Problems on Parade

Nothing never goes wrong. I'm a stage manager and my entire work exsistance is comprised of problems that I have ten seconds at least, fifteen minutes at most, to fix a problem that is happening live in front of an audience.

Many people don't know what a stage manager does. Simply put our job is to do anything and everything logistical to make the show happen. Scheduling rehearsals, taking notes on everyones movements, set/props needed, lighting and sound information, making sure actors are getting breaks, being the middle man between actors and directors, calling cues during the show. All that and more fall under our list of responsibilites. Things always go wrong and it's our job to fix it.

One time I was stagemanaging Shakespear's Twelfth Night. The director had decided she wanted a live band on stage for the production. I was on headset with the conductor to cue him for when music was coming up, but on our final show, his headset died. He had a cue coming up and I had fifteen seconds to come up with a solution. I signaled to him to watch my hand and visually cued him like that for three fourths of the show. One of my assistants tracked down and changed the batteries in his set and got it up and running for the last quarter of the show. They didn't miss a single cue that day and no one knew anything had gone wrong.