The Stage Manager's Toolkit

CHAPTER 1

Avenues of Communication

Early in my teaching career, I asked a group of students to identify the images that to them best represented a stage manager. Responses included a headset, an unending pile of paper, a roll of spike tape, and a stopwatch. All of these objects symbolize information with which the stage manager interacts and items through which he or she communicates.

But this list also demonstrates a second truth: communication is not limited to a single method. The stage manager receives information through a variety of channels and employs multiple techniques to share those details. One of our most important jobs is to combine many facts into a single point of information—what the scenic design drawings tell you about the ...