilitating that part of the process. Essentially, I was doing a three or four day project for my professor when I agreed to stage manage his show.
Well I really enjoyed the experience. I remember there was a moment where a singer had to change his costume right next to me, but I was calling the show so I didn’t have the hands to help him. I paged another singer up to help with the costume change and it all worked our really well. Being able to solve problems on my feet like that was really gratifying; it was one of those moments where I really felt like I could figure things out and be useful.
So after this I went back to my Company Management job and started sending out resumes for stage management internships. Of course I had no experience so I didnt get a lot of responses. But one place that did respond was a little Shakespeare company in Marin County, California. One of the founders had gone to the same school as me (albeit twenty years before) and I really played that alumni angle. And maybe it was the alumni connection… maybe not… but she offered me an assistant stage manager job for the coming summer. So off to California I went!
I had a great time. We did Hamlet, As You Like It, and The Servant of Two Masters. All the actors were super nice. We performed outside in the sunshine. The stage manager also worked at Portland Opera, and told me all about stage managing an opera. Being part of the rehearsal and creative process was just so amazing for me.
Now at the same time, I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket, so I had applied to a huge fellowship in Opera administration. Opera America had a program where if you got accepted, you would work with three different companies over the course of the year and learn how differently sized companies works. The application process involved wiritng lots of easays and several rounds of interviews.
I got to the last round of interviews which happened to take place in Washington DC. I asked for the weekend off from my job at the Shakespeare Festival and off I went. Opera America flew me out, put me up in a hotel, and give me a nice meal stipend. I think there were maybe eight or 10 of us in this final round. I don’t remember much about what we did, but I remember going out to the Georgetown waterfront with my fellow applicants and spending our meal stipend on a fancy dinner. At least it felt fancy to us.
The final interview round was the next day, before a panel of seven or eight people all of whom were major administrators and directors at opera companies around the country. It was quite daunting for me.
And I was sitting in front of that interview panel, feeling quite out of my depths. And one of the first questions one of those leaders of the arts asked was, “Why do you want to work an opera arts administration?”
And I remember a thought clear as a bell went through my head. A voice – was it my own?- said, “But I don’t want to work in arts administration. I want to be a stage manager.”
I guess when a little voice tells you something while you are sitting in front of a row of opera big wigs, it really helps to focus you.
I BSed my way through the rest of that interview, went back to my ASM job at the small Shakespeare festival, and the rest, as they say, is employment history. From then on out, I knew what I wanted to do.
And that’s the story of how I decided to become a Stage Manager.