Welcome to my brand new stage management blog for my stage management class! Here I will be taking the time every week to recount my experiences working as stage manager for my college's fall show A Man for all Seasons. For the first few weeks, I will also be talking about my readings in Stern and O'Grady's Stage Management, which so far is a very good book indeed.
This week, I read the first and sixth chapters in Stern and O'Grady, which were about a stage manager's job and expediting the audition process, respectively. The first chapter makes two things very clear: 1) it is a stage manager's job to make the entire production run smoothly, from prerehearsal to postperformance, and 2) stage managing is often a thankless job. One should not get into stage managing looking for lots of recognition or awards, but for the love of helping a good production be a great one.
The chapter on the audition process was very helpful, as in a week's time I will be assisting our director with auditions for A Man for all Seasons. A lot of the information in the chapter was more useful for professional and/or union theatres, but general ideas like striving to make actors comfortable during the audition process and keeping organized notes of the readings are definitely applicable to even a college theatre.
That is all for now, but I will be back next week with a report on the first week of technical theatre work study and more from Stern and O'Grady!
