Behind the Scenes on Broadway: What a Stage Manager Really Does
How Much Can I Make? — Real Jobs. Real Stories. Career Insights
In this episode of 'How Much Can I Make?', host Merav Ozeri sits down with Billy, a seasoned Broadway stage manager with 30 years of experie
Key takeaways
- Stage managers are responsible for coordinating rehearsals, scheduling, technical cues, and ensuring all production elements run smoothly.
- The job requires constant vigilance during performances to handle emergencies like actor injuries, technical failures, or medical incidents in the audience.
Main topics
- Daily responsibilities of a Broadway stage manager
- Handling technical issues and emergencies during live performances
Notable quotes
"If it's a big show like Say Hello Dolly, which I did, the sets are mammoth and huge and very complex. You have to figure out how you're going to get from one scene to another and it can be incredibly complicated."
Conclusion
Billy's story reveals that stage management is a high-pressure, highly skilled profession essential to the
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:04) If it's a big show like Say Hello Dolly, which I did, the sets are mammoth and huge and very complex. You have to figure out how you're going to get from one scene to another and it can be incredibly complicated. Speaker 2 (0:20) Welcome back to How Much Can I Make, the podcast about jobs and careers. I'm your host, Merav Ozeri. Today we are with Billy, who has a very sexy job. He is a stage manager. Why are you laughing? It is, it sounds like very sexy. Thanks for, by the way, willing to share your experience with us. That's fantastic. Let's start by learning. How did you get into stage management? Speaker 1 (0:45) How I got into it non-professionally was I did theater in high school. I was attracted to it from seventh grade when I was in a production of The Sound of Music. I played one of the kids. I was hooked. In high school, in order to be in the productions, We had to work backstage. We had to work on Saturdays. We had something called work parties. And we would work on sets, costumes, props, putting the show together, mainly building the sets. And in that process of doing that and then being on stage, I developed this awareness of not only what it was like to be a performer, but what it took to create the stage. the lights and the props and the costumes and wigs and everything that it took behind the scenes. Was your Speaker 2 (1:39) dream to be a performer? Yes, Speaker 1 (1:41) yes. That was my dream to be a performer and to be a star on Broadway. Speaker 1 (1:48) a rock star. I wasn't picky. I just wanted to be a star. And so I went to school for music for one semester and then I switched to theater because I was a singer too. And in university settings, and first one was a state university and the second one was a private university, part of your requirement on When your performer is to work backstage and to work in the shops and learn how to not only build shows, but run shows, run lights, run follow spots, run. Carpentry cues on the deck. You learn all that in university settings. Sometimes it's very divided. In my case, the school I went to, which was State University of New York at Fredonia, everybody did everything, just like my high school. So it was just kind of like a carryover. And I would get on crews of shows, and I was performing in shows. But the thing that even... Always when I was performing, I was always aware that it wasn't just me up there with the audience and my fellow actors, that there was a whole infrastructure backstage that was kind of allowing us to be there. and for the show to be Speaker 2 (3:02) effective. And Speaker 1 (3:03) then I went to New York. I was waiting tables, doing kind of theater as a hobby. But I was in a lot of productions. They just didn't really pay me anything. And at a certain... You were in production as a performer or as Speaker 2 (3:16) a stage manager? Yeah, as a performer. Speaker 1 (3:17) And at a certain point, I started to get a little frustrated with the life of an actor. You're only as good as your last audition. You can be fabulous in a show, and everybody can love you. You can walk into it and... an audition and they may love you and then they'll say yeah but you're just not right for this show and I just got sick of hearing that so I was taking acting classes they were doing some readings and the director needed a stage manager for it and basically what he needed was to schedule people's availabilities around their work schedules. I did that for a couple shows and he was very impressed with my ability to do that. So what does a stage manager actually do? Well, what doesn't the stage manager do is probably a shorter answer. But basically you're running the show. You're making sure the rehearsals happen as scheduled that The director and the actors have what they need in the rehearsal to rehearse meeting. Do they have a floor plan of the set? Do they have props that they can handle? Do they have costume pieces that they may need? If they need a sword, you got to have a sword there. If they need a cup of tea, you got to, in the scene, you got to. make sure all that's there so they can rehearse in a bare-bones fashion. If it's a musical and they need piano and drums, you've got to make sure they're there. You need to make sure the rooms are ready and available for these rehearsals to happen. And then once the rehearsals happen, you keep them on schedule, you call the breaks, you make schedules for every day. And you not only rehearse in the room with the actors and the director, you're also talking to the designers. I need to have a costume fitting for this person for this role. When are they rehearsing tomorrow? I only have this window of time to use. I need to do shoe fittings. I need to do wig measurements. I need to do wig fittings. Any other kinds of things that may pull them out of the room. So the stage manager is scheduling all that stuff. And then making sure that the production is proceeding. on schedule so that you can get to the first performance. And before you get to the first performance, you move from a rehearsal studio, typically, onto the stage of the theater with a crew that hasn't been in rehearsal, most of them, and you start to put the cast on stage in their costumes, going scene by scene, working with the lighting designer and the sound designer to light, the show, do the sound cues, get the set on and off. If it's a big show like Say Hello Dolly, which I did, the sets are mammoth and huge and very complex. You Speaker 2 (6:12) have to figure out how Speaker 1 (6:13) you're going to get from one scene to another and it can be incredibly complicated. Who is overseeing you? You're working mainly as the right-hand person to the director. The director's relying on you to make sure that the rehearsals can Speaker 2 (6:31) happen and things stay Speaker 1 (6:34) on schedule. If it's a musical, then there's also a musical director who's teaching them music and then they have to learn all that. And then if there's a musical, there's usually a choreographer. So you've got to be rehearsing all these things in an eight-hour day in like, say, three different rooms and all things going separately and then coming together. things