Stage Management

My first practical experience stage managing was for the University of Houston's new work, Breaking the Bands by Samantha Ray. The play was written by the senior playwrighting major, and was almost entirely student led except for the guest director. The process involved a mix of typical theatre rehearsals with conversations about the script and continuous collaboration with everyone from actors to directors to designers. It was a one month long process with many different drafts of the script emerging until we began tech. Thus, proper organization and communication was imperative for the production. As an assistant stage manager, my responsibilities involved taking blocking during rehearsals, creating paperwork for tech and pre-production, updating the callboard, taking notes on rehearsals and production meetings, and running prop and scenic changes during run-throughs. 

During tech, the show continued to be edited in scenic, prop, and blocking changes. So, my responsibility was to update, edit, and communicate these changes on the run-sheets, prop presets, and pre/post show duties paperwork given to the crew. Moving on to performances, I ran the stage right upstage and downstage corners, as it was performed in a black box. Before performances, I performed safety checks of backstage areas, handed off and received weapons during fight call, and followed up on the crew's pre-show duties. I gave stand-by and go to crew members for certain transitions, handed off prop weapons to actors, and called 15, 5, and places for the start of show and after intermission.