The Secret Life of a Stage Manager by / Jean Schiffman

At 6:45 p.m. I arrive at an upstairs office at Berkeley Rep, where stage manager Cynthia Cahill, known as Cyd, is having a quick meal. Soon she’ll be up in the booth at the Roda running the Molière comedy “A Doctor in Spite of Himself.”

I am here to shadow Cyd. I figure this is the best way to learn what stage managers do—or anyway, what this SM does. Besides, it’ll be fun to see the show again, from a different vantage point.

Cyd is low-key, slender, with long blonde hair, wearing all black. A freelancer, she’s been an Equity SM since 1998, working one to three shows a season here at Berkeley Rep and the rest of the time elsewhere around the country, totaling three or four shows a season.

7 p.m. Off to the booth for Cyd’s first call: “One hour, please. One hour.” To our left the light board operator is training a substitute. At this point Cyd might normally answer email or do scheduling stuff. “Ninety percent of my job is communication,” she says. Or something might need special attention, like the fog machine might be on the fritz. I’m secretly hoping something will go wrong tonight so I can see what she does. But she says this is a fairly easy show—not a huge cast, no flying actors or flying scenery.

SMs not only call the cues during the performances but also manage rehearsals. Beyond that, the SM’s duties vary depending on the theatre’s size and structure. “Some theatres have a really strong production manager who takes care of a lot of issues,” says David A. Young, who lives in Petaluma and stage manages Word for Word’s shows and others. “Sometimes the production manager does things I’d expect to do myself, like schedule rehearsals and production meetings. Sometimes I have to say, ‘No, the stage manager doesn’t do that’—like, for instance, distribute payroll.”

Dave has been an Equity stage manager for more than 25 years, starting as an actor before switching. Today, younger SMs often come out of training programs such as ACT’s mentorship program.

Cyd majored in directing at SF State and is now starting to do some directing around the country. Like many other SMs who aspire to acting, directing or other theatre roles, she feels she needs to prove herself out of town before she’s recognized here.

7:15. Song call onstage. This happens before every performance of this particular show. We go to the stage. One actor is late for the call. So is one of the two band members. “Where’s Greg?” asks Cyd. “Washing out his tuba.” “Oh Lord, why now?”

We walk out front to watch. “I love these song calls,” says Cyd—this is a perfect time, with the cast all together, for her to give notes, rather than individually after the show. (Among an SM’s responsibilities: to give notes to the actors and crew, making sure the integrity of the show is maintained according to the original direction.) But the cast had a special music rehearsal earlier today—two understudies are being transitioned into the show as replacements for two cast members who are leaving—so no notes need be given now. Cyd runs understudy rehearsals once a week.

At smaller theatres, the SM may not just call the show but also operate the boards. Stephanie Alyson Henderson, currently stage managing a show at Cutting Ball, has often operated boards as part of her job, sometimes both boards simultaneously. She sometimes checks props herself, but usually the assistant stage manager does that, after which Stephanie rechecks them. She also covers things like last-minute costume fixes if the designer is unavailable, replaces light bulbs and, of course, makes sure the actors are okay.

Stephanie graduated from UC Berkeley in 2010 in theatre and performance studies; she took a production management course there and also stage managed. Her first SM gig after that was at Altarena Playhouse in Alameda, and she expects to eventually join Equity—but not too soon, as Equity houses won’t hire you without sufficient experience, and there are fewer union jobs than nonunion jobs.

For example, the Magic Theatre produces five shows a year and vies for the same seven or eight go-to Equity SMs that are also in demand at larger theatres like ACT or Berkeley Rep. “We also try to pull from the ACT stage manager mentorship program,” says Magic production manager Sara Huddleston. She gets about a half-dozen unsolicited resumes a year. She has also gone to the Marin Theatre Company–sponsored “speed dating” event, a sort of job fair for Equity and non-Equity SMs, and saw at least 40 applicants there (mostly women, Caucasian, well under age 40), at varied levels of experience. In general, she reaches out to new hires through word-of-mouth recommendations. “Some stage managers are great in the rehearsal room, some are great in tech, some are great on everything,” she notes.

7:28. Back to the booth to call half-hour. The ASM checks the stage and signals Cyd when she’s done. “I don’t have to micromanage when the assistant stage manager is reliable,” Cyd says, as she cues the house manager, who’s on a walkie-talkie, to open the house. We have to be quiet here; the glass isn’t soundproof.

Cyd predicts tonight’s show will be a little shakier than tomorrow’s. “Tuesday is hard for any show, especially a comedy like this,” she says. “That one day off will affect physical memory.”

Now off to the green room to check the call sheet. Recently an actor forgot a 7 p.m. curtain time. Cyd has a naturally calm demeanor and knew he probably wasn’t dead and would show up by 7:15. But should she hold the curtain, or what? She called general manager Karen Racanelli for advice, but the actor luckily appeared at 6:45.

We hang out briefly in the green room with the crew, who are engaged in a lively discussion about bacon-flavored chocolate. A silent monitor shows the stage. Two wigs sit on pedestals on the central table.

Back in the booth, Cyd calls 15 minutes, then 5 minutes. She has her headphones on and also has binoculars nearby. “You have to judge when to call places,” she explains. “You don’t want the actors waiting in places too long.” You have to time it with the house manager and the preshow music. An acute sense of timing seems to be a big part of the job of calling cues. The biggest trick, says Cyd, is the anticipation factor—you have to account for the board operator’s reaction time, and that varies from operator to operator. And the operators need to be consistent in that regard, too; you have to get a coordinated rhythm going.

“This is the fun part of the job, watching people coming into the balcony,” observes Cyd. We discuss audience members’ hairdos as seen from above.

Now Cyd is issuing orders so fast I can’t keep up with my notes: “Lights 20. Go. Places, please. Have a great show, everyone.” One latenik actor sometimes has to be paged separately, but not tonight.

“Lights 50. Sound 75. Go. Cue the band please...Door slam. Go.” The cues are sequential, with no number repeated. This show begins with light cue 100 and has only a few sound cues.

Cyd encourages me to ask her questions even while she’s got one eye on the prompt book, another on the stage. She’s both relaxed and focused and says she’s usually nervous only at previews and opening nights.

I ask her if there are misperceptions within the field about the role of the SM. “There’s an idea we’re not creative individuals on our own, just paper pushers who can create schedules and make an Excel document,” she says. “That we’re limited, or that we’re like accountants.” But on the job, SMs are part mother confessor, part psychotherapist. Highly organized and detail-oriented, they need to communicate well with all different groups of theatre artists—directors, actors, designers, technicians—and varied personality types. “The misconception,” she continues, “is that we don’t have much to do with the overall show. But I think the SM is one of the most influential roles in the company—you can create harmony or dissension easily by your own actions.”

What is the ideal SM personality type? Someone who can get people to do things without bullying or condescending. Can insinuate herself into many different groups, some of whom may have been together for a long time. Doesn’t panic. Is clear about the tasks at hand. Stays focused, is not flaky. “You’re dealing with a roomful of artists,” Cyd points out. Artists can be sensitive. Organizing them can be like herding cats. The SM is the only person they can talk to, during the run, about what’s working and what’s not. You have to be approachable yet authoritative; you have to command respect at all times; keep rehearsals moving without being a bossy killjoy; make everyone feel taken care of.

“You need patience,” offers Dave, “and a perfect blend of attention to detail and ability [to delegate].” He figures he has a natural tendency to put up with a lot of crap, but says, “You can’t be rolled over, either.”

Says Stephanie, “I like to have quiet control. I try to seem calm, but it’s not part of my personality makeup. I take a moment, then process, then speak, then act. It shows calm to everyone else, and that’s what’s important.”

When she was stage managing the tech-heavy “Sticky Time” for Crowded Fire, Stephanie’s computer crashed twice, which brought the show to a 10-minute halt each time. But she’d written a just-in-case script ahead of time, even though there’d been no problems during rehearsal, and so was able to make a calm announcement to the audience.

“The biggest thing,” says Cyd, “is you have to be in the moment. The show goes on. You worry about it later.”

For SMs, more problematic than technical disasters are interpersonal difficulties. Dave has worked with directors who disrespected actors and staff, and he’s had to talk to the producer about it. Cyd says that bad experiences come not from complicated shows but from unpleasant directors who treat actors and crew badly, don’t know what they’re doing with the play or don’t know how to manage their (and thus everybody’s else’s) time.

As for actors, Cyd sees a direct correlation between talent and graciousness. An asshole with an ego is usually not as good an actor as he or she thinks. Whether the show is good or bad is not of crucial importance to an SM: “It’s easier to get through a mediocre show with a good company than a great show with unpleasant actors,” Cyd says, adding that some actors are nice to other actors but not to the production assistant or crew. Most are nice to the SM, though, who is in a clear position of authority.

8:45. Cyd yawns, but she says she doesn’t get bored in a show like this with very little down time. “I genuinely love theatre and love watching actors. But in shows with maybe two light cues in half an hour, a long, slow drama—that’s going to be a little boring after a while.”

9:30. Cyd cues the house manager to be prepared for the audience talkback after the show. We’re up to cue number 759 now.

9:40. The show ends. Cyd announces, “Good show,” and gives information on the next understudy rehearsal and tomorrow’s call time.

We go to the green room. Cyd disappears into the men’s and women’s separate dressing rooms to give notes, stopping to advise the wigmaster, who’s in the green room fitting one of the replacement actors for a wig.

Cyd always prepares a complete set of notes by the next day—house, tech and director’s notes—which are printed and distributed as needed. Under house notes, she might mention where the laughs came that night. For tech, tonight she’ll note that the curtain rose a little too slowly at a certain place. The director’s notes keep the absent director posted on what happened during the show—for example, one note mentioned to the director that an actor altered a line, and that it got a laugh.

“It was a pretty good show tonight,” she tells me. It seemed perfect to me. As I leave, she’s gone back to discussing the wig.


Jean Schiffman is an arts writer based in San Francisco.