In this edition of “Map of Skills,” Yolanda Greaves, a seasoned stage manager, describes the technology and the uncertainties that go into managing a contemporary stage production.
1) Please pick a (relatively small) project that is part of your work, and describe it. What are the various components of the project?
The role of a stage manager is an important and, at times, hectic one. They’re responsible for determining when the lights go on, when dancers go on and when sound goes on for a performance. So, you start the project by watching the ballet—watching the rehearsals—and understanding the sequence of timing of when music starts, when the choreographers want the sets to be changed or the lighting to be changed. Then, the real work comes in the week of the production. We start with a technical rehearsal—when the dancers get on stage for the first time and the lighting designer starts figuring out what lights are going to be turned on and when—whether they’re lights from the front, lights from the side or what colors and things like that. We also determine where the sets are going to be put on stage, whether they’ll be on stage right or stage left, how they’ll be moved on and off and what the timing is for moving them on and off.
As a stage manager, I take note of when all these things are supposed to happen so that when we get to the performance, I can actually manage when these things happen. Before that, we have a dress rehearsal and in the dress rehearsal, the idea is that everything will run as if it were in the performance, so at this point, as the stage manager, I’m standing backstage on a headset so I can speak with the lighting person and the sound person who are out in the front of the theater. My job—the role of the stage manager—is to call all the different things to go, so that starts with the curtain going up, music playing, lights going, dancers on stage or off stage and as we go through the whole ballet I would direct prop placement and dancers on and off the stage. Through the whole hour-and-45-minute ballet, the last thing I do is call the final curtain and then as we get ready to finish, we allow the dancers to go downstairs and get out of costume. And that’s a very shortened version of the project.
2) What are the necessary skills to fulfill these parts of the project? Please describe skills relevant to your project, even if these are not acquired by academic study.
For me, I use Excel to put my notes into, so as I’m sitting in rehearsal, I’ll write the information about when the lighting cues need to happen, when the sound cues need to happen, when dancers are entering and exiting and then I put that all in an Excel spreadsheet so that I have a place to track it. It’s also, as a stage manager, good to know and understand lighting and how to light a performance. It’s good to understand sound and how sound works as well and how props need to work from their movement to timing when entering the stage and exiting.
I was actually a dance major and my senior year of college I was watching how other people were being stage managers so for my last project in school, instead of dancing in it, I decided to be a stage manager. I didn’t go to school for it necessarily, but my dance training and understanding of how a performance needs to work helped me understand what it means to be a stage manager. (Learning by doing is one of the best ways to earn a STEM education for the modern world)!
3) What technology do you use to complete each part of the project, if any?
In relation to this project, one of the things that has changed dramatically over the last couple decades is the lighting field in regards to theatrical lighting. It used to be much larger pieces of equipment that would run the lights and now it’s computerized—the light board is very small and compact. That’s been interesting to see as a stage manager—that evolution of technology for the lighting equipment. Now instead of having just one color, you can have a million colors coming from one lighting instrument.
4) What technology do you use in order to train the various skills that you need for the project?
In my case, since I only manage two or three productions a year, I need to review quite a bit to make sure I remember what I’m doing. So, there’s not necessarily a whole lot of technical parts to this process, it’s mainly just reviewing my notes to essentially relearn everything and then, again, actually getting into the theater and beginning to direct the actors and actresses helps bring back the feel for the role I’ve always had. I learned how to manage a production in college. Though I was a dance major, I spent a lot of time on the production side of things and by observing the stage managers I worked with, I picked up most of the tools I know and use when doing this today.
5) What background information helps you engage in and complete the project better?
Well, what’s interesting about this is, like many things, it’s become much more educationalized meaning now students are in college for four years and they’re becoming stage managers as opposed to the route I took of just observing and picking up what I know on my own. It’s not nearly as easy to just pick up stage managing anymore—you’re going into school and studying much longer specifically how to become a stage manager. If someone were interested in doing it, they would have to be doing some production work already in high school and then study it a little bit more in college.
6) What is the most difficult part of your project?
The uncertainty of things. As a stage manager, you can plan everything out to the minute, but sometimes props don’t move the way you thought they would or there’s errors among the dancers—they’re human, they’ve rehearsed, but you still have to make sure they’re on the right side of the stage, facing the right direction and that they’re completely in costume. When working with school-aged children, this can sometimes become even more challenging, but it’s all worth it when we finish the show!