People often say that stage management is like pornography—you know it when you see it. In my abstract role as a stage manager, I see people at their best, their worst, their most vulnerable, and their angriest. I’ve been a partner to co-workers in situations I’ve never even witnessed with my own spouse. I spend a lot of time behind closed doors. I could build an empire out of sentences that start with “between you and me.”
Stage managers are sitting in the busy intersection of everything imagined and all of the reality that comes along with it.
My central position in theatremaking does not make me an expert on everything. If I were to give a speech on dynamic ticket pricing or structural engineering, it would be a comedy show. But as a stage manager, I have learned a little about a lot of things. I have access to most everyone, I interact directly with every department in a production. From my vantage point, I would say that theatre has a cohesion problem.
I’ve heard crew members complain about producers scheduling performances on weekends. I’ve witnessed company managers scoff at dancers requesting physical therapy. I’ve had actors try to excuse me from Equity meetings, assuming I’m one of the employers. (Oh, those wild Equity hills. So many die on them, and usually over mountains of ignorance. Actors, employers, directors, and stage managers too.)
I’m not saying each show has its own cohesion problems—I’m saying the entire industry does, and it’s rooted in a lack of education about what our collaborators are experiencing, what the expectations of their jobs actually are, and how we pay for everything. Over the past five years, theatre workers have fought for social justice at all levels of production and sought a deeper understanding of what individuals encounter in the workplace. For many, the passion behind these efforts has been brilliant—like the roar of a jet engine with unlimited potential. We’ve invested our time in reading books on inclusion, attending Zoom workshops on conflict resolution, writing community agreements on giant Post-its, launching programs to dismantle barriers, and starting rehearsals with sharing access needs. Over lunches and coffees, we’ve casually compared successful and rewarding methods for building a healthier working culture. When my civilian husband overhears my meetings, he is in awe of the care we bring to our business. These recent efforts were long overdue and in no way complete; we will never truly see progress unless we also develop a shared understanding of how the theatre economy functions and what people are doing inside of it.
I like to imagine the theatre industry as a turducken—a chicken stuffed inside a duck, stuffed inside a turkey. I’ve never actually eaten one (a piecaken is more my speed), but I like the carnage the image suggests. Generative artists—playwrights, actors, designers, directors, composers, craftspeople, crew—are at the heart of what we do. They’re the chicken—the soul of the operation. But everything we do in professional theatre, whether commercial or nonprofit, is wrapped in business—the turkey that surrounds it all: producers, grantwriters, marketing professionals, development managers, box office managers. Without them, we’re hobbyists.
Middle managers, including stage managers, are the duck in the middle. Without us, you’ve got two barnyard birds creating friction while they try to reason with one another. We’re perfectly positioned to be agents of workplace education around a myriad of issues; communication and facilitation are at the core of what we do. We touch everything—and everything we do can be infused with the generosity of acquiring and sharing knowledge. We should choose to be encyclopedic, insatiably curious, and spread that knowledge around like a gravy.
