I learned recently that I was nominated for an award for “Outstanding Achievement by a Stage Management Team” for the most recent play I stage managed (Poona the F*ckdog and Other Plays for Children), by the Western Ontario Drama League. I am very pleased to have been nominated, though of course I think that my team and I should have won. I do wonder how they even measure achievement of work that is necessarily invisible to a play-goer…

For anyone who is unfamiliar with what a stage manager does in the context of a show, their job is basically the project manager of the production: they make sure that all the pieces come together in the right way and at the right time. I’m only familiar with stage management at a community theatre level, where often the stage manager will take on additional responsibilities as necessary (e.g. I also did the lighting design and operation for Poona), so my definition will likely differ from what a professional stage manager does. Stage managing a community theatre show is very much like stacking a part-time job on top of a full-time job, but without the additional paycheck. Between production meetings, rehearsals, and various planning tasks, the job can easily take 10-15 hours per week during rehearsals. During build and tech (the week before opening, when our sets get built and lights/sounds/etc. get added to the show and rehearsed) the time commitment can easily become “all the hours you are not at work or sleeping.”

All that to say, it’s a big job.

The award nomination makes me really happy for one big reason: I worked my god damned ass off for it. When I initially committed to the show, I promised myself that I would do better than last time. The last show I stage managed (last April, Hamlet) was a bit of a personal train wreck for me. The show came together fine and our audiences really liked it, but I was going through really hard times in my personal life and compartmentalizing isn’t my #1 skill. Rehearsals went fine, but when things got tough during build and tech and I was spending about a bazillion hours at the theatre (partly out of necessity, partly to avoid being at home), I broke under the stress of it all. When it came time to work on Poona, I promised myself (and my partner) that I would take better care of myself so that I would be capable of taking better care of the show.

And it was a crazy success.

I didn’t sacrifice my sleep. I delegated to my assistant stage managers so that my workload was reasonable. I only took on extra tasks that I knew I could reasonably accomplish. While build and tech were somewhat stressful, I didn’t have a breakdown in the booth or yell at anyone – a definite improvement over last year. And the show was better for it, too; we didn’t have any needless drama and everything  happened on a proper, easy timeline. Poona was probably my greatest stage managing success yet.

Like any proper, perfectionist stage manager, however, I know there are things I could have done better. I could have better scheduled the tech and build days to avoid the late days we did have. I could have done better to get our ridiculous number of cues into the prompt book and called the show properly (which would likely have prevented a couple missed cues, particularly simultaneous ones).

I don’t have any additional stage management jobs in my future just yet, since I’m terribly burned out from this season and am taking a small step back next season. When I do next stage manage, though, you can bet that I’ll strive to be even better. It’ll be a whole new show and a whole new cast and a whole new production team, and they…well, I don’t know what they’re going to do. And I’m kind of looking forward to that.