Stage Management

Stage manager Carmelita Becnel reflects on the need to support mothers, women of color, and stage managers as creative collaborators in the rehearsal room.

Playwright and producer Samantha Mueller talks to director and educator Colleen Rua about their mutual passion for immersive theatre.

Erin Mee explores the role of stage manager and shares Stage Manager Sophia Lana Cohen’s perspective on working with This is Not a Theatre Company.

In this installment of the series on Cornerstone’s California: The Tempest tour, stage manager Nikki Hyde discusses what she’s learned from her bird’s eye view.

Ash Nichols writes about stage managing Cornerstone Theater Company’s California: The Tempest and the connections made on the road.

One of the stereotypes about the post-Grotowski Polish ensemble theaters is that their processes are rigidly closed and their rehearsal rooms are treated like devotional spaces. There is often a way through a more closed door, but you may have to put on your sweatpants.

The O’Neill is a space for the playwright to explore the boundaries of his/her piece (play, musical, song, puppet). The success of a piece doesn’t always have the end result of “being produced.” Instead, the success comes from the writer gaining additional knowledge they need to continue the journey of their play—Kurt Van Raden, Stage Manager at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center.

The last two posts of this series have documented the kinds of rehearsal scheduling and breaks that some of the Polish post-Grotowski theaters use. However, in addition to this normal set of practices, on rare occasions, some theaters rehearse without taking any breaks at all.

This period of shared, relaxed time puts the performers in harmony with the theater, the rehearsal, and their fellow actors. It's like musicians tuning in the same room together. When I participated in this pre-rehearsal hangout, despite my initial antsiness, and not knowing what to do with this unstructured time, I found that my mind grew calmer. The flexible start was a moment of meditation before a strenuous activity: a deep breath before the dive.

Our US union regulations and laws require us to take breaks of a certain time, at a certain time. But nothing requires us to take *exactly* and *only* 5 minutes every hour or 10 minutes every 90. Why not, as an experiment, give them more? Why not make one break longer, and looser? An ongoing series of reports from rehearsal rooms and interviews with theater people in Poland; how US artists can modify or adapt Polish techniques for their own rehearsal kitchens.

Yes, some rehearsals (not all, mind you) are paid, and have to be regulated, legally, as work. But why did we decide, as US practitioners, that theater rehearsals fell so wholly into the realm of work and were so utterly unlike things such as parties or play? Why did we push rehearsals all the way to one end of the work-play spectrum? How did we become afraid of rehearsing without a stopwatch?

We all love a good fight (in a show). A reminder to keep things real by checking in with actors and their weapons, maintain a full fight call, and maintaining consistent order.