Look at my kit!

So I've been seeing a lot of SM's (mostly students) on tumblr posting pictures of their kits, and I figured I'd do the same thing on my old-school non-tumbling Blog About Stage Management, mostly because as I transition into the life of a free-lancer, knowing I've completed my last internship and have no plans to go back to school in the near future, I'm feeling a little older and a little wiser.  I want to offer a slightly different (OK a whole lot different) version of the SM "Look at my kit!" post.

So, here's a picture of my kit.

Uhhhh, guys? That's it. It all fits in that cute little makeup bag I got in the Target dollar section.

It contains my stopwatch, a tiny notepad, a clicky-sharpie, Frixion erasable hiliters, an AMAZING set of post-its in all different shapes/sizes in one convenient little book, my template for drawing accurate blocking, a pair of scissors, and Frixion erasable pens (1 blue for random notes, 1 red for line notes, 3 black for blocking and props).

That's really it.

Let me explain.

Currently, I'm freelancing as an ASM, and that means two things:

1- I DON'T HAVE TO PERSONALLY PROVIDE EVERYTHING THAT ANYONE COULD EVER POSSIBLY NEED. 

Now your mileage will vary on this, but with my current gig- the theater provides a first aid kit, tape, & hospitality (coffee, hot water, cold water, sugar, mugs, stirrers, plastic forks, etc) and the SM provides everything else in his kit, and by "everything else" I mean basic office supplies.  At my previous internship, the theater provided EVERYTHING- Centerstage literally has a road box filled with nothing but tape and first aid supplies. A full-size, 8'tall, rolling black case full of tape.  We had more office supplies than we knew what to do with. If you needed it, they had it, and if they didn't have it, they'd get it. It was beautiful.  The internship before that provided first aid, tape, and basic office supplies. 

Like I said, mileage may vary, but you notice a common thread here of "the theater provides these things." I realize that there are theaters that do not provide anything (at my current gig, the SM provides about 200% more than the theater does), but so far, I haven't worked for one.  Maybe that's hubris talking, or naivete, or maybe I've just been really lucky with the theaters I've worked for. Take it with a grain of salt, it's my personal experience.

2- PORTABILITY PORTABILITY PORTABILITY

I have approximately an hour-long commute- 10min walk to metro, wait for metro anywhere from 2 to 20 min, 15 min train ride, 20 min walk to the theater. The theater where I currently work is part of a community center, which means our rehearsal space does not belong to us, and our storage space is at a premium- what I bring to rehearsal has to go home from rehearsal with me. In addition to my tiny kit, I'm also bringing with me my laptop (which unfortunately weighs as much as a small child) & it's charger, my planner, my lunchbox, and my dirty little secret- I also have 2 other little makeup bags that transfer from backpack to oversized purse to whatever. One contains a mini hairbrush, travel-size lotion & deodorant, hand sanitizer, hair clip, gum, chapstick, ibuprofen, & allergy meds; the other has my iPhone wall charger, Kindle charging cord that conveniently plugs into the iPhone wall cube, headphones, thumb drive, and screen cleaning cloth.  

Bag o' personal hygiene

Bag o' technology

While I would not deny those items to a colleague in need of a phone charger, ibuprofen, or a hair tie, they are my personal necessities that I bring with me no matter where I'm going (with the exception of fancy parties that require dainty purses that match my shoes). I keep them in bags because I hate digging through piles of things and tangled cords & whatever to the bottom of my backpack. Things get crusty down there. Anyway, long story short, my backpack already needs its own zipcode. I've been known to bowl over elderly women on crowded trains (not really). Can you imagine what would happen if I added a full-size kit?! Holy cow.  My back would not survive the commute.

I still have my full-size kit, full of tape measures and screw drivers and crescent wrenches and hole punches and labelmakers and 584933485 pencils and and and.  When my show goes into tech & performances, what I bring with me will change- I won't need my template and my tiny notepad any more. I'll add my flashlight, multitool, & clipboard to my backpack.  

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I am responsible only for what I need to do my best work.  I know that some SM's view their kits as a redundancy, a "last resort" in dire straits (oh god the lead is allergic to latex and nobody told sound! quick, grab the non-latex condom from my kit!), and I'm sure that when I transition back to the role of SM, I will probably do the same thing, but right now? I am LOVING the fact that everything I need fits in a tiny little bag.

Also, something that Auburn did which I absolutely LOVE: they provide kits for their student SMs.  I am SO GLAD we convinced the department that it was unfair for the SM students to pay out of their (tax-deductible) pockets for the actors to have hair ties and pencils in rehearsal.  The department purchased and paid for 6 tackle boxes & supplies, which are checked out by the SM & ASMs at the beginning of each rehearsal process (we're a small department, we never have more than 2 shows running at once).  The SM is responsible for it during the process, and tells the student production stage manager if the supplies need replenishing.  The PSM inventories the supplies at the end of each semester, and restocks the kits as necessary.  It was WONDERFUL, and in my experience so far, closer to the way things actually work in the real world.

Just my two cents as a freelance ASM.  

PANTS

So I'm breaking my almost year-long internet silence to talk about something REALLY IMPORTANT- black pants.

Pants shopping for women is always a difficult/stressful experience- arbitrary sizing, muffin tops, etc. Shopping for black pants to wear backstage is about 1 million times more difficult.

It is actually absurdly hard to find black pants that not only fit, but also:

-Have belt loops

-Have normal pockets

-Are made of some sturdy, denim-like material (ie not spandex or linen or some dress slacks synthetic fabric blend or HORROR OF HORRORS corduroy)

-Are actually solid black, without holes or artful fading or glitter

-Are not either ultra-skinny-leg jeggings or super retro huge flares.

I have a pair of show pants that I wear 80% of the time backstage. They are perfect. I've had them for about three years, and they are beginning to fade. I'd given up hope of finding another pair, and was seriously considering buying a bottle of rit and dying them back to their former glory.

But today, miracle of miracles, I FOUND THEM AGAIN. And not only that, but they were on sale- buy one get one free. I am the proud owner of TWO new pairs of the perfect black show pants... I just have to find room in my suitcase to get them home with me!

And yes- I am so excited about black show pants, I'm writing a whole blog post about them.

An introspective look at my career choices, or, Why I'm Not a Lighting Designer

I had a discussion today with a couple of lighting designers about my color blindness, and it got me to thinking about my career path.

I wanted to be a lighting designer for a while. The fact that I'm red-green color deficient really didn't factor into that decision, it was mainly based on the fact that I "designed" the lights for every show at my high school my junior & senior year. This is due to the fact that I was the only person who knew how to use the light board, I did some research to learn the difference between a par & an ERS, and I knew how to pronounce the word "fresnel." Basically I was a glorified master electrician. I made sure that all of our 75 lighting instruments were plugged in and we had some vague sort of wash onstage, achieved via bounce focusing on our 4 motorized electrics (everything else was dead hung to the ceiling). Occasionally I'd go really crazy and convince Pruitt to order a gobo.

Anyway, the point of my high school reminiscing is to say that I was much happier as an electrician than as a designer. I like following the plot, I like reading the paperwork and putting gel and templates and all the accoutrement in order. I don't like having to make actual artistic decisions.

I'm the same way with scenic painting- show me what you want it to look like, give me the paint (mixing paint is not my strong suit, you know, with the color deficiency), and I'm your girl. Stage makeup, too- I loved stage makeup, loved the class, loved everything about it except the designing. I liked following instructions and making it look like the chart. Designing my own? Not so much.

That's why stage management is so perfect for me- the director and the designers decide what it looks like, and then I make it happen in every performance. Give me a cue sheet, some spot charts, a whole bunch of spike marks, and I'm golden. I am the facilitator of the art, but I do not make the actual artistic decisions, and that is just the way I like it.

On mentorships

So I've started a long-distance mentoring program through SMNetwork.org, which is an amazing amazing resource for stage managers (and really anyone in theatre). I am a guinea pig- there has been discussion for a while on the site of getting some kind of mentorship program up and running, but nothing really happened with it until one of the mods stepped up to the plate and volunteered to mentor up to 3 people- 1 in high school, 1 in college, and 1 in the early stages of their career. I volunteered to be a mentee, and here we are!

He is an AEA SM who has worked in regional theatre in the DC area for several years and just recently made the move to the world of NYC commercial theatre. We'd been emailing back & forth, and talked on the phone on Monday. He had some great advice and insight into working in DC, which is where I want to be. It was so reassuring to have a conversation with someone in the business whose career path is so similar to where I want to be in 10 years and who basically told me I was taking the right steps, moving in the right direction for where I want to end up. I'm looking forward to continuing- hopefully we can get the ball rolling for some other mentor/mentee pairs.

On a slightly similar note, I skyped with the AU Stage Management class a few weeks ago! It was honestly a little surreal- I am by no means an expert on anything (as evidenced by the fact that I am in a long-distance mentorship program right now!). I really enjoyed talking with them, though, and I hope I was helpful. Our other SM intern was with me, so we gave them a little bit of an internship/young professional viewpoint, I guess.

On Coexistence:

overheardinthetheatre:

“Actors without Technicians are just naked people standing on a dark and empty stage trying to emote. Technicians without Actors are just people with markitable skills and lots of free time.”

-Crew T-shirt

I have seen this quote and its variations many a time, and it never ceases to piss me off. Today it appeared on my tumblr as a post from the often hilarious "Overheard in the Theatre" blog, and I felt the need to break my 2-month blogging hiatus to rant about it.

The superiority complex that so many technicians/designers have over actors is frankly just stupid, and the fact that the post was titled “Coexistence” just makes that feeling of entitlement ironically condescending. Obviously we high and mighty technicians deign to bestow our marketable (notice how I spelled that correctly) skills upon you pitiful, helpless actors in our bountiful free time.

My job has no purpose without actors. I depend on them for my livelihood. My job title is “stage manager-” a stage with nothing on it does not need a manager. We coexist, a symbiotic relationship, like sharks and those little sucker fish that follow the sharks around.

The respect that I have for actors is enormous. It takes skill, hard work, passion, and training, and a level of determination and self-sacrifice that few professions require. I have no illusions about my skill (or lack thereof) as an actor. Without technicians, an actor is "a naked person standing on a dark and empty stage, trying to emote." I beg to differ. An actor, a decent actor anyway, any actor worth his salt, would not allow a lack of technical assistance to prevent him from telling his story to the audience. He would find some clothes, he would find a light switch, and he would not try to emote. He would act. Just ask the girls in the BFA Performance program my senior year at Auburn, who produced Five Women Wearing the Same Dress without any technical staff, and gained not only new skills, but a greater respect and understanding for those of us on the other side of the curtain.

It is true that there are sometimes actors who don't understand what goes into the technical aspect of a production- take, for example the tech process of a musical I recently worked on. We were having sound issues, namely the orchestra was overpowering the cast due to their placement in the house. The cast couldn't hear themselves in the monitors, no one in the audience could hear them, etc. Instead of working through it, they were angry with our sound designer- Why can't he just turn down the volume? It's too loud! They had no concept of how difficult it is to mix a live orchestra, and no trust in the designer to fix the problem as best he could until we could find a more permanent solution (ie, moving the orchestra into another part of the building entirely & just using the monitors).

However, this goes both ways. I recently worked on a production that had a large, moving scenic element that rotated without a fixed point. The actors were moving this unit themselves without a run crew of any kind, and unanimously told me that it was very difficult to move and control- they needed handles. When I relayed this information to the scenic designer, he replied "They don't need handles. They're actors. You can't expect them to figure out how to rotate it correctly on their own." When we showed him that the way the actors were moving the unit was exactly the way they had been instructed to and it was still unnecessarily difficult, he agreed to the addition of handles.

Basically what this all boils down to is respect. Respect for other artists. Respect for another person's work. Having enough respect for someone else as a person to view their work as art. Respect for the creative process. Eliminating the sense of "the other" or "the inferior" so that all members of a company are viewed as equals.

Theatre is a collaborative art, y'all. Truly the most collaborative art form in existence, and without respecting your co-collaborators, where are you?

Opera a Capella

I ran the light board this morning for a school matinee performance of the world premiere production of A Midsummer Night's Dream: Opera A Capella. The show is a joint venture of POTS & Opera Memphis, & has just been an absolute extravaganza of... stuff. Basically it's an opera version of Midsummer, using Shakespeare's text (no supertitles), and with all the accompaniment performed by a "voicestra" of a capella groups, with no orchestra.

It got an EXCELLENT review in The Wall Street Journal. Yeah, the actual Wall Street Journal.

Here are my thoughts:

I really enjoyed it. Like, I legitimately enjoyed watching the show, and I had fully expected to hate it.

Visually, it was gorgeous, the lights especially. I mean really, some of the best lighting design I've seen ever. The set was great, the costumes were great, the lights were fabulous.

I thought that it was blatantly obvious which cast members were used to standing still & singing without having the expectation the audience would actually understand what they were saying. By that I mean singing in German or Italian with English supertitles is very different from singing in Shakespearean verse. People have to understand what you're saying, or they won't be able to follow the plot. Not to say that any of it sounded bad, because it didn't- gorgeous sounds coming from all of them, just hard to make out what they're saying.

I found the voicestra to be very distracting for the first five minutes or so of the show, especially since the first few minutes was Theseus & Hippolyta, who were two of the most opera-y (read: difficult to understand) of the cast. I knew that I needed to pay attention to the actors onstage so that I could follow the plot, but all I wanted to listen to was the CRAZY AWESOME A CAPELLA MUSIC EXPLOSION coming from the pit. After a few minutes, the newness of the voicestra (I hate that word, but I feel like typing 'a capella singers' or 'vocal instrumentalists' or something is just lame) wore off, and I made a conscious decision to stop paying attention to them as more than just accompaniment. After that it was a lot easier to focus on the action and to follow what was happening.

Apparently the voicestra couldn't be there for the matinee, because this morning's performance was instead accompanied by a piano & the beatboxer. So, not so much a capella as... opera with weird accompaniment.

Watching the opera's SM call the show was fascinating. I've been reading a lot on SMNet about the differences between SMing for opera & theatre, but watching it was something else. The paging was... intense. I can't imagine paging actors for every entrance. Overwhelming.

One day, I am going to go into the scene shop when there is nobody there and take all of their drill guns, hide them in various places around the building, and then promptly forget where I left them.

Yesterday, I had a push broom, a regular broom, 2 dustpans, & a foxtail in the green room, all labeled CIRCUIT SM ONLY.

Today, when I needed to sweep before our first rehearsal onstage, I instead spent 15 minutes looking for those items.

Here's my tally:

• Push broom: UNDER THE ROCK WALL. Really? It's under the wall. You need to sweep under the wall?
• Regular broom: MIA
• Big dustpan: Under a trashcan backstage
• Small dustpan: On the tablesaw in the scene shop
• Foxtail: MIA.

Really I just want my foxtail back. Is that so hard?

Peter

Peter is our Assistant Technical Director. Peter is 6'8". Peter's nickname is Gorilla. Today Peter bent a metal rod into a U shape with his bare hands, & left me this note for rehearsal tonight.

If you can't read the note, it says-

"To Becky- The sink works now.
No leaks! Water can always be on.
No need to turn it on every time.
Note: -drain only works on SL side of sink
-Leave weight in SR side, it is necessary for the glue to set correctly. Tell Irene to think of it as a really heavy casserole dish in for a soak, it won't be there tomorrow.
-Peter"