So when I began my PhD journey, it was very important to me that, along with whatever academic outputs I managed, I wanted to create something that had the potential to impact the industry. It’s one thing to write a PhD thesis that like 10 people total might ever read about how care ethics and…
Stage managing can be a difficult job to balance with anything else. The hours are long. You don’t always know exactly when you’ll be needed. And you may be nomadic – out on tours, cruise ships, or hopping contracts to where ever the next place is that might hire you. And early career stage management…
I’d like to pause in our regular programming and take a minute today to talk with you about one of my favorite annual events that is happening this weekend. The Broadway Stage Management Symposium. This event is an incredible opportunity for stage managers at all stages in their careers. To this day, I am still…
So I’m a little behind this year, but I thought we could do our bi-annual dig into the Stage Manager Survey Report. You might be wondering, what is the Stage Manager Survey Report. Run by David J., McGraw, the report has been happening since 2006 in an effort to better share info about the industry…
I’ll admit that I don’t think LinkedIn is the main way to find jobs in the arts, but as someone who does some hiring, I would find it a little weird if someone didn’t have a LinkedIn. I also do some solid stalking of other stage managers career paths. I find folks doing the jobs…
It’s been a while since I wrote much stage management content, so today I thought we’d take a break from personal finance and I’d ramble a little bit about the absolutely insane dreams that sometimes accompany some shows. I recently worked a fairly high stress festival on minimal sleep for the week and I have…
**This is a sponsored post.** I am an early holiday shopper. I bought my first Christmas gift of the season in July and as I type this, I’m about half done with my 2023 Christmas shopping. So it doesn’t seem super crazy to me to think about holiday shopping in October. I like spreading the…
I was recently thinking about one of my favorite parts of stage managing and for me, it has definitely been travel. You get to be a part of some of the most exciting productions in the world, working with talented performers, designers, and technicians to create unforgettable experiences for audiences. One of the biggest perks…
May is right around the corner and it makes me think of being a shiny, new graduate. What an absolutely freaking terrifying exciting time! As a new graduate stage manager, I remember the challenges that come with navigating the financial landscape after graduation. It can be overwhelming to figure out how to make ends meet…
For the last several months I’ve been working very part time for my supervisor’s theatre company here in the UK. Between balancing school, my part time digital workshop work back in the US, and the theatre company… I wasn’t really doing alright. I had to talk to him about quitting at the end of my…
**This is a sponsored post.** Sponsored post-ness aside, I do love Etsy. I’ve mentioned my fairly unhealthy and potentially bankrupting love of candles several times on this blog. And Etsy is on to me with their candle gift guides. I also like it for unique and personalized gifts. I’ve used it as a go to…
Unsplash – CC0 License Stage managers are responsible for organizing the running of theaters day-to-day. Their work involves everything from setting up rehearsals to forming meetings post-show. But what’s the career path in this profession? How can you get a position like this? Make Sure That You Have The Right Qualifications Unlike some technical careers,…
Friends, let me tell you a story about the power of a thank you note. Around the time Ringling Brothers closed, my resume floated to the top when Cirque was kindly trying to help rehome a lot of unemployed circus workers. I was not currently an employee at Ringling, but somehow my resume got flagged…
So I have been in the process of starting a doctoral program, working a freelance corporate events job online, and sorting a move across an ocean for several weeks now and a last minute delay with one of my visa items has left me in the United States for a few extra weeks. Like any…
Full disclosure, I do not receive any affiliate kickback promoting the Broadway Stage Management Symposium, but I have been involved in both the expo and on panels in the past – so I am clearly a bit biased towards how awesome it is. Today I want to talk about the Broadway Stage Management Symposium.…
I was a very slow adopter of iPad technology. A few years ago I worked on a show where my ASM was all about. She did all her notes on hers, regularly accessed documents, and would call the show (which is still a pretty hard no for me, but to each their own on that…
So I’m back home from my first show since the end of the pandemic and before I left, I was struggling a little bit with how to balance the healthy habits I’ve built in the many months of not working with how life is while out on a contract. I’d developed several really good food…
Friends, things are starting to happen again. I have an interview this week for a short contract with an opera company I worked for a few years ago. And I have to be honest, I don’t know how I feel about it. I really enjoyed working for that company. The director is my favorite director…
I was looking up some SEO information on Stage Management – for my non-blogger friends out there, that’s how to optimize for searches and found that one of the most commonly searched phrases is Stage Manager Job Description. And it got me thinking. It’s kind of a hard job to define, isn’t it? If you’re…
A few weeks ago, I went on a bit of stage management specific tangent about anchoring and priming effects from reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I’m still thinking about this subject, but today I want to reflect a little on how, as performing arts workers, we get anchored in the starving artist…
Today’s post is all stage management, friends, sorry, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled personal finance and sometimes moaning about life shortly. So my day job does a lot with apply cognitive behavioral science to selling techniques and a book that gets mentioned a lot at work is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel…
A few weeks ago I was interviewed for the TheatreArtLife podcast and it sparked a pretty good conversation among us about sharing salary info. A key part of my blog is my accountability updates each month that breakdown where all of my money goes but also how I earn it – it gives readers a…
I saw an interesting question on one of the Facebook stage management groups I’m part of the other day from a younger member asking what any of us would do if we were recent grads this year and I thought a lot of the answers were pretty great. It left me wondering what I would…
Passive income is the dream, isn’t it? I remember reading a great book called Multiple Streams of Income by Robert G. Allen years ago and in it I learned that most millionaires have, on average, seven stream of income. That seemed insane to me at the time. And of course, the golden cow here is…
A lot of time, I think we can feel like we’re in this financial journey alone. Sometimes I think the unique challenges we face as freelancers in the arts can really amplify those feelings. We have some really unusual challenges at times. That beings said below are a few resources to consider using when you…