"How Do You Manage?"

by Angie Ahlgren 

[Angie Ahlgren’s article on stage managers appeared in the Fall 2024 issue (volume 41, number 1) of American Theatre; it was posted on the AT website on 2 December 2024.  AT has published previous articles on stage management and other backstage work: “Managing the Stage, and Managing Expectations” by Jerald Raymond Pierce (29 September 2020), “Take the Hell Out of Hell Week” by Pierce (23 October 2018), and “‘10 Out of 12’: How the Other Half Techs” by Diep Tran (15 June 2015).

[I like to post articles that define, describe, or explain the work of theater pros which isn’t generally known or understood by non-theater people (whom one of my teachers liked to call “civilians”).  On 14 January 2014, I posted “Stage Hands,” “Two (Back) Stage Pros” on 30 June 2014, and “Stage Managers” on 30 January 2017.

[I ran articles that profiled theater photographer Teresa Castracane, set designer Eugene Lee, and wig-designer Paul Huntley; on 28 November 2015, I posted “Broadway’s Anonymous Stars,” an article about actors who replace original stars on stage.  On 9 March 2016, I ran a collection of pieces about “swings” and on 22 August 2018, I posted an interview with Tony Carlin, a Broadway and Off-Broadway understudy or stand-by.

[I ran a whole series on lighting designers and their work called “‘Light the Lights” in October and November 2018, followed by a series on arts administrators in December 2020 and one on sound design in March and April 2021.  There’ve also been others over the years.

[I’d like to remind ROTters that in a recent post, I remarked: “Just about the only theater worker who can get a gig for the asking, I’d guess, is the stage manager.  The need’s so great for a good one who’s willing to work Off-Off-Broadway, that when a theater manager or director finds one, she’s snapped up faster than a New York minute.  The only problem is keeping her.”]

Who better to take the pulse of a changing industry than with the folks at the hub of the wheel: stage managers.

In November 2022, Lisa Smith [b. 1968] was weighing whether to continue stage managing or to scale up her part-time job at a gardening center into a full-time gig. She’d been stage managing in the Twin Cities for 20 years, 15 of those as a member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA [the labor union representing theatrical actors and stage managers in the United States]), when the forced break of the pandemic [12 March 2020] reminded her what a full night’s sleep felt like. When theatres opened again [14 September 2021] and she returned to stage management, she grew wary of some companies’ plans for reopening and their failure to create contingency plans for any personnel but performers. Understudies are great—but what happens if the stage manager gets Covid and there is no backup?

“We literally can’t call in sick,” she said ruefully. “We’ve all done shows puking in the booth.”

As the theatre industry has begun to recover from the pandemic, workers on- and offstage have been questioning the punishing norms built into the profession. As Jesse Green asked in an August 2022 article in The New York Times headlined “Shutting the Door on the Hard-Knock Life,” “Can the theatre . . . find a way to uphold [its workers] more holistically as humans, even as they continue to gut themselves every night?” [This article is reposted on this blog as “‘The Reformation’ – Article 3,” 29 September 2022.] Bound up in this question are legacies of racism and sexism that have always been part of the industry but which got a fresh spotlight after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 [25 May; asphyxiated by a Minneapolis police officer] and the aftershocks of the #MeToo movement.

Stage managers often spend more time in rehearsal rooms and theatres than other workers, and it is their job to handle myriad interpersonal issues. Mythologized as unassailably capable people, stage managers have plenty to say about burnout, overwork, and the state of U.S. theatre in the post-Covid-lockdown era.

In conversations with 10 stage managers from around the country over the course of a year, they spoke about their career trajectories, working conditions, and the unique challenges of labor that’s not only invisible to the public but can also be opaque to those they work alongside. [“Invisible labor,” a term coined by sociologist Arlene Kaplan Daniels (1930-2012) in 1986, is work, most often done by women and racial minorities, that, though essential, is unseen, unvalued, or undervalued.] For some, the pandemic halted just-blossoming stage management careers. For others it meant choosing to leave solid careers in New York for more affordable cities. For a few, like Smith, the pandemic lockdown gave them a tempting glimpse of less demanding career paths. All found themselves reflecting deeply on the demands of life as a stage manager and its sustainability as a long-term career.

Evolution of a Job

Stage management as we now know it began to take shape only about a century ago. According to Jennifer Leigh Sears Scheier’s 2021 history of the profession, up until the late 19th century, directors and prompters guided theatrical productions in the United States. As theatrical styles shifted toward realism, the director began to assume more aesthetic control over productions, and the stage manager emerged as a figure in charge of technical production elements. Prompters continued to supply lines in rehearsal and call cues for actors in production. Eventually the director and technical director became distinct positions, and the stage manager assumed some of the prompter’s duties, along with production management.

Tracking changes in the stage manager’s title and job duties from the 1870s through the 1980s, Scheier’s research shows that while the role evolved significantly over a century, the job has always been ill-defined and nebulous, with the stage manager taking on duties that don’t strictly fall to anyone else. She attributes this in part to a historical lack of formal professionalization for stage managers, who are organized with Equity (a vestige of the days, nearly a century ago, when they also frequently performed as actors in shows they were working on).

As productions became more technically complex over the 20th century, stage managers took on more responsibility for calling a larger number of cues and managing teams of workers. Stage managers once called shows from the wings, whereas many are now stationed in a tech booth, where they can see more of the stage picture.

The work didn’t only get more technical in this time, Scheier [assistant professor of stage and production management, Point Park University, Pittsburgh; freelance AEA and opera stage manager and stage management historian; b. 1986?] notes, writing, “The labor moved beyond technical know-how to a position where emotional intelligence became paramount to a job well done.”

Up until some time in the first half of the 20th century, stage managers were also predominantly men. It’s not clear who was the first recorded woman to serve in the role, but we do know that as late as the 1950s, female stage managers on Broadway were still rare enough to be newsworthy. Ruth Mitchell’s work on West Side Story [1957-59] was widely publicized in the New York press, though she already had more than a decade of work under her belt at that point [Broadway managerial début: assistant to the director, Annie Get Your Gun, 1946]. Coverage was also unsurprisingly sexist, with papers reporting information about her marital status, beauty, coloring, and weight.

Along with Mitchell [1919-2000], other notable women, such as Elaine Steinbeck [1914-2003], made careers as Broadway stage managers. Mitchell went on to become a prominent producer, working alongside Harold Prince [director and producer; 1928-2019] on his projects until her death in 2000. By the early years of the 21st century, the vast majority of stage managers were women—a heartening development, though it brings with it new issues. Is it any surprise, after all, that a role often defined by its invisibility, and by catch-all job duties designed to help other people shine, has increasingly fallen to women?

Emotional Labor

“I am not your mother” was a resounding theme in the interviews I conducted. Even male-identified stage managers I talked to acknowledged that the job comes with the expectation of caretaking labor often associated with women.

Today stage management is one sector of the performing arts dominated by women, who made up between 66 and 71 percent of respondents to David McGraw’s Stage Manager Survey between 2006 and 2023, with those identifying as nonbinary hovering around 10 percent once the survey moved away from collecting gender data on a binary basis. In terms of backstage labor, the percentage of woman-identified workers is rivaled only by costume designers and technicians.

This trend only solidifies tropes about the job and perceptions of feminized labor. Stage managers are expected to withstand social slights and have the flexibility to maintain composure in unexpected situations. As “professional problem solvers” and “the hub of the wheel” of the production process, stage managers encounter a huge range of human behaviors from people in different parts of the theatrical hierarchy.

In the 1980s, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild [b. 1940] coined the term “emotional labor” in her book The Managed Heart [The University of California Press, 1983] to describe the work of flight attendants, identifying it as work that “requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others.” Emotional labor, in other words, is the work of producing (usually positive) emotional performances, which may be at odds with true internal emotions, for the sake of those being served. Not coincidentally, flight attendants at the time were almost exclusively women serving largely male clientele.

Some stage managers I spoke with specifically invoked the term “emotional labor,” while others discussed the way gender dynamics influence their work. As one gay man of color from Minneapolis told me, stage managers are sometimes relied on implicitly as quasi-therapists or mental health experts, roles for which they are not trained.

“Everybody likes a lady who has a lot of good ideas but doesn’t need to be in charge,” is how Victoria Rayburn (not her real name), a Washington, D.C., stage manager, put it. She even noted how her socialization as a woman has contributed to her success as a stage manager. “As a woman, personality management is built in—‘Like, oh my gosh, a man with an ego?!,’” she joked. “That’s absolutely part of everyday life, in all aspects of my life. It’s not just that I learned that at work; I learned that in my house with my brother!”

Lisa Smith also described her style as motherly, explaining that rather than using conflict or confrontation as strategies for getting people to do what she wants, she leverages “guilt and disappointment.” She never yells at people if they’re late; instead, she expresses concern and asks what she can do to help next time.

While this may be a successful approach to working with actors, Smith said she has encountered blatant hostility from backstage workers simply for being a woman in charge. On one show, she recalled, an all-female stage management team encountered a troubling degree of resistance from the all-male union backstage crew. Of one man in particular, she said, “I would speak to him and he would talk to someone else to tell me something—truly, a grown-ass man in his 60s who wouldn’t regard me as a human being.”

She laughed as she related this story, but noted more somberly that she regrets not reporting the behavior. (Both of her fellow stage managers did.)

Stage Management as an Art

But stage managers are not simply glorified babysitters or under-compensated human resources professionals. Most enter and remain in the field because of their affinity for the work onstage. As Smith put it, stage managers now “are not just a stopwatch.” As technology and culture have shifted over the past 30 years, “what a stage manager has to do has become more graceful. It is an art to do it well.” Said Rebecca Skupin, a stage manager in Houston, “I definitely consider myself an artist.”

Certainly stage managers need to understand basic dramaturgy, lighting, and theatrical timing to rehearse and call shows, but seldom are their artistic abilities recognized publicly. This may be changing: In 2021, Minneapolis-based Elizabeth MacNally [b. 1979] won a prestigious McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship for her work as a stage manager—the first time the organization has recognized stage management as an artistic practice in its own right. [The McKnight Foundation is a family foundation based in Minnesota that supports programs in the arts, sciences, and the environment.]

MacNally worked frequently with the late director Marion McClinton [1954-2019] at Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis. By her account, McClinton’s approach to directing was to get out of the way of the story, and MacNally said she similarly sees herself “as a stage manager of the story. Are we getting in the way of the story? And if we are, how do we get ourselves out of that and get back to the story? The last thing we want to have happen is the audience gets smarter than us.”

Rosey Lowe [b. ca. 1995], who had been working in Minneapolis and Chicago when we spoke, came to stage management from an acting background. They joked that rather than run a tight ship as a stage manager, they prefer to run rehearsals like a “very functional loose canoe.” The artistic process needs flexibility, she explained, because “you sometimes can’t plan for when a breakthrough is going to happen.”

Out of the Shadows

Still, aesthetic or otherwise, much stage management labor goes unrecognized.

“I am perfectly happy working in the shadows,” said Lyndsey Goode [b. 1979] of Arlington, Texas, “except to the extent that networking is how you get your next gig.” Rayburn concurred on the double-edged sword of invisibility, saying, “If you are in theatre and you don’t know what a stage manager does, or at least what your stage manager does, you’re not appreciating the people you work with.”

Invisibility can also translate to monetary devaluation. As Goode pointed out, “A stage manager is never going to sell a ticket,” and on Broadway name recognition comes with more power to negotiate a contract. Ultimately, she said, any producer can decide “if you’re not going to take it for minimum, they can find somebody else who will.”

This may be why, partly enabled by Zoom communication, some stage managers have spent the past four years building collective knowledge and power. New York-based stage manager Amanda Spooner [b. ca. 1985] started the Year of the Stage Manager project in 2020, and the connections continue via a Facebook group.

Meanwhile there has been material progress: Houston’s Skupin, elected as one of Equity’s Western Region Stage Manager Councilors in 2022, sounded hopeful when we spoke in 2023, noting that contract negotiations included a number of gains for stage managers, including more ASM [assistant stage manager] contracts, reduced workweeks and increased rest hours, and better overtime policies. Additionally, according to a request for proposal from 2023, the union is also taking steps toward a name change “inclusive of all its members.”

From their unique position as conduits, funnels, or hubs, stage managers naturally accrue responsibilities and knowledge. They are therefore ideally positioned to advocate for the culture of rehearsals to change.

In the meantime, they must also advocate for themselves. Goode left for the Dallas-Fort Worth area when gigs in New York dried up during the pandemic, eventually landing a job as a company manager for a ballet company in Dallas [Texas Ballet Theater], a position in which she utilizes stage management skills and continues to work in the arts. MacNally left Pillsbury House Theatre for a position as the associate director of event production at the Walker Art Center, also in Minneapolis.

For her part, Smith is still on the fence about how much of her professional life she wants to devote to the theatre. She has stage-managed one show a year since we spoke in 2022, and is trying to strike a balance between work that simply pays the bills and work fueled by passion and creativity. She said she is working with a career counselor to help her sort through these decisions and launch her into her next chapter.

Whichever path she chooses, it will be her own.

“I can’t fix this industry,” she said. “There’s not time in my lifetime to make this better.”

[Angie Ahlgren (she/her) is a writer based in Duluth, Minnesota, and owner of Ahlgren Consulting, LLC, a consulting and coaching business for academics in the arts.  She started out as a stage manager at Minneapolis’s Theater Mu in the late ’90s, and her academic research has focused on stage management, gender, and invisible labor.

[Ahlgren’s writing has appeared in Theatre History Studies, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Women and Music, and she’s the author of Drumming Asian America: Taiko, Performance, and Cultural Politics (Oxford University Press, 2018). 

[Research for this article was supported by a faculty fellowship with the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and a short-term fellowship from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.]

"Equity On Tour"

 

[As readers of Rick On Theater know by now, I have an occasional series of articles on this blog describing jobs and professions in theater that few even avid theatergoers know much about.  I’ve covered stage managers, dance captains, swings, understudies, and wig-makers; now I’m posting an article from Equity News (vol. 104, no. 4 [Fall 2019], entitled “Equity on Tour”) which features interviews with union members who work on national tours of Broadway shows.  I couldn’t imagine a more appropriate article to post on ROT.] 

“ALL IN A YEAR: EQUITY MEMBERS BUSY WITH NATIONAL TOURS IN 2019”

Perhaps the only thing harder than making a living on stage or backstage is doing so while touring. And yet, there are now more members doing just that than at any point since the last recession. With interest in touring only continuing to grow, Equity News sat down with seven tour veterans – a mix that included stage managers, an understudy, principals and chorus – to find out what they have learned from life on the road. Special thanks to Kevin McMahon, chair of the SETA [Short Engagement Touring Agreement] Committee, for helping to lead the conversation. What follows is their conversation and their lessons, edited for space and clarity.

WHAT WOULD YOU TELL A NEW MEMBER BEFORE THEIR FIRST TOUR? 

Kevin McMahon: For me, it’s “bring less.” You don’t need it. If you do need something, you can buy it.

John Atherlay: It’s okay not to know the answers; ask questions. And don’t try and fake it.

Christine Toy Johnson: I’d pass along some great advice I got from my friend Jose Llana right before I left town. He had just come back from two years on the road with The King and I and suggested these top three things:

1. Ziploc bags will be your friends. (Now I have reusable ones, and they are my friends.)

2. You don’t need that much stuff. You may have a couple of parties where you really want to dress up, but he said he started the tour with five suits and by the end was down to one black blazer, which he used for all press and opening nights.

3. You don’t need to lug around gigantic, Costco-sized lotions and shampoos. Normal sizes are good!

Andrew Bacigalupo: Know we’re not brain surgeons. It’s serious, we’re all professionals, but everything doesn’t have to get elevated so quickly. There doesn’t have to be stress. This is something we want to do, so let’s enjoy doing this. There’s a lot of pressure to be perfect because everybody’s watching, but really, everybody’s in this together.

Marina Lazzaretto: It’s important to find the things that bring you joy and do them in every city. For me, I plan my workout in every city. I find the places that I want to go to, and that’s what brings me joy, and I plan my life around that.

David O’Brien: I go on websites like TripAdvisor to see the top ten things to do and try to do at least one of them in each city; something to get me out of the theater so I don’t lose my mind. I would definitely advise new people to take advantage of the cities they’re going to, because it’s such a great experience to travel the country.

Sid Solomon: I’m a big fan of meeting people. My first Equity job, I spent two years touring with The Acting Company, which is a very different kind of touring model where you’re very bus-and-truck, one night here, one night there, in very small towns.

I did everything that I could to try to meet people who lived in those places. Sit down at a restaurant that’s known as a place where people from that city go and start a conversation. The country is wide and vast and filled with lots of different kinds of people, and the people in the city are the ones we’re there to do the show for. So, every opportunity that I could take to just meet somebody and find out what their life is like felt to me like it enriched my ability to do the work that I was in that city to do.

McMahon: Most of my good memories of my years on the road revolve around the stuff that we did with my friends, like that the trip on the balloon in Albuquerque with “O’B” (David O’Brien), trips to the dog park with all my dog friends on the road . . . that’s a part of living. That’s your life.

O’Brien: We have 14 dogs on our tour now, Kevin!

HOW DO YOU STAY HEALTHY ON THE ROAD?

Johnson: Come From Away is like a 100-minute long sprint, and I find I have to prepare myself in a different way than I have for other shows. As much as I do love seeing as much as I can of the cities I’m in, I am also very conscious of not having a mindset that I’m on vacation. The only reason I’m away from my home and my husband and my dog for most of the year is to do the show.

So I’ll do whatever I need to do to be at my optimal energy for the show. It’s all about balance. I am a writer as well, and part of the leadership of Equity and the Dramatists’ Guild, and I chair a few committees. I get up at 6:30 or 7 in the morning just naturally. When it occurred to me that I needed to be at my optimal energy 12 hours after I got up, I realized that I had to really be mindful of structuring my day for both physical and mental wellbeing. It took me months to set up the parameters so that I could do this.

I don’t do meetings on Mondays anymore because even if it’s a travel day or golden day; it’s a day off. I don’t do meetings after a certain time in the afternoon because I have to reset my body clock and take a little nap or be quiet. Now I don’t really do a lot of things after the show, except for on Sundays, and it seems super boring sometimes, but for me it’s all about making sure that I am at my peak performance level at all times. I’m proud to say that (as we speak) I’ve done every single performance of our run so far.

Lazzaretto: I want to talk about food on the road, because I think it’s particularly difficult to feel your best and to perform your best when you’re consistently eating out at garbage restaurants. I make it a priority to find a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s in each city. I travel with a plate, a bowl and a kitchen knife so that I can have my normal diet, food that I would eat at home, in my hotel or in my Airbnb. And that helps me maintain my optimal body health for my show.

Johnson: Same. Exactly. It’s absolutely vital to do that.

Solomon: It has always been my experience that people who do what we do tend to be creatures of habit. We were touring with a lot of first-time-touring people, and it was really important for all of us to accept the limitations of touring as quickly as possible, to understand that for as much as you have a dedicated routine at home, there are realities to being on the road. The sooner you’re willing to figure out how to maintain as much of your routine, as many of the things that make you happy on a day-to-day basis, you should do that. For me, it’s light in hotels. I need there to be some light in my room, and I will go back to the front desk and ask for a room with better light.

My health suffered for the first six months of the tour because I’m an outdoor runner. We were in cold weather cities a lot, and I had a really hard time adjusting my exercise schedule.

Atherlay: I don’t do workout routines very often because my schedule changes at the drop of a dime, so I tend to walk around a lot. I listen to Sirius Radio, and I just see the different sites. I’ve been touring long enough that I’ve seen them all, so I know where to go that gives me peace.

I also tend to find the closest hotel to the theater so that I can go away between shows or after rehearsal and before the show, so my day is broken up. I’m not spending 12–13 hours in the theater, but maybe four or five, then going away for two hours and coming back. It refreshes my brain and relaxes me a lot.

YOU BRING UP A GOOD POINT. WHAT DOES EVERYONE DO FOR MENTAL HEALTH?

Bacigalupo: We’ve been talking about mental health on my tour recently. I think, as Christine said, we’re not here on vacation. We’re not there just to have fun in the city. We’re there to do the show. Some people go out after the shows, to this bar or that place with an “always on the move” mentality. I think it’s important to realize that I wouldn’t necessarily do that while I was at home, so working on the road I don’t need to feel the pressure to do that either. It’s okay to have time to yourself.

McMahon: I couldn’t agree with you more, Andrew. Sometimes you’re 50 years old and you feel like you’re back in high school with the parties and who didn’t get invited to this thing, and you have to step back and like realize, okay this is just for now. This is just this week, and next week we’ll be in a different city. It will all be different.

Lazzaretto: For my own mental health, it was important to realize early on in my experience that you don’t have to feel like you have to be everyone’s friend. If we worked in a normal office, you wouldn’t feel obligated to spend all your time with every person you worked with, so it’s okay to realize that not everyone on your tour is going to be your friend. You do your work together, and you can be pleasant and nice to each other, but you don’t have to feel bad if you’re not invited to something. You don’t have to be everyone’s friend. It’s okay.

O’Brien: I’m sober. I’ve been sober for 29 years, and it has its specific challenges on the road. And that is my staying healthy. A lot of it has to do with having my dog, finding people that aren’t in that party mindset. It can be done, but it’s much more challenging on the road.

STAGE MANAGERS: HOW IS YOUR ROLE DIFFERENT ON THE ROAD COMPARED TO DOING A SIT-DOWN PRODUCTION?

O’Brien: There’s so much more to it on the road, which is why I like being on the road. So much of my career was in New York, and I always found it to be a challenge, especially on shows that did run a long time. I was on Cats for five years. Five years in New York is to me tougher than five years on the road. The excitement of going from city to city and being in a new theater and a new environment gives everything a new energy.

Atherlay: I’m with O’B. I much prefer the road. We’re in Toronto at the Mirvish, and it’s our first theater without a crossover. So we had to go in and figure out what costume changes need to be moved where. And focusing the show where we are – our second stop didn’t have box booms, so we had to move everything to the front and deal with the challenge of making it look the same without the same positions, which is very, very difficult.

But I’ve been around so much, a lot of cities become second homes to me. I know the challenges in Toronto, what we’ll have at the Golden Gate in San Francisco, what we’re going to have in Cleveland when we get there in a couple of weeks. But it’s the challenges I prefer.

Bacigalupo: When you’re always moving, there’s more of a “we’re all in this together vibe,” and it’s a whole different atmosphere to the show.

WHAT TOOLS DO YOU USE TO GET YOURSELF ACCLIMATED TO A CITY?

McMahon: I always go on Trip Advisor, and there’s a new Facebook group I think a lot of us belong to called Tour Talk, where people share advice on cities and actually give tips on hotels, which was very helpful to me on my last tour.

Solomon: I have for a very long time kept a membership to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and they have an extensive reciprocal membership program for not all that much money that gets me free entry into art museums in basically every city. And so early in each week, I would go and find the major art museum in the city. It’s usually in the center of town, and it usually has some deep rich history about how it was founded and it tends to be such a part of the civic identity of a city, that it tended to tell me a lot really quickly.

Johnson: I eat a 90% Paleo menu, so I will Google “Paleo + [name of the city]” and find the restaurants that fit the bill. There’s a small group of us that likes to find a good restaurant to go to on the first night in a city, so I make the reservation and find something that’s a treat for all of us. I also start with locating the nearest Whole Foods, because you can do wonders with a rotisserie chicken and a box of salad.

O’Brien: On our tour now, we have a group of people that love to eat breakfast, so we find breakfast restaurants in our cities. It’s been great.

Bacigalupo: On every Tuesday or every load-in day, we do a management lunch where company management and stage management go out together. There’s a lot of excitement in the days before we to go a city about where we are going to lunch on Tuesday. And then just the stage managers, the three of us, always do brunch sometime in the week, and it’s important to us to have the time that’s just our department to check in.

Lazzaretto: To me, the people who know the city the best are the locals. I like to find a yoga place in every city, and I talk to the people in class there. They tell me where their favorite restaurant is or what their favorite art museum is, or what else I shouldn’t miss.

McMahon: I couldn’t agree more. I used to talk to the dressers, and I would research the dog parks and ask the people there what they like, and I’ve never been steered wrong.

DOES ANYONE HERE TRAVEL WITH THEIR FAMILY?

Johnson: My husband Bruce and my dog Joey travel with me often but not full time. In the first year of Come From Away, we had four children traveling with us, five dogs and at least two or three spouses full time. My company has been extraordinary about welcoming all extended family to everything we do, which has been, I think, really essential to the inclusive happy family feeling that we have in our show.

McMahon: For me, my husband Doug and I have a five-week rule. We had to see each other, physically, at least once every five weeks. That was the absolute rule.

Atherlay: I have three kids. My two boys grew up when I was doing Beauty and the Beast, so I was home for them. When I started touring again, we put a map on the kitchen refrigerator. My ex-wife would pinpoint where I was, and when I would call them, we’d talk about time differences and seasonal differences, and I got them to figure out what the country was. Before computers and texts, our communication was phone calls. My daughter, who is now 18, would visit me on the road because her mother’s grandmother lived outside of Chicago. Four or five times when I was playing Detroit, they would be driving home from Chicago and stop off to spend the weekend with me, to the point where when she was in first grade, my daughter told everybody at school that her daddy lived in Detroit.

It’s about communicating. It’s about talking and sending postcards and showing your kids where everything is. And now my daughter is studying theatre management in college.

Bacigalupo: I have a boyfriend that I started seeing last summer, before I started this tour. We didn’t get quite to seeing each other every five weeks, but we haven’t been apart for more than two months at a time. It’s important to have somebody that you can go to who’s not involved with the show. It helps to realize there’s a world outside the isolated bubble of the tour. I don’t think I could have made it through this tour without having someone I could go to as a sounding board who’s not really involved with the production.

WHEN YOU HAVE A CONTRACT THAT IS EXPIRING, HOW DO YOU DECIDE TO RENEW OR NOT TO RENEW?

Johnson: For all of us, I think you check the boxes: do you love the show? Are they treating you well, both salary-wise and globally? Are you artistically fulfilled? Kevin, you taught me this. If you have at least two of these three things, it’s easy to stay.

I think I can speak for everyone in the Come From Away company – we feel so invested in the message of the show. No one ever wants to be out. No one ever wants to not do the show. The people that left didn’t really want to leave; they had children going to school or other commitments that they needed to tend to.

For me, the positives outweigh the negatives (being away from home), so it was not a hard decision to stay for year two.

Solomon: Our situation was a little different in that we opened the first national tour the beginning of September and we closed in the middle of August. So the first national tour came to an end, but we knew the show was going to continue on for a second tour on a new contract.

Once we knew what the details of the contract were, there started to be conversations with the cast about continuing on with our show. If you haven’t seen The Play That Goes Wrong, it’s very intricate. It’s complicated. It’s very dangerous. And the more people you have who have done it before, the better off you are.

I loved my time on the road. I loved the tour. I loved the show. I love the people. Understudying the show is a particular challenge. I was not in the same kind of physical pain the rest of the cast is on a daily basis, but the mental anguish of not only keeping that show in my head but being prepared for it on a nightto-night basis was its own special kind of thing.

For me, it simply came down to having to be away from my wife and my dog and my family. My whole life is here in New York. Another minimum nine months on the road just wasn’t the right choice for me right now. And for me that’s actually kind of a big deal. All I ever wanted to do is work. No job is too small, no role is too small. I just want to be doing something all the time. So I’m kind of proud of myself. It was time to look for the next adventure.

Lazzaretto: I think that the number one thing for me as I’m evaluating whether or not I want to continue a contract is: am I still growing as an artist? Am I feeling stagnant? Is there more I can gain from this specific production?  What is the level of my happiness doing this job? Whether I’m going to be happy is the most important.

Atherlay: I look at how I’m being treated. I look at what they offer me to renew. I’ve been very fortunate so far in that I’ve been treated very well. I don’t believe in just leaving work. It’s not in my nature.

Bacigalupo: With stage managers, we don’t really have a contract renewal, we’re just here until we’re not here. I had an opportunity to leave the show for another show earlier in the year, and I felt such anguish about leaving this creative team. I have so much respect for them, and I care about them so much, and they have really helped my career move forward, so I felt a big responsibility to them.

I felt a lot of responsibility for the show. Everybody is replaceable, but I was in the room when the show was created. I know why we’re doing this move, not just that we’re crossing to this number at this moment. And I think a lot of that gets lost in translation as you pass the show on to another PSM.

O’Brien: The only thing I would say is the same as Marina. I left Wicked once because I felt I wasn’t as happy, and I wasn’t serving the show – I was not doing my best job at that time. I thought I needed to take a break from Wicked, and then once the position opened up again, I came back because I realized the show makes me happy. But I will leave a contract if I feel like I’m not doing it justice.

WHEN YOU HAVE A CHOICE FOR HOUSING & TRAVEL, WHAT FACTORS DO YOU CONSIDER IN MAKING THOSE DECISIONS?

McMahon: For me, I’ll tell you that Marriott Rewards Points were as important as my 401(k). (Laughs) If there was a Marriott, I knew there would be a consistent quality of housing, and they’re usually pet friendly.

Johnson: Because we’ve traveled with so many pets, our company manager has made sure that all of our housing has been pet-friendly. I generally stay with the company because I like to be around them, and I don’t like to travel home from the theater by myself. It’s most important for me to be really near the theater if possible, because I like to get there early and also go back to the hotel in between shows to rest. One other thing: the presence or absence of refrigerator and microwave. That’s really important too, because otherwise, you know, you can’t have your rotisserie chicken and a box of salad if you don’t have any place to put them to keep them cool.

O’Brien: I will also look at the company choices and look at ratings, just because where I’m living is so important to me. I will be miserable in a place if my housing is bad.

Bacigalupo: I have stayed at an Airbnb twice on this whole tour in the past year. I get super anxious about Airbnbs – there seems to be a lot of pressure in finding the best Airbnb, the closest Airbnb, the cheapest Airbnb. It’s like a full-time job. It’s too much stress to figure out, so I’ve stayed in the company option most of the time. Even if it was a more expensive option, I would still pick the company hotel, because I knew that if there were issues with the room, if the water doesn’t work, if there was mold, the company would take care of it.

And I do the same for travel. I know a lot of people do their own travel between cities, but I do Monday load-ins. The stress of a flight delay if I paid for the ticket is a lot higher than if the flight’s delayed and the company’s paid for it, because if I don’t make it to load-in, the company will help to figure it out. That takes all of that stress away from me.

Atherlay: Location is important to me, especially with my schedule. And sometimes the pricing is ludicrous, but it’s par for the course. Like Andrew, I’ve had too many actors spend too much time complaining about the Airbnb: that it’s not what they what they signed up for, it’s not what was advertised. I find the hotel is important because it’s my peace of mind. If it is a bad hotel, someone’s going to take care of it and fix it or move me or upgrade me or something.

Lazzaretto: I feel the same. Proximity to the venue is always top priority for me. I’m one of those people who’s splitting my time between the hotels and Airbnb dependent on the length of stay. If we’re somewhere for a week, I’m more likely to just choose the closest hotel option. If we’re somewhere a little longer, I like to have a kitchen.

HOW DOES BEING IN THE UNION AFFECT YOUR TIME ON THE ROAD? ARE THERE TIMES YOU’VE TURNED TO THE UNION FOR HELP?

McMahon: Speaking personally, I know I was on the phone a lot with my reps. Our tour had a lot of new members on the road, and they didn’t understand the rules and working conditions. I was deputy, and I became a teacher for a lot of people about Equity and the contract. The union was incredibly helpful to me in every capacity.

Solomon: Something both being a union member and now being a union officer had me very mindful of on the road was how I interacted with other workers on the road.

Especially when you are living in hotels, taking taxis, going to restaurants – you are constantly interacting with the hospitality industry. And so many of the workers that you are interacting with are unionized workers; sometimes they’re workers who are trying to unionize. I did everything I could to be as mindful as possible of being respectful to fellow workers. Whether that was being mindful of appropriately tipping at hotels, or in cities where there’s a difference between how people are paid to drive – a licensed taxi as opposed to just getting in somebody’s car for Uber – I tried to err on the side of that being mindful to how I was contributing to the way another person made their living.

Lazzaretto: I learned so much about our union and the contracts from Kevin when I was on the road with him. The one thing I like to tell new members in the shows I’m doing is not to be afraid to call the union. It’s there to help you and to be a resource. Call your rep, ask them questions. They’re all so lovely and helpful and willing to give you the information.

McMahon: Being a deputy also becomes a teaching experience for new members. I took that duty very seriously.

Johnson: One of the things I’m most mindful of is our 401(k). That’s an awesome thing that’s part of a negotiated contract. I’m especially grateful to be on a long-term job, having a long-term contribution from the employer in place along with my own.

Atherlay: I have a philosophy, and I teach my deputies all the time, that the words in your agreement are as important as the words in your script. I find that Equity has always been very responsive towards me when I do call with an issue.

O’Brien: With Wicked, we get a lot of new people, new people to Equity who have just signed their first contracts. One of the things that we started on this tour: when a new person joins, we do a meeting. The company buys them dinner, and the associate company manager and my first assistant stage manager go out and explain everything about the road. Then we have a separate meeting where we talk to them about how to use their deputies. And it’s been working really well.

Bacigalupo: In the past two years or so, when I moved to New York, I joined committees and I came to membership meetings. And I think that having the knowledge is such a huge help to understand the bigger picture of what’s going on, to understand what the rulebook rules are, what the agreement is. It’s so interesting to see the reasoning behind the things in these agreements. It’s so cool what you’re doing at Wicked to explain this to people, opening up the agreement and going through it together – I just wrote that down and might steal it for the future.

*  *  *  *

[I’m a dog-lover, so I wanted to include this little sidebar to the Equity News cover article.  ~Rick] 

“HAVE DOG, WILL TRAVEL”

One of the things that makes life on the road a little easier is being able to travel with a pet.

“Right now, we’re so fortunate we can even take our dogs to the theater, like we have like six dogs at the theater every day,” said Marina Lazzaretto. “They hang out in the dressing rooms. Gandalf even has his own Cats costume. I wouldn’t tour without him. Like, I can’t imagine my life on the road without him. He brings me so much joy and like he brings so much joy to other people at the theater and at the hotel, too.”

Caring for an animal on the road can be a challenge. Once Lazzaretto found a good veterinarian in Oklahoma, so she makes a point to stop when she is in the area and take Gandalf to visit the veterinarian they’ve come to know.

Stage Manager David O’Brien drives himself from stop to stop so that he can travel with his dog, a 55-pound rescue mix. “I actually adopted him on the road,” said O’Brien. “My other dog, Charlie, was 15 and passed last year. I was without a dog on the road for about five months. Having one makes all the difference in the world to me.”

“A pet can really be the key to everything – making sure that we have the normal thread of joy in our lives,” said Christine Toy Johnson, who often travels with Joey, a six-year-old Westie. “How we navigate that, and when we find that is supported by the people we are working with – that is really just everything.”

*  *  *  *
MEET THE INTERVIEWEES

JOHN ATHERLAY

John is Production Stage Manager with The Band’s Visit. Before that he spent two years on a cruise ship. Other touring experience includes Cabaret, Blithe Spirit, Porgy and Bess, Anything Goes, Fela! and Man of La Mancha.

ANDREW BACIGALUPO

Andrew was the Production Stage Manager on the recently concluded Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tour. Prior to that, he toured with Elf: The Musical, The Sound of Music and Million Dollar Quartet.

MARINA LAZZARETTO

Marina is an actor currently on the Cats tour. Before that, she toured with American in Paris, Wicked and Come Fly Away.

KEVIN MCMAHON

Kevin is chair of the Short Engagement Touring Agreement (SETA) Committee. In addition to serving as a Western Principal Councillor, he toured with Wicked for six years and with Bright Star for one year.

DAVID O’BRIEN

David has been the Production Stage Manager for Wicked on the road for seven years. Prior to that, he did 17 Broadway shows and tours of Chicago, Cats and White Christmas.

SID SOLOMON

Sid toured as an understudy on The Play that Goes Wrong. It was his first experience on a commercial tour as an Equity member. He also serves as Equity’s Eastern Regional Vice President.

CHRISTINE TOY JOHNSON

Christine is an actor on her second year of the first National/North American tour of Come From Away. Previously, she has toured with Cats, Flower Drum Song and Bombay Dreams. She is chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee and an Eastern Principal Councillor.

"Aging & Achieving: Staying Active in the Industry for Decades"

[As long as I’ve been sentient, theater people have been protesting the treatment older people in the profession have received as they age.  This has been especially, though not exclusively, true of actors, and most demonstrably of women actors.  The Actors’ Equity Association, the union that represents professional stage actors and theatrical stage managers, has been trying to address this apparent inequity pretty much since it was formed.  

[The situation may be looking up.  The Winter 2020 issue of Equity News (vol. 105, iss. 1) ran an article on the progress that’s being made in an issue titled “Aging & Achieving.”  I’m posting the article on Rick On Theater as part of my occasional series about issues in the industry.  Here is Gabriela Geselowitz’s “I’m Still Here: Aging and Longevity in the Theatre.”  Geselowitz is Senior Writer and Project Manager at Actors’​ Equity.]

“I’M STILL HERE: AGING AND LONGEVITY IN THE THEATRE”
by Gabriela Geselowitz 

Marjorie Horne was about 23 when she got her Equity Card. It was for a chorus contract, earning $100 a week in summer stock in Michigan‘s upper peninsula. While rehearsing the third production of the summer, producers ran out of money, and on her very first union contract, they had to use the bond to send her home. Horne was undaunted:

“It was very clear when I was offered my card, there was no going back,” she said. “I just looked totally ahead and was there.”

That year was 1967, and now Horne is a successful stage manager and Equity councilor who has been working in the industry for over fifty years.

Theatre is for all ages, and that’s for audiences and artists alike. For those who have made their careers on or backstage, the industry isn’t just a youthful pursuit, but a lifelong occupation. Despite its reputation to the contrary, successful theatre professionals can achieve career and financial stability. Equity members in particular have access to protections that give them the freedom to age on their own terms, and stay active in the industry as senior citizens. Many actors and stage managers slow down or cease working in later years due to dwindling job opportunities, health necessity or personal desire. But some artists continue working well into their sixties, seventies or beyond.

Why keep working at an age when their peers are retiring? Do decades of experience bring the luxury to choose when and how you participate in theatre, or does the hustle last forever? Equity News spoke with several working members about aging in the theatre, changing opportunities and, for some, how the drive to make art never goes away.

“I have always thought that I wanted to do this until I die,” said actor Anita Hollander, 64.

“Actors don’t retire. Do actors retire? I’m not retiring,” asserted actor Sally Wingert, 62.

The average age of retirement in the United States is 65 for men and 63 for women, thanks in part to Social Security, though that number is likely to rise as Americans have greater difficulty acquiring the resources to stop working. Most would not likely guess that theatre actors could be among those who can choose to retire and live off a nest egg. However, Equity offers a 401(k) plan, and as members reach their 60s, they may start collecting the pension that they have been feeding through union contracts over the course of their career.

Even though Equity affords protections for members as they age, no one spoke of that as a motivation for joining the union. Some members had no idea what Equity was when they joined, and others recalled wanting to earn their card as a sign of prestige, only appreciating later the extent of the practical benefits it would afford.

“I never thought of old age,” said Delphi Harrington, 82. “Who would be called an actor and think about old age?”

“It wasn’t that I was particularly mature or thinking ahead. Certainly I was not thinking about retirement in the way that I should have been,” said Wingert. “The fact is I have told so many young performers that I’m working with currently that it is the complete and utter gift of my union to have a solvent, significant pension, and those are going the way of the dodo bird.”

“As a 62-year-old performer that knows I’m going to be using my pension within the next decade, I could not be more grateful that I joined my union when I did,” she added.

With exceptions, members can usually begin collecting on their pension at 65, and they must by age 70.5. Many Equity members belong to SAG-AFTRA as well, and may be pulling funds from multiple pensions, in addition to Social Security payouts. But finances can be a complicated, frustrating matter, as actor Dale Soules, 73, learned firsthand.

“In the years of the recession things weren’t so jolly,” she recalled. “I went to The Actors Fund and talked with them about what to do. I applied for food stamps and after difficulty reapplying for unemployment, it came through – for $67 a week.

Soules’s fortune improved, first with Hands on a Hardbody (her seventh Broadway show), and then, after a career predominantly onstage, when she became a series regular on Orange is the New Black. And then, in what she described as a “perfect financial storm,” she, by law, had to begin collecting her Equity pension and Social Security, and along with her television work this moved her to a higher tax bracket. She also took a hit from the new tax laws that limited her ability to claim deductions . . . and then got audited. During that process she received a history of her earnings under Equity contracts over 50 years, and it totaled just under $500,000 – an average of $10,000 a year.

“I would not have been able to survive a number of dry patches in my career if it weren’t for the fact I live in a rent-controlled apartment,” she admitted. “The day I can’t make the four flight walk-up things may get a little tricky but for the moment I’m still in shape and it’s like having a free gym!

“Actors often subsidize their own careers, and they subsidize the theatre,” she reflected. “But I do have that pension. And whatever I lost in taxes, even if I were to lose everything I made I would be OK. I could get by because of social security and that pension.”

Some stories are more serene. Stage manager Bob Bennett, 75, began taking his pension when it became available while continuing to work, stage managing fewer shows each season. He doesn’t want to leave the theatre, but the pension allows him to take fewer jobs and pursue other passions in his new spare time.

“It makes it possible for me to do some of the things that I might not be able to do as freely,” said Bennett, who is a long-distance hiker. “It’s one of the great benefits of our union.”

“I think it’s a huge credit to the business that I’ve not felt ageism at all,” he added, “I don’t feel it from my cast; I don’t feel it from my crew. The most I hear is, why am I still working? Because I like to. I don’t know that I’d find that in other businesses.”

Others have not been as fortunate in avoiding discrimination.

“There’s a patronizing attitude people have about aging that in some way you’re diminished,” said Harrington, who moderated an Equity panel on ageism in the theatre this past spring. “I don’t feel diminished. I feel expanded, richer, deeper, more various, stronger! I don’t like people to make assumptions about me.”

Some theatre artists have actually been denied roles based on their age.

“I’ve lost work because I was honest,” says Marjorie Johnson. She recalls an employer asking her age, and when she answered honestly, they told her they thought she was younger, and she lost the part. It is actually prohibited by federal law to discriminate against anyone 40 or older based on their age, and anyone in a similar situation should contact Equity, but Johnson no longer makes her age public.  [Respecting her wishes, I’ll only add that Johnson is in the middle of the range of ages of the Equity members interviewed here.]

“I just thought, ‘Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have said that,' and so from that point on I just don’t,” she said.

“I do think that roles are harder to find for women as we age,” added Greta Lambert, 63. “They’re not impossible, but for example my first season here [at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival] there would have been six to eight shows where I could have had a role as a young leading lady, and now there’s one show, maybe two in a year where there’s an age-appropriate role.”

“Usually directors like to hire young people and make them look older,” said Virginia Wing, 82, noting that even roles written as older characters are no guarantee.

Many professionals, however, have been surprised to find that their golden years are some of their best working ones.

“When I reached my fifties, I entered into probably the most significant decade of work that I’ve had in my life and it seems to be continuing,” said Wingert, who credits ample job opportunities in the Twin Cities, “Any given year I have worked between 35 and 60 actor work weeks.”

“Actors more than stage managers have the option of not retiring,” explained Horne, since at least some plays have characters of advanced ages that are cast appropriately. And yet, she too is still working, both new and recurring gigs like the Tony Awards.

“I’m making more money than I had ever seen in my whole life in a year. It is nuts,” she said. “I’m still putting into my pension because I’m still working on contract a couple of times a year.” 

The land of semi-retirement can be a fertile one, as members work on their own terms. For some, that means declining to take understudy roles, or a refusal to audition. Stepping away from solely acting or stage managing may also mean broadening one’s theatrical horizons, pursuing other technical work, directing, writing or teaching.

Lambert lives in Alabama, and while that meant passing on New York and the opportunities it offers, it also meant that she found an intimate home, where there’s always a way she can participate in the theatre, and where she runs into audience members at the supermarket. She has been part of the same company on and off since 1985, served as faculty for an MFA program and held titles of Director of Education, Director of Fellowship Company and Associate Artistic Director.

“I’ve had to redefine what success means for myself because it’s not about what the business tells me it’s supposed to be about” said Lambert, “For me, it’s been about playing great roles and being part of a community – not only other artists but the community I live in now.”

Lambert has also found that aging publicly, in front of an audience, can be a daunting proposition.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be willing to perform because of my own vanity, that I’ll be able to keep letting audiences watching my growth,” she confessed, “I don’t think my struggle is any different than any other person who ages. If it’s difficult it has very little to do with my business. It’s the culture of aging.”

Ernest Abuba is transitioning in the opposite direction; now retired from teaching theatre and in his seventies [he’s 73], he is looking to act more than he did when he was working at Sarah Lawrence College. (He has also worked as a director, playwright and founding member and resident artist of Pan Asian Repertory Theatre.) He thinks he may have more opportunities now, in part because fewer older working actors means less competition, and because he has seen improvements overall for actors of color.

“For many years it was all about stereotypes,” said Abuba, who has worked in the theatre for 50 years. “Now the way I look at it, the system has opened up more, it has been opening up more for the Asian American, in the last ten years or so.” An activist for better representation and an early member of Equity’s Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, Abuba now hopes to enjoy some of the hard-won progress.

Even if the work opportunities are present, other complications arise as Equity members age in the business. For those struggling with health issues, the choice to keep working can be very much a privilege. Some members spoke of actor friends who had to leave the business when they could no longer memorize lines.

“As long as I’m still functioning and my brain is still functioning, I’m in it for the long haul,” said Johnson, “Thank God my memory is still intact.”

Hollander is acutely aware of how to navigate physical wellbeing and an onstage career. When she was 26, she had her leg amputated due to cancer. She was back performing on stage four weeks later, and she spoke about how working with a disability prepared her for aging in the industry.

“I was not only under pressure for how I would make a living, I was now a cancer survivor and an amputee,” she said, “I was definitely not going to ever let anything get in my way. I am aging, and I am noticing, ‘Oh my gosh, this is not easy.’ But I’ve been disabled since my twenties and working in this profession. I didn’t go into this so naïve that it wasn’t going to be difficult and painful and worrisome, but I wasn’t going to give up on that.”

Hollander is one of many members who finds she is working more now than she ever has, in part on the strength of autobiographical solo shows. However, steady work never fully addresses her concerns.

“The results are happening and the irony is, I’m still struggling to get my insurance,” she said, “This industry has been very challenging to navigate as any kind of performer, but particularly a performer with a disability – and add to that an aging performer with a disability.”

Hollander is grateful that in the 1980s she found a home in Manhattan Plaza, a federally subsidized residential complex that takes her medical expenses into account. She is also aware of The Actors Fund Home, a short and long term care facility in New Jersey, as well as other resources.

“I’m just hoping that I can be OK, but I do feel fortunate that The Actors Fund exists,” she said. “I have been working all my life and there may be a time I need help.”

Members agreed that a support network is crucial for survival in the industry long term, not only in terms of health and finances, but professionally and socially. Hollander, for example, directs as well, and she casts her peers who are also aging actors with disabilities. Horne has decades as a stage manager behind her, and that means decades of connections.

“I have good relationships with the people that I work with,” she said. “The new jobs that I’ve gotten have come from other people that I’ve worked with and their recommendations.”

“I have a group of friends that are very, very supportive of each other,” added Johnson. “I have a very strong network of performers in my age category. Even if we have the same audition, we’ll work with each other, including gathering to read opposite one another or record one another for virtual auditions."

By now, members know that a spate of good working years does not mean permanent comfort, and that a dry spell does not spell the end.

“For the last ten years I would say I’m in my retirement mode, and then the next week I’d have a job,” said Johnson, who in 2016 received critical acclaim for a leading Off-Broadway role in Dot, playing an aging woman struggling with Alzheimer’s.

Soules was optimistic, thinking that a general aging population would create a mirroring effect in the arts world. But she knows that all she can do is continue to perform as best and as long as she can.

“You never really know on what criteria you’re being judged,” she noted, “The only thing you have any control over is the work that you put into it.”

“When you love what you do,” said Harrington, “You don’t quit.”

[A note about one of the Equity members interviewed above: Marjorie Horne, the 76-year-old stage manager, is also featured in another Equity News article I posted on ROT: “Get Me to the Stage on Time,” part of “Stage Managers,” posted on 30 January 2017.  “Stage Managers” is an entry in another ad hoc series on ROT, introducing and explaining the work of performing arts jobs theatergoers seldom know much about.]

Stage Managers

[As I recounted in my two-part article “Actors’ Equity at 100” (19 and 22 June 2013), the Actors’ Equity Association, the union that represents professional stage actors and stage managers, was established in 1913.  Many people who follow theater know that AEA represents actors who work on the live stage (SAG-AFTRA represents those who perform in the big and small screens), but I wonder how many outside the profession are aware that the same union also represents stage managers, the theater pros who keep the productions running smoothly from back stage.  (I published an article from an earlier issue of Equity News, “Stage Managers Wear Many Different Hats” by Michael Sommers, that addresses the question of what a stage manager does.  It’s part of a post called “Stage Hands” [14 January 2014].)  AEA used to represent directors, too, until 1959 (when they split off and formed what is now the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, known as  SDC), but why didn’t the SM’s follow them or form their own guild?  Surely, what SM’s do is more akin to what directors do than it is to actors, right?  Indeed, it’s the responsibility of the stage manager to keep the show stage-worthy in the absence of the director, say after opening, and to rehearse understudies and replacements. 

[First, many SM’s are also actors—as you’ll read below—and continue to work in both capacities.  Second,  unlike directors, whose jobs are essentially done when the play opens, stage managers are often called upon to play small roles, especially in touring productions and at small rep companies where cast size is a serious consideration.  This puts them squarely in Equity’s wheelhouse, and so they remain part of the same union as their performing brothers and sisters.  The Winter 2017 issue of Equity News is devoted to paying tribute to he union’s stage manager members, and so I’ve collected the six articles from the union’s house magazine for republishing on ROT.  I hope readers find them edifying.  ~Rick]

From The Executive Director

CELEBRATING OUR STAGE MANAGERS

by Mary McColl

Every performer loves stage managers. Stage managers are the artists who maintain the production. They keep time, keep the schedule, keep everyone on stage and on their mark. If you follow us [i.e., Actors’ Equity Association] on social media, you know that we have spent the past couple of months celebrating and highlighting Equity’s stage managers with #LoveMySMs. We asked members to submit photos of themselves, or stage mangers they have worked work with, for us to celebrate. The result has been inspiring. We have heard from and showcased many of our stage managers who work across the country. We encourage you to continue sending us photos (send to jaustin@actorsequity.org) so that we can keep #LoveMySMs going.

While working at Actors’ Equity I’ve had the opportunity to interact with many of the stage managers featured in this month’s magazine. One conversation that stands out for me was with a stage manager who works Off-Broadway. She spoke about how stage managers are artists who “conduct” each performance. She said that every call she makes brings the show to life. That conversation helped give me a new perspective on how stage managers work and further solidified why they are so important to this industry.

Performers in a company depend in so many ways on their stage manager. Not only are they a wealth of information when it comes to your contract, rules and breaks, but he or she helps ensure your safety. Your stage manager is often the first line of defense in your workplace. (Make sure you talk to your Deputy as well if you encounter any issues. He or she is there to help and will make sure we know what is going on.) The fact that we represent stage managers as well as actors is good for the production and good for the industry.

This issue brings us stories of stage managers across the country. We hear from two stage managers who have disabilities, stage managers who have the added pressure of awards season, a stage manager who works full-time as a resident stage manager and another who is often working at various houses.

2016 was a big year for Equity. Not only did we implement the new format of Equity News, we introduced the Equity News Center and ECC [Equity Chorus Call] and EPA [Equity Principal Audition] online sign-ups in the Member Portal, we negotiated strong contracts across the country. We also strengthened our commitment to diversity and inclusion within our industry (look for more news and statistics in my next column).

As 2017 begins, we stand with our brothers and sisters in the labor community. Together, we will face challenges. As a union, we will work to protect your rights.

Now, more than ever, we need to stand together because we are stronger together.

*  *  *  *

WE LOVE OUR STAGE MANAGERS

by Ira Mont

A stage manager is a vital role that I view as the central hub of both the production and the company. We are responsible for facilitation, communication, collation, collaboration and administration. We are the protector, the sounding board and disciplinarian of the company. The stage manager is the eyes, ears and, I believe, the heart and mind of the producer and director when they aren’t in the room.

I thought I was going to be an actor. I joined the union in the spring of 1987. I scored my first contract at the Theater Factory St. Louis, an SPT [Small Professional Theatre] company. Having done some stage management work, I was hired for the company’s summer season to not only perform in several shows, but to also stage manage several others.

Stage managing came naturally to me; one, because I like to know everything that’s going on and two, in addition to being organized, I like to make things work. When I was a student at Circle in the Square, I spent a lot of time watching Present Laughter [1982-83] from the booth with PSM [Production Stage Manager] Michael Ritchie. I became the friend who could help light a cabaret or assist in stage managing a showcase. Between ’87 and ’88, I started getting calls and job offers for stage management. Without looking for it or realizing it, I transitioned from actor to stage manager. It was and is a perfect fit.

Getting to be on both sides of the curtain has helped shape my union tenure. I currently serve as the 3rd Vice President of Equity. I believe that many of the qualities that make me a good stage manager make me a good union leader. I thoroughly enjoy all of the intricacies of how our union works. I joined my first committee (Developing Theatre) the minute I returned home from St. Louis in 1987. Since then I have served on and chaired several committees, represented our members at organizations like the AFL-CIO, among others, and have continued to advocate and fight for members on contract negotiations. My role with the union is not much different than my role in the theater.

Having been a performer, I believe stage managers and actors serve each other well as members of the same union. If you view the life of a show as first rehearsal to closing night, only two groups are there in the room every day from beginning to end—actors and stage managers. We bring out the best in each other.

I am proud to have made a career as a stage manager. I’m even more proud to serve all of you, my fellow brothers and sisters. I’m thrilled to celebrate our stage managers and to acknowledge their tireless work and dedication to the production. I love my fellow SMs!

[Ira Mont is 3rd Vice President of Actors’ Equity. He’s currently PSM on Broadway’s Cats, before which he stage-managed 18 Broadway shows, including all three of the Norman Conquest trilogy revivals (2011), the stage première of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (2013-15), The Producers (2001-07), Smokey Joe’s Café (1995-2000), and Love! Valour! Compassion! (1995). Mont’s also worked Off-Broadway on Full Gallop (1996-97), I Do! I Do! (1996), and Manhattan Class Company’s Class 1 Acts: '91-'92 (1992).]

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STAGE MANAGING WITH A DISABILITY

by Josh Austin

Members Philip B. Richard and Elizabeth Salisch share what it’s like working with a disability in this industry

When Philip B. Richard II had his worst epileptic seizure to date, he was at work. He fell, landing hard on his chin. He broke both sides of his jaw and lost two teeth. After visiting the hospital and leaving with a wired-shut mouth, he returned to work that day.

“I was told I couldn’t do my job with my mouth wired shut, and I couldn’t get workers’ comp since my epilepsy was pre-existing,” he said. “But just like with everything else, I told them I could do my job and I was back to work that same day—blending my food and eating from a turkey baster.”

That was prior to becoming an Equity member. Richard has been a union stage manager for just under one year—and is flourishing. He was born with epilepsy, a neurological disability that affects over 3 million Americans, and causes unpredictable seizures. For Richard, his longest span without an episode has been 12 years. But, like anyone with a disability, and in particular working as a stage manager, there have been a lot of “figure it out for yourself” moments.

“The theatre has always been a place that I felt that I fit in and belong,” he said. “I’ve never wanted to do anything else.” That’s meant, for Richard, figuring out bus rides or walking routes (he’s not allowed to drive a car; though, he noted, Equity doesn’t allow that to affect the hiring of a stage manager) and working effectively with strobe lighting (which can trigger a seizure). “I always make sure that my disability never stops me from doing what I want.”

Elizabeth Salisch was born orthopedically impaired. Between the ages of one to six years old, she went through 15 surgeries to make her hands functional.

And though Salisch said that she is unable to operate a drill gun, “I am highly adaptable to finding ways to do what I need to do, whether it’s finding another way or by knowing how to find the right person to help me. This is very useful as a stage manager.”

Salisch saw her first Broadway show when she was just five years old. Immediately, she knew she wanted in. Attending the University of Pittsburgh as a Theatre Arts major, she found stage management from asking how she could be involved. “I fell in love with stage management because it not only fits my personality, but is one of the few positions that sees the journey of the production from the very beginning to the very end.”

Though both Salisch and Richard admit that Equity has made their lives easier (for Salisch, it’s saving for a pension and health benefits; Richard is grateful that the union has taken major strides to protect those with disabilities and to ensure they are not discriminated against), Richard acknowledged that those in the industry might have preconceived notions about workers with disabilities. Perhaps, he said, people believe those with a disability can’t handle the stress of the job. “Stage managers have so much that we do on a daily basis and a lot of that is last-minute along with being fast-paced,” he said. “That is the normal level—for those with disabilities, it adds another layer, but it’s not impossible.”

Salisch has stage managed many young audience productions. She noted that the students most often ask her what happened to her hands. “My response to them, and to anyone who perceived people with a physical disability as being different, is that we are the same and I can do the same things as you, but I look different just like some people have brown hair and some may have blonde.”

Richard also pointed out that those with a disability tend to have a preconceived notion about themselves: They assume they can’t do something when all they have to do is find another path.

And for those with disabilities thinking of entering the world of stage management, both Salisch and Richard would say “follow your dreams.”

“For someone with a disability, it can be harder, but don’t let it stop you,” Richard said. “Never, never let your disability stop you. Work with it. Think outside the box. I’ve never let anything stop me.”

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I would tell someone else who may have a disability if they want to stage manage, or do anything else in the theater, they should go for it.  —Elizabeth Salisch

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DEAR STAGE MANAGERS, THANK YOU.

“To be an SM is to run an adult daycare at times. Colleen Nielsen knows that a balanced amount of respect while maintaining an organized and safe environment to explore the human condition is its own art. You are so essential to the success of our storytelling. Thank you!”  —Iris Elton

“Jill Gold is always a class act. She’s a family woman with kids my age, so I can relate. She always has a smile on her face and kind words for everyone, and she seems to truly love actors. My last Equity job was Empire with McCoy Rigby [Entertainment; La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, La Mirada, California; 2016] and I was very excited to hear she was helping steer the ship.”  —Richard A. Bulda

“There is no better SM around than long time stage manager Pat Adams at the Wilma Theater—and I think she has been there almost 20 years. Another wonderful Philadelphia SM who is now at Delaware Theater Company is Marguerite Price. These are two exceptional women, devoted union SMs and the backbone of theatre in the Philadelphia area.”  —Nancy Boykin

“Before the last show of the week, Stephen Milosevich (production stage manager for Hir [by Taylor Mac, Playwrights Horizons; 2015]) would play disco over the monitor at our places call. He is the most organized, most professional goofball I’ve ever met.”  —Tom Phelan

“Bryan Rodney Bauer is one of the most inspiring young stage managers I have met. While juggling a main stage production at Playwrights Horizons, he facilitated an organized, warm room for us to create Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop [by Michael R. Jackson; Feinstein's/54 Below; 2016]; I cannot wait to work with him again!”  —Larry Owens

“I have to give a shout out to the amazing Kate Bartels. Kate is always professional, always smiling and she always gets the job done! There’s nothing better as an actor than knowing that the stage manager is on top of everything, and with Kate, there’s never a question!”  —Amy Alvarez

“Craig Horness is the PSM at Ford’s Theater [Washington, D.C.], and I was lucky to do five seasons of A Christmas Carol with him. He keeps the show in shape and keeps the company in great spirits, and is a fantastic human.”  —Vishal Vaidya

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GETTING INTO THE BUSINESS EQUITY MEMBER

by Stephanie Masucci

Two stage managers talk about starting their careers and mentoring those who are up-and-coming in the industry

Cheryl G. Mintz, the current Resident Production Stage Manager for McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., knew in high school that she wanted to be a stage manager. “In 11th grade I had the opportunity to stage manage The Crucible, and that opened up my theatrical world and changed my direction. I had very positive undergraduate theatre experiences at SUNY [State University of New York] Stony Brook and University of Loughborough in England, all of which led me to the Directing & Stage Management MFA at the Yale School of Drama.”

Yale proved to be a definitive experience for Mintz. Over the course of three years, she worked with over 300 passionate students and was able to network (a very different [sic] in the 1980s, she noted). After graduation she began her professional career with the National Theatre’s production of Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C. [1987], and then returned to New York City with a new production of the play [Promenade Theatre, 1988], in her first Equity Production Contract as a PSM.

On the flipside, becoming a stage manager was a career member Hope Villanueva accidentally fell into. “It was under one of the first directors that I worked for in Los Angeles that I realized this job appeals to both my desire to be around and create art, as well as my organizational sensibilities,” she said. “Becoming an Equity member wasn’t easy, though. “Since I started as a PSM and fell into job after job, I couldn't get into an EMC [Equity Membership Candidate] program when I wanted to join the union because I was ‘overqualified.’ Thankfully, a production manager in D.C. was willing to take a chance on me and offer me my first Equity contract as a PSM. I’ve been doing the D.C. thing ever since and even get to pick up an NYC project once a year or so.”

In 1984, Mintz first observed Susie Cordon backstage when she was the production stage manager for Noises Off on Broadway. Fast forward to 1991, when Cordon brought her in to be the rehearsal stage manager for Artistic Director Emily Mann’s production of The Three Sisters [McCarter Theater, Princeton, New Jersey]. “She remembered me, and seven years later that networking paid off. A perfect example of ‘you never know where you might get a job from.’ The McCarter was having a challenging time mounting its then-new production of A Christmas Carol, and Susie had to focus her energies upstairs, thus bringing me in for the next production that was in rehearsal. I was 29 years old, and Susie was an impeccable role model. There were few first-class female production stage managers in the ’80s and early ’90s, and Susie was one of them.” Mintz has since built a deep collaborative relationship with Mann, having done 31 productions together at McCarter and the Kennedy Center and on Broadway.

While Villanueva also believes networking is a key tool for success in this business, when it comes to job searching, she uses Equity’s Casting Call and other resources, even when she has a job. “I’m grateful that in the last year or so, I’m starting to get directors or companies to ask for me.” She also offers advice to those who may be just starting on this path: “Be flexible and be nice. Anyone can learn to be organized or do the paperwork or call a show with enough practice. The hardest thing will be being gracious and efficient, even when you’re being treated badly. You help set the tone for the whole production, and if you can keep a lightness and kindness to you, I believe the show ends up being a healthier place for everyone.”

The success of her staff is something Mintz takes great pride in, “and the 40 interns that have passed through the McCarter Stage Management Internship inspire me to no end. Last year, during my 25th season, I decided to step back and evaluate what my interns don’t learn while at McCarter. I contacted two dozen past interns asking that question. Out of that feedback I have created some master classes, which I conduct with the current interns, such as Opera Stage Management Boot Camp, and the Business of the Business. I definitely have my systems for doing things, but the interns shake things up, and keep me fresh and constantly re-evaluating things.”

For Villanueva, the “post show glow” is her favorite part of being a stage manager. “When everyone knows it came off great and the audience loved it or were moved, it feels like a job well done. I also enjoy tech more than most, I think. Unless there’s a crazy hurdle, I feel like it’s the time when I actually learn to do my job on the show instead of just supporting the learning of everyone else.”

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GET ME TO THE STAGE ON TIME

The road to the Tony Awards as told by stage managers

Councillor and stage manager Marjorie Horne sat down with three Equity stage managers—Peter Hanson, Bess Marie and Michael Passaro—to talk about getting their casts and productions ready for the Tony Awards.

Marjorie Horne: What are your experiences from the time nominations are announced to getting into the theater for that week?

Peter Hanson: It’s complicated if your show opens late in the season. You barely get a chance to catch your breath— you’re trying to think about understudy rehearsal, bringing the swings up to speed—and you’re immediately having to figure out your number for the Tony Awards, rehearse it, show it to the Tony producers, and all those things that happen in the run-up.

Bess Marie: What’s unfortunate is the performers are running on empty, especially those who are nominated. It’s also difficult when you have stars in your show who are not nominated, or when your show doesn’t get any nominations and you’re asked to perform.

Michael Passaro: When we did How to Succeed [in Business Without Really Trying; 2011 Best Revival of a Musical nominee] and Dan [Radcliffe] wasn’t nominated for Best Actor in a Musical, everyone was tiptoeing around this. To his credit, he pulled the company together and said, “Listen, I’m so proud of the show and what we’ve all done here. We should celebrate the fact that John Laroquette [Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical winner] and Tammy Blanchard [Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical nominee] and the show and all these things are nominated. Don’t worry about me. I know the people are coming to see this show because of the movies I’ve been in, and if I can have one person develop a lifetime of theatregoing because they came to see us in this show, then my job is done.” That was the greatest thing to turn that whole situation around because it can be so fraught with pressure and jealousy.

Horne: What’s your relationship to the creatives in building the number for the awards show?

Passaro: With Bright Star [2016 Best Musical nominee], once the producers decided to do the opening number, we had to determine how many of the cast we’d bring; would we include the swings, were we bringing all the musicians or just the ones that were visible in the house? Were they going to bring the scenic unit from the theater, were they going to build a separate one or bring a modified one?

Hanson: To take an eight-minute-long number and reduce it to three and a half minutes means work for the creatives, the musical team and the choreographer before we even show it to the actors. You have a number in your bones that you’ve been doing for a couple months, and now we’re asking you to do a surgical snip here in musical time and then go to this 15 bars and then go to this, and it gets complicated. When the producers of the Tonys are out in the house with their video cameras, you want them to look good.

Marie: There’s nothing like it.

Passaro: Particularly at the dress rehearsal, you get to see a lot of people you haven’t seen in a while. It’s a small industry, but we all have our shows and we all have our lives—we don’t ever see each other that much. It’s a wacky day, and many of my most cherished memories of doing Tony Awards are the morning rehearsals.

Hanson: One of my great memories from Evita [2012 Best Revival of a Musical nominee] was that we were coming on stage, and as we headed up with Elena Roger in front, coming off stage was Patti LuPone, who originated the role of Evita. Those two women jumped into each other’s arms and had this incredible introduction to each other. [NB: There seems to be some error here: Michael Passaro stage-managed the 2012 revival of Evita. ~Rick]

Marie: It’s fun, too, when they do the backstage stuff. During Once [2012 Best Musical winner], they wanted to do outtakes when going to commercial break, so they were showing some of my cast members warming up, and I just happened to be there because Cristin Milioti [2012 Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical nominee] needed her spray for her throat. I was there giving Ricola out, and next thing I know my phone is blowing up in the middle of the night with, “Oh my God, oh my God, you were just on TV!”

Passaro: I became interested in theatre because of the Tony Awards, in the days when the only Broadway we got to see in upstate New York was the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Tony Awards. My mother was watching television one Sunday night the year that A Chorus Line [1976 Best Musical winner; 2007 Best Revival of a Musical nominee] opened the awards with that incredible number, and I said, “I want to do that.” To be able to participate at this level is such a thrill and an honor, I can’t even describe it.