So you think you might want to be a stage manager? Let me warn you now, almost everyone who works in the arts thinks they can be a stage manager and the vast majority can’t. Just because you are an organized human being doesn’t mean you have the skillset to be an excellent stage manager.

Here are some skills you should amass before embarking on this journey (and if you’re in school getting a bachelor’s degree, a lot, although not all, of these will probably be covered there):

Read Music

I can’t even begin to tell you how harshly I judge a stage manager that can’t read music – especially if I take over for one and they’ve removed the sheet music from a script and just written in lyrics. This is sloppy. And lame. If you can’t already read music, learn now. And, honestly, you’ll learn much better if you learn by picking up an instrument than by just trying to read sheet music.

Not knowing how to read music will drastically lower your employment opportunities.

Directing

Even if you don’t have to take a directing class, read up on it and study the directors your work with closely. Your job is to take care of their baby after rehearsal. When you have to adapt to different spaces or swinging in different performers, an understanding of blocking and upstaging will help you decide where you need to move people. When you have to do put in rehearsals for new hires of long running shows that the director has long since moved on from, you need to be able to look at the show with a directorial eye.

Brush Up Your Design Skills

I’m a terrible designer. I nearly gave the audience seizures the first time I did a lighting design in college. Even though I’m a terrible designer, I’ve taken classes in lighting, scenic and costume design, and while I’m not good at creating those designs myself, I have a broader understanding of what designers are trying to do. This is really helpful with lighting, since there really is an art to getting the cues to land as the designer intended, but you may need to choreography scene changes in certain ways to optimize the beauty of the set design or even mend a costume on the go out on a tour without the exact fabrics used to build it in the first place.

The more you understand design, the easier job you’ll have as a stage manager maintaining a designer’s intent. Additionally, there are time when you may have to alter designs on tour to fit into different venues and you’ll use these skills to do so in ways that maintain the integrity of the production.

Stagecraft

You should know how to use tools to build sets and the basics of lighting. Early in your career, the vast majority of job offers are stage management slash something: Stage Manager/Sound or Stage Manager/Lighting. You will be so much more employable if you become solid in one of those areas as well. But even if you don’t feel confident enough to do technical jobs as well, you should know how to change a channel on a mic pack or switch out of a microphone. You should know how to readdress a lighting fixture or change a lamp. All of these things are common little emergencies that can arise onstage.

Sewing

You should also know how to set on a button and repair a hem. Or if you’re totally against learning Sound or Lighting (which is madness and you should probably not be a stage manager if you’re totally against learning anything), there are also job openings for Stage Manager/Wardrobe once in a while. Sewing is increasingly a lost art, which makes it a very marketable skill.

Psychology

Basic knowledge of psychology will take you pretty far in stage management. Everyone you work with will be their own version of insane and tech week will bring it out in all of them. I’m not saying you need to go major in psychology, but spend some time reading up on behavioral psychology. Some of the most useful books I ever read were The Art of Speed Reading People and Please Understand Me II. And while you’re learning how to handle the people you work with, make sure you get a good grasp on yourself as well. You need to know what your own panic reflex is and how to fight it.

You’ll also need to be the cast psychologist, although personally, I’ve always just thought of it as being everyone’s strict mom. I need them to follow a bunch of rules, but I genuinely try to care about each of them, so when they have some sort of breakdown I’m kinder and listen better to their problems. And there will be breakdowns.

First Aid

Just get the certifications. They cost less than $150 and you only need to do it every 2 years. You may never use them, but if the day comes that you need to know how to do CPR, you’ll be really glad you’re not Googling it. Honestly, in 12 years of stage managing, I’ve used first aid knowledge twice – and both times I was very glad I didn’t need to look up what I was doing. Additionally, plenty of job listings want you to have them.

What skills would the rest of you add? Performers, what skill do you always want your stage manager to have?

If this hasn’t scared you off, you can check out my posts about the day in a life of a stage manager here:

• A Day in the Life of a Cruise Ship Stage Manager
• A Day in the Life of a Circus Stage Manager
• A Day in the Life of a Touring Children’s Theater Stage Manager