A few months ago I tossed out the idea “how much do stage managers make?” Because as one, I’m generally pretty curious. There’s a wide variety of pay scales among us (and the job itself varies widely), but I’ve always been a little puzzled about why we keep what we make such a secret.

If you want to major in banking, a couple of Google searches will give you a pretty good idea of your likely earning potential, assuming your not a total basket case at your job. The same is true of teachers, policemen, even politicians… but once you get into the arts, people clam up.

Part of me wonders if it’s related to the crazy starving artist mentality (that I love so much) – are people so broke and so poor they have nothing to report? Or, more likely, I think, are they ashamed they are making money? If you’re making a good, living wage, maybe even better than a bare bones minimum wage, do you feel this lessens your career choice somehow?

Or are you scared that if people know how much you make, you can be underbid? Or are you worried employers will see how much other stage managers are making and start offering you less?

Fact is, there’s always someone who can do it cheaper. Especially in the arts. There are nutcases that will do it for free.

But you get what you pay for. And a halfway decent company or theater knows that too.

I’ve got news for you stage managers, I really don’t think it hurts anyone if you air out what you make at different jobs. If nothing else, I think it would help kids in college and other folks considering this weird career to see if it’s worth it.

I think the reason that this is still on my mind a little (ok, how much I’m making and my future earning potential is almost always on my mind – I am a personal finance blogger, after all) is that I offered a 100% anonymous survey to my readers to collect some of this data in that last post.

I got 0 replies.

I thought… dang, this is an unpopular post. But really, my stats don’t lie. And it’s not. As a matter of fact, anything I write about stage management gets upteen more hits than anything else I write.

Stage managers are curious about what they can make. But even anonymously they still won’t talk about how much they are making.

I’d say I’ll put my money where my mouth is, but I already do. You can see every penny I make each month in any of my accountability updates.

But clearly I didn’t walk out of college into a steady paying stage management gig. So I’m going to close out this post with a little bit about my pay history as a stage manager – and if there are any other stage managers with blogs out there reading this, I challenge you to do the same. And link back or leave a comment or something – I’d love to be reading you!

Wouldn’t 19 year old you have loved to see how someone 10 or 20 years older than you had survived as a stage manager so long? Wouldn’t you have liked to know that it will be tough but it can also get better?

I sure would’ve.

Also, you have a reason to play with Sharpies.

A little bit about these dots:

• Dot #1 was my first paying gigs at $6.25/hr that were capped at 20 hour work weeks, because they were actually for the college I attended. No one wanted to stage manage our shows, so they started paying me to do them. Clearly, I was working more than 20 hours a week.
• Dot #2 was when one of professors put up a big fuss and said I couldn’t be paid to stage manage as a stage management major. Thanks, buddy. On the flip side, that became one of those times when your student worker job can really help out your resume and I started working full time as a tech in the Performing Arts Center. Way better money and no cap on the number of hours I could work. God bless overtime.
• Dots #3-5 were the two seasons I worked for a tiny touring theater company in Virgina for a whopping $500 a month. You know the best thing about that job? Factoring in the cost of living for the area at the time, I was still clearing $300 a month. Except for summers. I should’ve added $0 dots for the summers because I was working as a Sound and Lighting Tech then. Again, way better money than stage managing.
• Dot #6 – thanks, recession. Also, to help out my parents who were hit way harder by the recession, I actually got a pretty good job as a Customer Service Rep so I could pay my grad school tuition along with all my living expenses. Fortunately that stint didn’t last long.
• Dot #7 and #8 were the early cruise ship days.
• Dot #9 was grad school again. Although I picked up some cash that year working in the school theater as a tech again, most of it came from being a campus tour guide. Yay, really strict student visa work laws. Thanks, England.
• Dot #10 was back to the cruise ship to pay off grad school.
• Dot #11 was the circus days.
• Dot #12 is a cheater dot because I’m not really a stage manager these days (except for my exciting squirrel experience back in May). So, yes, clearly production managers make a lot more money than most stage managers.

My advice to college aged stage managers is to learn everything about the tech side that you can. It’s way easier to get work there and it pays better. Not because you’ll have to do it, but because you should always be able to. Also, it’ll make you a better stage manager.

So you can, you know, eat. And other exciting things like that.