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 American and Equity, there is some guidance on what your job consists of – but even then, a panel I realized enjoyed at the Symposium a few years ago was about keeping up morale and all of the things that go into that.

When you think of Stage Managers do you think of folks who make billboards with everyone’s birthday or artistically arranged fan mail? Do you think they’re the brains behind potluck Saturdays?

In the non-equity realm of keeping up morale, I organized roadside attraction stops for us in our little passenger van for two tours. This was totally a bit self-serving because I love roadside attractions – but I also made sure we hit big landmarks and things I’d already seen because I knew “seeing America” is part of the  fun of touring but quite often “seeing America” can turn into only seeing whatever restaurant is across the street from the theater and the hotel bar.

I had a stage management professor in college who taught us the stage manager is “absolutely responsible for absolutely everything” which is… not entirely true. But at times being the catchall person falls into our laps.

And the fantastic essay by Carissa Dollar (that is now a horrifying 21 years old) reminds us that “stage managers do make coffee.” Which is to say there are a lot of little tasks we do to make life more pleasant for everyone. When I was teaching stage management last year, one of our lessons took some time to sit and brainstorm ways to make a rehearsal hall more comfortable/hospitable beyond just making sure it’s mopped and swept.

I know this is what I expect a stage manager to know if they come work with me for the first time:

• Paperwork (this list is not exhaustive)
  • Rehearsal Reports
  • Show Reports
  • Run Sheets
  • Props Tracking
  • Running Orders
  • Who What Wheres
  • Creating a Prompt Book
  • Calling Scripts
  • Blocking Scripts
  • Checklists
  • Contact Sheets
  • French Scene Diagrams
  • Costume Plots
• Scheduling
• Taping Out a Floor
• Calling a Show
• Kindness
• Tactfulness
• How to Be Authoritative
• How to Remain Calm & Emergency Preparedness

The nice thing is that even if you don’t want to go to college, you can learn a lot of these things on your own.

All of that paperwork? There are examples online. However, if you’re seriously interested in stage management, head to the library and check out a stage management text. I think two of the best intro to stage management books are by Lawrence Stern (my favorite) and Thomas Kelly.

You’ll find examples and explanations of all that paperwork and more in either of those books. Once you get the gist, then spend some time cruising the web for additional examples. In the world of paperwork, there are often a lot of ways to skin that cat.

The same goes for scheduling. If you’re not sure of what to look out for when making schedules, either of those books will get you started. Then find as many examples as you can online. At your first gig, ask if they have copies of calendars and schedules from previous productions – if they do, those can be incredibly useful in making your rough draft of the schedule for the current production. It’ll also give you a chance to flag anything that looks weird and to start asking questions.

Taping out a floor is another task that’s easy to learn. Surprise, both those books will give you a brief overview of what is meant by taping out a floor. Then just buy a roll of tape and give it a go. Find a ground plan online. Tape it out in your basement. It’s an easy skill to learn with a little practice. You will probably also want a scale ruler and two long measuring tapes for this exercise.

Calling a show can be a little more difficult to practice because you’ll need to obtain a calling script and a recording but you can probably do that with a little ingenuity. Your high school or college may have recordings of past shows in the library and archives of the stage management prompt books (which will also give you an idea of how different people put together their prompt books).

Additionally, (I’ve not used it) there is a new software called CallQ which can let you practice calling cues.

What we just went over above at the easy things – things I believe anyone can learn with some practice. They’re the hard skills of stage management.

Kindness, Tactfulness, How to Be Authoritative and How to Remain Calm are softer skills. I think stage managers benefit from learning how to be generally kind people. This comes naturally to some, less so to others.

I think a lot of the keeping up morale stuff we see stems from kindness. We want folks to have a good experience working on the show. So we come up with tangible ways to show kindness like acknowledging life events and coming up with events to help us come together as a team.

Tactfulness is necessary because we often are the ones mediating a lot of conflict. We also have to deal with confidential matters. They can be as big as being the person who has to tell a co-worker that a loved one has died and you need to help them make plans to get home, to as small as having to tactfully confront the smelly cast member and talk about ways to fix that problem.

Fortunately the big problems are rare.

…there always seems to be a smelly cast member though.

Learning to be authoritative takes some practice too. No one wants a dictator – we’re all a cog in the machine that makes the show happen anyway, you need everyone. That being said, the machine does still need a leader to make sure it’s running properly and on time. I think this just takes practice and some people take to being a leader better than others.

I also think you can benefit by reading some books about leadership as you’re learning this skill – or continuing to grow it. Some that I have found handy are The One Minute Manager series (especially the one on delegating – The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey), The Soulful Art of Persuasion, The Art of Speed Reading People, The Five Love Languages, The Rules of Management, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and Please Understand Me II.

Learning how to remain calm is sort of difficult because you don’t really know how you’re going to react in an emergency until you’re there. However, one of the best ways to remain calm is to be prepared. You can be First Aid & CPR certified. You can do OSHA 10 or 30 training. You can take the Event Safety Access Training course (which is actually really good). If you work with animals, you can take the FEMA animals in disaster courses. You can take fire safety or earthquake awareness training.

After completing the training, you can think, “what if the stage caught fire?” And then write out your plan. “What if a performer gets hurt and can’t get off stage?” Make a plan. Even if it turns out you are pretty panicky when the bad things happen, you can grab your plan and work it. This is why there are so many checklists in the medical profession (speaking of books The Checklist Manifesto is another good one).

Those are the big things we do. We also:

• Run Put In Rehearsals
• Sweep the Stage
• Mop the Stage
• Set the Props
• Make Coffee
• Set Out Hospitality
• Buy Consumable Props
• Glow-Tape the Stage

…and do any number of weird things that come up in the course of the creating the show.

Some random things I’ve had to do as a stage manager (this list is also not exhaustive by any means):

• Make two hours worth of blood packets before each show
• Run a sound and/or light board (negotiated in advance)
• Create a “cast chat” event
• Spray the performing space with room scents
• Turn on A/C or heat upon arriving
• Be in charge of load in and load out
• Have a cruise ship safety function
• Manage PR events in TV studios, radio stations and random locations
• Create a short performance for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
• Catch a squirrel
• Catch a pig
• Did the FOH light focus
• Take performers to the hospital
• Write a police report
• Payroll
• Hire rehearsal pianists
• Rented and transported a large number of chairs
• Drafted a ground plan for a venue (once, only once, I am terrible at drafting)
• Buy birthday cakes
• Exchange foreign currencies for performers
• Bought props
• Built a toy train costume for a grown man
• Worked a 1920s style show with no com that involved a lot of running
• Spent hours trying to tune a collection of rubber chickens
• Driven an RV
• Driven a box truck
• Walked elephants
• Helped setup and a take down the trapeze net

Some of these things are absolutely production manager and company manager territory but on shows that don’t have one, it’s not uncommon for some of those tasks to fall on the stage manager. Often this is included in the job descriptions, and you can decide whether you want to put up with that or not (or try to negotiate some more money because of it).

What have I left out, friends? What else has fallen under the stage manager job description in your experience (whether or not it should’ve – those opinions are also very welcome)?