Stage Managers Ranked #1!
FALL is a season of pumpkin spice, dissipating humidity, and NFL “Power Rankings,” or clickbait hot takes of best-to-worst teams in the league this year (spoiler alert: the Carolina Panthers are at the bottom of almost every national list).
Huh? Why open this theatre post with a football reference, Steve? I’ll get there, but honestly, it surprises me that the Venn Diagram of sports and theatre doesn’t contain more overlap. After all, both cultural forums celebrate the thrill of imaginary live conflict in front of an audience. Both are safe spaces to practice high stakes.
But alas, I am one of the few theatremakers who constantly draws analogies between sports and theatre, and that’s where I found myself a few years ago, on a fall day at the start of the semester, asking my Directing I students to create “Power Rankings” for all the jobs involved in a production. “Rank the following in order of most to least important,” I instructed, setting up a trick question that bordered on irresponsible (This is a collaborative field, y’all! Everyone’s important!):
Director
Playwright
Actors
Designers
Stage Manager
Do the same now, blog reader. Scroll no further, and rank these from most to least important as you perceive them.
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Are you back now?
Here’s how I’d expect the list to look, especially in a Directing I class:
Director: It’s in the name. This person is in charge. Words like “visionary” and “auteur” flash across the mind. We are all pawns in the director’s pursuit of conceptual genius.
Actors: They are the apparent storytellers, the receivers of applause, the icons we recognize in the produce section of Harris Teeter. We all got into this business because we thought we wanted to be actors. A few of us are even good at it!
Playwright: Never met ‘em, but we got scripts in the mail with some stern licensing language, so we better not mess around too much.
Designers: The director will say, “Too bright,” and the lighting designer will find a knob and turn it down. The director will say, “That’s great, but what if it were three stories?” and the set designer will add a level via some unknowable magic. Costume designers are really talented at finding gems at Goodwill, and sound designers know the best doorbells to download.
Stage Manager: Ugh! They send emails and write down the blocking.
How does this compare to your list?
Now, perhaps the real inspiration for this post comes from an acute deficit we see in Charlotte and the theatre career pipeline writ large. We don’t have enough good stage managers. Why? Because we’ve really failed at articulating what a massively important, all-encompassing, and exhilarating job it is. When it’s all working as it should, here are just some of the factors that catapult them to the top of my power rankings:
Stage managers create culture. They set up the room, determine policies, practice boundaries, and establish levels of care. They are the nexus of theatre relationships; any artist who collaborates with another must route through the stage manager. If the rest of us are remote American Airlines destinations, the stage manager is Charlotte Douglas.
Stage managers wield the collective brain of the production. As the director develops tunnel vision, the stage manager remembers every prop that needs to be sourced, every intimacy rehearsal that needs to be scheduled, and every transition that needs to be finessed.
Stage managers run the show. This is stressful and exhilarating. A highly volatile beast of countless component parts must appear seamless and consistent to the paying public. Systems will fail, and stage managers must make difficult decisions (I will never forget how my friend and stage management mentor, Michael Passaro, would elegantly and humorously orchestrate derailing Oompa Loompa carts during the Broadway Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Stage managers also stick around. When a show opens, the director leaves, and the stage manager becomes the guardian of what was rehearsed. When actors get bored and tense and snippy with each other, stage managers returnto the positive culture they created on day 1.
Stage managers learn transferrable skills. Want to bring your theatre skills to your day job or your day job to the theatre? Stage managers understand people, organizational systems, communications, technical jargon, responsibility, and maintaining grace under stress. Stage managers are here to prove that theatre, believe it or not, might be the most broadly relevant thing you can do to be a more employable, capable human being.
So, if I were to make a revised power rankings of the above, I’d suggest:
Stage Manager
Playwright
Designers
Actors
Director
What, the director last? Steve, I thought you went to school for directing?! Why would you put yourself in the basement? And why did the other roles change, too?
Subjects for another post.