Thomas A. Kelly - The Back Stage Guide to Stage Management: Traditional and New Methods for Running a Show from First Rehearsal to Last Performance

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF
Robert D. Currie
my friend and mentor
AND
Gilbert V. Helmsley
An artist and friend

I would like to offer special thanks to all the wonderful assistant stage managers I have had the good fortune to work with, especially Chuck Kindl, Grady Clarkson, Lani Ball, and Ken Cox. I would also like to thank my wife, Memrie, and my children, Tom, Lydia, and William, for their love, support, and patience over the years (and for letting me have the computer and quiet when needed for this book); John Istel, the original editor of my ramblings here; Bill Wilson, without whose guidance and example none of this would have been possible; Amy Vinchesi, the patient editor of Back Stage Books; project editor Ross Plotkin; Tony Moore, the copyeditor of this third edition; Francesca DeRenzi for her contribution of paperwork; and especially Frank Hartenstein, for his help and advice on the automation chapter.

APPENDIXES

It is impossible to make good theater without good stage management. I speak as a director who has occasionally endured bad stage management, and I know, believe me, what that means. Ive also known bad productions with good stage managementand, alas, in these circumstances, however professional they may be and however hard they try, stage managers cannot finally save poor writing, false acting, indulgent designing, or inept direction. But I have never known a really good production with bad stage management.

The trouble is that directors tend to take stage management for granted. When it is good, they dont notice itlike service at a first-class hotel. But if it is bad, they notice soon enough, because their job is made impossible.

What makes good stage management? I will leave the science to Tom Kelly and his book (he is one of the best I have encountered in thirty-five years of directing, incidentally). I will take for granted the ability to cue shows impeccably, organize props with efficiency, and keep a clean and lucid book or record of the production. All this is the science. As director and head of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre of Great Britain, I have, I know, accepted these skills as the norm for many years. I will concentrate on the artor, if you like, the intangibles.

The stage management teamand particularly the head of the teamestablishes a mood and an atmosphere of work. The stage managers have to make a team of the whole theater staffactors and techniciansand they must also liaise with the front-of-house staff. From them comes a sense of discipline: being on time, not wasting time, working hard. Yet this discipline has to be in the air and accepted by the whole communitynot imposed by rules and regulations or by any kind of tyranny.

The stage management must think ahead. They should never explain why something doesnt work or isnt there as a justification for failure; they have to get it to work, and they have to create an atmosphere in which everything is possible.

A director is particularly dependent on the stage management to organize the breaks in rehearsal. The various unions have organized the theater so that the break requirements are all different. They therefore increase the difficulty of getting a play on. If the day ever comes when the director and the designer and the stage managers are bound by breaks as well, it will be impossible to do a play at all. Or so I sometimes think.

Stage managers have to be diplomats. They have to deal delicately with actors, understanding the stress and strain of creation. And they must not treat the star actor with deference and small parts with disdain. An even-handed understanding is essential.

They must have the confidence of the director and be able to tell him gently when he is being unreasonable or a fool.

And above all they have to create an atmosphere of enthusiasm and hard work and belief.

The most difficult situation for stage managers must be the need to be loyal to a bad director and a bad production. If they allow their own judgment to obtrude or even to show, they will undoubtedly make it worse.

Why on earth should anyone want to do such a job? I can only say that I am glad they do, otherwise I could neither create a production, nor know that it would be re-created loyally every night of a long run. Perhaps, therefore, ideal stage managers not only need to be calm and meticulous professionals who know their craft but masochists who feel pride in rising above impossible odds. I thank them for making my work and the actors work possible.

SIR PETER HALL, 1991

Retire?! Youll never be able to adjust, scoffed many friends at the notion of my doing so. Well, I have. This spring, after the 20072008 season at the New York City Opera, having served as their PSM for six years, I decided the time had come. In some form or other I have been working in show business as a stage manager, actor, lighting designer and electrician, carpenter, producer, production manager, teacher of stage management, staging supervisor, scenery shop general manager, etc. for forty-seven years, since 1962, and quite frankly, I am tired. Pleased, happy, and proud of my work, I wanted to stop before I became too tired to keep up the pace or in the end too cynical to be a positive energy force. I have also always wanted to travel, especially to study ancient civilizations, and it made sense to do so while I could still get around well. My life has been deeply blessed by working in production and by the immensely talented and exciting creators and cohorts I have worked alongside, and I am grateful for my experience and career because I know how rare it is to be able to make a living solely in the arts for so many years.

Of course, as soon as I decided to retire, the fine people at Back Stage Books called and asked for a third edition of