#smproblems

[leslieexplainsitall]

My SM cut her hand during the break and had to go to the ER to get stitches less than 3 hours before the preview tonight.

So I, the ASM, was asked to call the show tonight with less than 2 hours to prepare.

I. FUCKING. DID. IT.

Like of course I made mistakes, (only a few were noticeable imo). But I fucking did it. I'm still riding that high because the SM had been at the theatre for over 25 years and this had never happened before.

I was nervous, but now that it's over I feel vindicated. Working that this theatre has been hard because most of the production team has been there for 10+ years and I feel inadequate sometimes since I've only been there for a few months.

But this reminded me that I am a good stage manager. And honestly? I needed that.

[broadwaysymposium]

A Stage Manager’s Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions

The beginning of the new year is a time for a fresh start and an opportunity for new beginnings. New Year’s resolutions can help us focus on what we want to do better and/or achieve over the next twelve months. With that in mind, below I’ve put together a top 10 list of New Year’s resolutions for stage managers to consider. These are things for us all to keep in mind throughout the year, ways we can continue to grow and work towards being the best stage managers, leaders and people we can be.

1. Be more proactive than reactive. Anticipate problems or issues and find solutions before they even become a concern. This is challenging, as we have so much on our plate to manage each day, it can be hard to see those few extra steps down the road. But if we spend a few minutes each day thinking farther along the process, any potential rough spots along the road from rehearsals through closing night can be smoothed out before anyone knows there was even a hint of an issue.

2. Be more compassionate. Try to see issues from the other person’s point of view. In this way, annoying complaints and seemingly petty concerns will be understood and solved easier and with less stress and strife. By simply understanding more, we create more trust and a better work environment.

3. Take care of yourself. We focus on taking care of others. Don’t forget to make time for yourself. Create some space to relax, spend time with friends, exercise… all of the things we usually sacrifice while working on a show. We matter too and the same way we invest in the welfare of the company, we can take care of ourselves.

4. Ask for help when you need it. You are not a super hero, as much as stage managers try to be. If you have to tape a complicated floor, ask for some extra hands. Need to change rehearsal studios, ask for help moving everything. Have a question or concern about a union issue, reach out and call. You are not alone. The theatre, producer and you have resources you can call on when needed. Even Superheros can’t always do it alone (see the Avengers or Justice League!).

5. Sleep. Of all the sacrifices we make, this is probably the worst.  We need sleep to function at our best. It helps our brains and bodies. Instead of staying at the theater late to update all your paperwork or rewrite all those line notes, get some shut eye to recharge and refresh. You’ll be more efficient and effective because of it.

6. Use sick days. You are allowed to be sick too. You are human. And it’s better to take a sick day than get the cast infected too. There is also that little quirk in the AEA Production Contract where you can only get paid out 11 of your 13 sick days, so when you get that long run, you gotta take at least two sick days a year anyway!  You can empower your assistants, find a sub and know that you will be covered.  And if you are so valuable that you can't get sick or the show falls apart, maybe that's a good time to ask for a raise!

7. Learn a new hard skill. Those hard skills such as dance vocabulary, computer skills and reading music can be learned in a class, from a book or online.  2018 could be just the right time to add to your skill set by taking a CPR/First Aid class or learning Filemaker or First Draft. Not only is it fun, but it makes you a more valuable stage manager.

8. Cut down on the caffeine and sugary snacks. There are many of us that use coffee or diet coke for a boost or grab that snickers bar for a quick jolt of energy. However, too much can result in dehydration, headaches and more. When in tech for The Little Mermaid, Disney producer Thomas Schumacher kept nuts and dried fruit on his tech table so folks would have real energy snacks available. I’m not saying give up your go to beverage or snack, rather work towards a healthier balance. This will help us be better in the long term. And we all want long careers, right.

9. Be greener.  Unfortunately, we use a lot of paper in our profession. Let’s try to find ways to cut back, reduce and/or reuse paper more. The Broadway Green Alliance has done great work on this front. See their website.  One of the stage managers on Doctor Zhivago had a method for using “dirty paper.” Any paper that was printed on only one side was saved in a special pile and the daily in/out sheet was always printed on the back. 

10. Remember why you love your job! It’s easy to get caught up in all the day to day minutiae of running a show. Everyone needs something and herding all those cats is challenging. If you step back a moment, you can really appreciate the wonderful and amazing job we are privileged to do. We get to work on PLAYS! No cubicles or time clocks, instead we get song and dance all day long! When working on An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin, I had to pinch myself to realize that I was working with icons that I grew up admiring  and dreaming about being in the theatre with.

11. BONUS CHALLENGE: Try to see a show and try NOT see the tech elements. This is a real tough one, but worth the effort. Can you get lost in a show enough to not picture calling it or timing the quick changes or re-organizing the scene shifts? Try to give yourself this gift and enjoy the theatre like you did before it was your vocation. I try and fail at this often, but when it works, it’s a very special night of theatre. 

Whatever your personal resolutions are, we wish you all the best with them and wish everyone a very happy new year!

[renjunchenle]

HANSOL ARE U STILL THERE?

[theatre-never-theater]

SM Problems

Yesterday I gave my actors their prop phones (that turned on and worked) and by the time I called places they already broke the programming system on the phones 🙃

[breakingdownthosewalls]

Day 1 - Rehearsal

Phone goes off when we are in the middle of rehearsing a dance number.

SM (to me): "Do you know who's that is?

Me: "Nope"

*SM goes to walk over the where the phone is ringing.*

*Actor runs past SM to turn off their phone*

Mystery solved.

[robertmillssm]

I may work for the resident company @mallofqatar, but this ain't no children's show. 50+ fly cues in under 40 minutes. #SMLife #SMProblems #MOQLive (at قطر مول - Mall of Qatar)

[gowithzflow]

Tech Week Adventures

Me: *calls huge cue sequence correctly during tech for the first time after several screw ups*

Me: *takes sigh of relief watching the changes*

Me:*realizes the traveler isn’t moving*

Me:*sinks to the floor from chair, and speaks from there*

Me: Hold please! Is the fly rail op on headset? Is your headset working? Yeah? Do your fucking job! Thank you. Everyone, bring it back to the top of that sequence please and let’s take it from there.

[leslieexplainsitall]

The show I've been working on these past several weeks has been hella stressful and literally messy.

There is a huge bloody mess onstage and we've known since the first rehearsal that the stage would be a bitch clean, the actors are supposed to clean most of it during the show, but the clean up was never properly choreographed in rehearsals. It was a lot of hypotheticals and doing it in the moment without stopping and too many actors have slipped when we finally used the blood.

Today on day 4 of Tech we finally, choreographed the cleanup to make it as safe as possible and it now involves a shit ton of towels. Way more than I anticipated. I also have to wash bloody linens too.

Because I'm sharing the laundry room with costumes who also needs to wash bloody clothes I realized it was impossible to wash what will most likely be around 2 loads of towels and 2 loads of linens (that also need to be folded) during pre and post show.

So I told the production manager that I either need to be paid to come in outside of my call times to do the laundry (since I am not hourly) or hire someone to do the laundry during the day.

He's going to look for someone, and since we are still in tech I'm not sure if I need to wash everything everyday because I don't have duplicates yet. But I am very glad I advocated for myself.

[broadwaysymposium]

I’ve missed you tumblr - A Stage Management Problem and more...

Dear tumblr (and all the wonderful people who have been following us for the last few years),

I haven’t posted in a while and It’s been too long. Like a dear friend who you love and care for, but lose touch with, we’ve fallen off. Life happens and you can turn around one day to realize that it’s been over a year since you’ve talked with that special someone.

Well, life has definitely been happening! As you know, being a stage manager can be all consuming. It’s one of the big #smproblems and rarely addressed. We work really long days, the first person in and the last person out usually. We are also on call for our cast, creative team and producers practically 24/7, in addition, there always seems to be something more to do. I’m sure you’ve felt, like I have, that your to do list gets longer and longer, not shorter, no matter how hard you work. It’s like Sisyphus, rolling that boulder up the mountain, only to have it roll down and start all over again!

If you’ve ever felt this way, check out the TEDEd video below for an insightful look at Sisyphus. Because, that can easily be a metaphor for stage managers! Even on the best of teams, the workload can be overwhelming. From prep and rehearsals, to the long days of tech, the constant change of previews and the many unexpected challenges during a run, managing to have free time can be quite difficult.

I was once asked by a young stage manager, “how do you deal with work/life balance?” I didn’t have a great answer, “I struggle with it all the time. I don’t have an easy solution, but we all grapple with boundaries and when to say no and making time for ourselves.” There is a reason those T-shirts with, “I can’t, I have rehearsal” are so popular....

But - the good news is, it’s never too late to start fresh. New Year’s Eve isn’t the only time to make a resolution. Every day is first day of the rest of your life!

So - we are back on the horse, reloading and moving forward into 2019 with renewed vigor! We’ve had some exciting developments to catch you up on, like the webinar. Launched last year, it was a huge hit and stage managers joined us from Australia to Hong Kong! Anyone can now log in and participate from anywhere or watch a replay of anything they miss. If you can’t make the trip to NYC for the Symposium this is a great option.

And we’ll also have an amazing new venue this year in NYC. It’s a fabulous space for us (but can’t announce it yet). So standy by for more info to come on that front.

I’ve missed you tumblr, and your exciting discussions, open communication, creative posts and funny memes about stage management, theatre and numerous other topics. We are here and look forward to sharing more about our crazy lives, the work we love, stage management and the theatre. 

We’re also looking forward to the 2019 Symposium and another great conference where Broadway’s professionals share their insights and information. June 1st & 2nd, more info on the website.

[toteschipotes]

SO my very first tour, we were in Omaha, Nebraska. There isn’t much to do in Omaha. Our hotel had a bar attached and so obviously we got drunk and played Crocodile Dentist. We recorded it a la march madness style in this 7 minute video.

the dude that make it posted it to fbook because it has 21000 VIEWS. WHO THE FUCK IS WATCHING THIS?!?!?! I literally cannot. AMAZING

[moods-mercurial]

Choosing fonts is simply a highlight of my line of work. #arielleisapsm #smproblems #ist2016 #interlakessummertheatre #organized #preppedandready (at Interlakes Theatre)

[xandrianirvana]

When an actor looks at a bag of chocolates and a role of spike tape. And assumes the spike tape is her rehearsal chocolates. As apposed to the ACTUAL BAG OF CHOCOLATES

[leslieexplainsitall]

I'm joining AEA this fall with no job lined up until January. Talk about living on the edge of your seat.

So if anyone knows of an Equity SM/ASM gig on the east coast between October and December

[broadwaysymposium]

To Email or not to email, that is the question? Seven pitfalls to avoid in your emails.

Email is so easy.  It’s a great tool to speed communication and distribute information.  We can send the exact same info to numerous people at the same time, have records of our communications, read and reply from anywhere, anytime.

However, it’s almost too easy.  Our inboxes get flooded and we get buried under hundreds of emails competing for our attention and needing a response. We write in truncated words without full sentences, reply while in transit or multitasking and all this can actually result in worse communication instead of better.

As stage managers, communication is what we do. Therefore, it’s important to know when email is the best tool or if a phone call would actually be the better course of action.

For example, a recent email thread with a director and GM I’m working with resulted in over 10 emails back and forth about our rehearsal schedule without a final resolution.  So finally, I called a digital cease fire and suggested we meet in person to discuss.  In one 15 minute conversation we solved the schedule problem and also solved other issues we hadn’t even identified yet.  In short, the “in person” interaction was much, much more clear and productive than all the emails.

When we understand the challenges inherent in emails, we can insure productive communications are happening.  So here they are, seven pitfalls to avoid in emails.

1.       Tone can be easily lost or misinterpreted in an email. The rise and fall of someone’s voice and the manner in which they speak say a lot that cannot be conveyed in an email.  You cannot read a person’s tone of voice or body language.  This can result in misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Therefore, clarity is of great importance.  Haven’t you ever written an email that was taking in a totally different way than it was meant?  In long threads, be clear about what answers are to which questions.  Few things are as confusing as asking someone multiple questions in an email and getting a reply back, “yes.”  Clarity will be your ally.

 EXAMPLE: In an online article, Psychology Today quoted research by a UCLA psychology professor, Albert Mehrabian concluded that, ”7 percent of a message was derived from the words, 38 percent from the intonation, and 55 percent from the facial expression or body language. In other words, the vast majority of communication is not carried by our words alone.”  For the full article, click here

2.       Emails can provoke bigger reactions than in conversations, the digital form makes it easier to say something that one might not say in person. Therefore, before reacting to an email by firing off a quick response. take some time to digest it and calm down a bit if needed. Remember point #1, you can’t read tone of voice or body language in an email. So sometimes it’s best not to respond immediately, even though you have the ability to do exactly that.  Devices like sarcasm do not tend to be clear in emails either, so before hitting send, re-read your email to make sure it reads as intended, with a calm clear head.

3.       Email can prolong resolutions.  Messages zip back and forth, response time can vary from minutes to hours to days and it gets more and more difficult to finally get to the solution or decision.  Making a lunch plan can take a dozen emails over multiple days. So even when speed is important, email, although convenient, may not be the most efficient. Time can actually be lost writing and reading and writing email after email after email on the same subject.

 EXAMPLE: Even with my best friends, I have to remember to just call and not email to make plans sometimes.  With all our conflicting calendars, it’s so much simpler to have a conversation!

4.       Slow replies or no replies create anxiety. Sometimes, it’s not even the reply, but the lack of a reply that causes concern. In the digital age, when we are used to instantaneous communications, a delay or a non reply can cause consternation. Did they get my email? Why aren’t they responding? Waiting for responses can induce anxiety and cause frustrations, which does not help clear communication. The information in an email can also change or shift or become irrelevant, while waiting for a response. Drowning in emails? Send a quick reply, “got your email and will reply as soon as possible.” That can alleviate the concern that the email may not have been received.  I always say, technology is great when it works, but it is fallible too.  Anyone ever heard the excuse, “Uh, I didn’t see the email” or “Never got that email.” That is why on critical issues, I ask for a quick reply to confirm receipt or explain to the cast in the beginning that I will always email the schedule by a certain time and if you don’t receive it, please reach out to me.  Then they become responsible.

EXAMPLE: These days, I send an email to all my casts to introduce myself and distribute important information.  This is an efficient use of time and insures that the everyone receives the exact same info. I had three cast members not respond after three days.  So it was time to pick up the phone.  Two of them had received it, but not read it close enough and the other hadn’t even seen it yet.  If I just relied on email, at least one cast member would’ve had no idea what day rehearsal was starting or where it was.

5.       And mobile compounds these concerns. With mobile we have the ability to read our emails as we ride an elevator or hop in a cab.  Our responses in turn become short or curt, or worse, archived and forgotten.  Ever receive an important email as you are heading into the subway, oh wait, the train is coming, gotta run to catch it… now what happened to that email? Deleted, archived, marked as read and then gets buried under other emails while you race underground to rehearsal? It’s just one other way that the speed of email communication, writing, sending, reading, responding can lead to a misinterpretation or non-response.

6.       Emails are great for communications, but not relationship building. All those emails get information out quickly and efficiently, but it doesn’t build real and solid relationships.  For that to happen you need to talk to a person, on the phone or in person.  If you are networking and trying to make a connection with a new person, a few email exchanges will not be nearly as affective as a phone call or face to face meeting.  We are in a people business and as great as LinkedIn, facebook and other social networks are, we cannot replace the real life connections.  They are our foundation.  

EXAMPLE: I’ve received networking emails from stage managers looking for work. Then when I look at the TO: field, I notice that I’ve been bcc’d.  This is very impersonal.  You don’t want to bcc a whole list of people, or worse, cc them all. Keep it personal, write an individual email to each person you are reaching out to. This makes people feel valued and appreciated, not just a stepping stone.  Emails are so quick and easy to write and you can still copy/paste most of the body.  So put a little more effort into it and address networking emails personally.

7.       Reply all or not to reply all? To bcc or not bcc? These are important questions.  Are you on an email with 20 other people?  Do they all need to hear your response or just the sender? Always be concerned, as you don’t want to add to the digital clutter or not inform the others on the chain about important information.  Or worse of all, intend to send a smart aleck response to the sender and instead send it to everyone.  Check your default settings and check exactly who the email is going to before sending.  When starting a thread to many recipients, think about it in advance.   Does everyone need to know who is receiving it and may need to reply all or not.  Rehearsal/Performance reports?  Best bcc, so replies only go to you, the stage manager and not to the entire distro list.  Does marketing really need to know when a certain prop will be in rehearsal?  Does the wardrobe supervisor really need to know about an upcoming interview for the choreographer?

EXAMPLE: I’ve heard a story, maybe urban myth of someone who accidentally replied all to a industry wide email saying negative things about a colleague. Needless to say, this did not help their standing in the community.

As a stage manager, we need to know how to best utilize all our available tools to effectively lead our companies. Facilitating communication is a key part of our job, so by acknowledging the challenges of email, we can avoid some of the dangers and miscommunications that can arise.

We work in a people business, so as wonderful as email is remember you have other options… phone calls, face to face meetings, skype, google hangouts, etc… so when your third email isn’t getting a reply or you aren’t sure what is meant by someone’s email to you, feel free to dial ‘em up and have a conversation.

Here is a great pic with some smart guidelines about this topic as well.

Wishing everyone happy and productive emails and phone calls!

[deadqueenwalking]

My boss at my non-theatre job doesn't know the difference between gaff and painters tape. She thinks its just black painters tape..... 😤😩 -__-