This year I was one of two Assistant Stage Manager (ASM) for a show in the University of Iowa New Play Festival. This meant I spent all of my evenings for the last month or so of school in the Theatre Building. I soon found out that most people I knew who hadn’t been a part of a Stage Management team had absolutely no idea what I could be spending all that time doing.
To alleviate this mystery, here is a typical day in the life of an Iowa New Play Festival ASM.
At 6:30pm, a half hour before actors were “called” for the start of rehearsal, the other ASM and I got to work setting up the theatre. We split the tasks between us: getting tables, speakers, and an extension cord from the Stage Managers’ office; getting a broom, dustpan, and the props cabinet key from the scene shop; sweeping the theatre floor; getting the props from the cabinet; setting up tables and chairs for the Director, Stage Manager, Dramaturge, Playwright, and ourselves; and setting up set pieces and chairs for the actors. This sometimes involved roping an early-arriving actor into helping us move heavier things like desks.
Closer to 7:00pm, the Stage Manager arrived, and we all set up our places at one of the tables, with our scripts and our laptops open to the Google Doc we were creating the show paperwork on. We’d look at the sign-in sheet, take out our cell phones, and call some late arrivers. Usually they’d walk in the door as their phone was ringing.
Rehearsal was from 7:00pm to 11:00pm, and the events varied. Our show had dance numbers, so some days we had choreography sessions, which I sometimes participated in when an actor was absent and we needed a stand-in. Other days were spent blocking the show. “Blocking” is what the director tells the actors to do as action to accompany the words of the play. After the day the actors were supposed to have their lines memorized by, I was usually put “on book”, prompting the actors for lines as needed. While the Stage Manager made notes on blocking to keep it consistent, the ASMs made notes in the Google Doc about when and where characters and props enter and exit the stage, as well as anything else that the director mentioned that other members of the design team, like the costume and light designers, might need to know. We stuck to Actors’ Equity Association regulation breaks: a five-minute break after fifty-five minutes of rehearsal, or a ten-minute break after eighty minutes of rehearsal, and time passed quickly.
At 11:00pm, the actors left, and the Stage Manager and the rest of the staff discussed plans for the next rehearsal while the other ASM and I put everything away. We stacked the chairs, put away the set pieces, collected the props and returned them to the cabinet, returned the key and broom to the scene shop, and returned the speakers, extension cord, and tables to the Stage Managers’ office.
Then the rest of the staff left and the Stage Management team returned to the office. We wrote the rehearsal report, including any changes to the script, additions to the props list, or anything else we needed to let people working on the show who weren’t present at rehearsal know about the day. We sent the rehearsal report to the entire production team, and then created the daily call (the schedule) for the next day’s rehearsal. We posted the daily call on the physical callboard in the Theatre Building, on the online callboard, and emailed it to the cast as well. Usually we were out of the building and on our way for home and bed before midnight.
In all, I spent between five and six hours at the Theatre Building every night, working on the show. I admit it took time to get used to not having that chunk of my day for homework or socializing, but ultimately I loved it. I love everything about stage management: interacting with the actors, helping to create a compelling story, and constantly learning things I never expected to learn. I know how to waltz now because of that show. And when the final performance went off without a hitch, how could I possibly think that any minute of that time wasn’t worth it?
