by Katrina
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If there is any art form that completely exemplifies the idea of material culture, it's theater. Theater is a profoundly human art -- and by that I mean a physically human art. It's about bodies. Human bodies with all their mess and imperfection. Spit and sweat and, yes, tears and blood. And though we tend to associate all this physicality primarily with actors, no theatrical artists are more immediately aware of the physical demands of creating theater than the members of the backstage crew. Our first post, then, gives us a glimpse into the world of New York theater from the perspective of a professional stage manager, who had this to say of herself:
"Katrina hails from western central Illinois. After attending the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, and surviving the jungles of BC Calculus, she decided theater was the career for her, and went on to become a stage manager. She is now the assistant stage manager on Kin
at Playwrights Horizons. Her life experiences include (in no particular order): a sleepless night in Australia due to a snoring brother, walking all over Paris looking for a crepe place simply to find a stand on the street by her hostel, watching the penguin parade at the Edinburgh zoo, reading Harry Potter
7 in less than a day, running up and down hills in San Francisco in an attempt to get her van out of a locked parking facility, playing the oboe for 6 years, and dissecting a cat named Maleficent in Human A&P."
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Theater conveys emotions and ideas through images. It is a spoken, visual medium. In that way, it mirrors my job. A stage manager doesn’t do anything. I can’t point to something onstage and say “I did that.” I convey knowledge, double-check, communicate. I never see the final product because I’m backstage, listening, counting people and items, communicating in whispers and facial expressions.
6:03pm – I arrive at the theater. I drop my coat off, turn on the computer, grab my “Beauty and the Beast” coffee mug, and head to the green room for some tea. I chitchat with the crew, all of whom are early, and then head back to the office to cruise Facebook. Er, I mean, do very important work.
6:30pm – Official crew call. I go to the green room, brief the crew on what needs to get done today (nothing new), and send them upstairs to test the mist and mop the stage. We test the mist before the show to A) make sure it works and B) get the stage wet without having to bring up the mop bucket. After misting, the crew gets out the squeegee – a vacuum that sucks up the water onstage. For future reference, do not skip down the hallway, punching into the air, humming “Eye of the Tiger,” while the actors are napping.
6:34pm – I go back to the office to chat and gossip with my stage manager. We look at cute pictures of wallabies and alpacas. What does this have to do with the show? Nothing at all.
6:50pm – I go upstairs and check to make sure spikes are still on the floor where they are supposed to be. There are 43 different sets of spikes on the floor. Checking them requires walking in circles looking at the floor and muttering to myself. It highly resembles acting like a crazy person.
7:00pm – Spikes are all in place, and I proceed to checking props and costume pieces.
7:10pm – I finish pre-show check. Today, this includes breaking the plastic sign-holder and sassing the house manager when he sasses me.
7:20pm – It is calming to lie on an empty, preset stage for the ten minutes before opening the house. Almost everything is done, and I am waiting for the house to open, breathing and thinking and listening.
7:25pm – My PSM and I check the cue-lights and do a blackout check. I hand the stage over to the stage manager who gives the theater to the house manager.
7:30pm – The house is now open, and I head to the office to change into blacks. I hate blacks. With a passion. Black socks are depressing and make me hate my life. Unfortunately, white socks look stupid with black pants and black shoes.
7:35pm – I hang out in the green room with the crew.
8:00pm – One of the actors enters the green room to wait for places. He and I have worked out a sign, so that he can always call places seconds before my SM calls it over the loudspeaker.
8:04pm – Places. I head up the spiral staircase, and as soon as everyone is lined up stage left, I let my SM know we’re set stage left. Stage left is always ready before stage right.
8:07pm – Scene 1 - I walk behind the wall, hidden from the audience. There is no backstage on this show. There is just onstage and offstage. There are two staircase entrances, stage left and stage right, and an elevator upstage center. There are two major set pieces: a frame and a wall. There is storage in the wall for a few props and costume pieces. Both wall and frame are on wheels and extremely heavy, requiring a strong push to get them moving. Two actors, two crew members, and myself stand behind the wall until the next transition.
The wall is cranky today; it is hard to move. This happens because tinsel from the Christmas Tree gets caught in the wheels. Fucking tinsel.
Scene 5 – This is the longest scene in the play. I stand behind the wall and do arm circles.
Scene 6 – The crew is so comfortable with the show that they lie on the ground and play with their phones. Even the cast has their phones out, just chilling “backstage.”
Scene 7 – One of the actors spritzes himself down during the scene, so he appears “sweaty” during the gym scene. There’s a look of beatific peace on his face as he spritzes away.
Scene 8 – There is a “Rock Your Body” dance party around the lift. Most of the show I stand like a bouncer at the edge of the lift, dressed in black, arms crossed. My headset and apron make me feel badass, but probably make me look like the person badass people beat up.
Scene 12 – A loud, rumbling noise comes from the back wall. It’s distracting and scary. I’ve heard it before, but it’s never predictable. I used to think it was the dumpsters being emptied, but today one of the cast tells me it’s dynamite from the construction work on the 7 subway line extension.
Scene 13 – It’s warmer than usual onstage, so one of the cast takes the spritzer bottle and spritzes her face to cool down. This leads to a whispered conversation about Vanessa Redgrave spritzing herself daily, and how she might be coming to see the show. One of the cast members and I play dots. Usually a game lasts 3-4 shows; I won the last round.
Kin is a quiet play. This is a problem when Christmas trees and treadmills and noisy office chairs need to be set. Or when crew members have coughing fits. Some of these things we can make better – different wheels on the office chair, perhaps. But some things, like coughing fits, happen. We can’t ban bacteria or scratchy throats from the theater.
Part of doing live theater is rolling with the punches. Some things can be dealt with during the show – spills onstage. Some things are after the show problems – stuck wheels on treadmills. Some things are both – the squeal on the lift pulley gets greased during the show, and then looked at before the next show during crew call. That’s why people like theater. Because it happens and you have to deal with it. The show goes on.
Scene 15 – This is my ninja hanging-off-the-stairs move. I hug the center pole of the spiral staircase, one foot on the stair, one foot hanging into space in order to let a cast member go past me on his way downstairs. Then I cue the wall, wait for the lights to go dark, grab the Christmas tree, wheel it over to the lift, and watch the Bear ride the lift to the stage. The best part of the whole show is watching the Bear sit in the trap room before her entrance, just sitting and waiting along with the other actor and two crew members. There’s a bear just chillin’. In the trap room. Like you do.
Scene 16 – It’s amazing the things you can get used to. There’s a bear. There’s a gun in the show. It goes off. And every day it’s “now’s the time to plug my ears because the gun is loud.” This is how the human race survives. Because no matter how weird or awful or great something is, we just get used to it. It becomes normal. And then we continue on with our days.
My crew is drawing on the inside of the wall with Sharpies. Graffiti is tolerated when your workplace is a theater, and the architecture changes every 4 months with the show.
Scene 17 – There are forest panels that get put on the front of the wall. They look like the forest of Endor as Luke and Leia race through on speeder bikes. There are circular fog vents that come out of the floor. When they pop up, they look like aliens and dispense fog so the stage ends up resembling Dagobah with Endor off to the side. The fog is a beautiful grey sea, slowly undulating as it spreads across the stage and wafts down the stairs. There is an air current upstage right that always twirls the fog into a slight hurricane. The sea is beautiful, unless you’ve read far too many sci-fi/fantasy novels and envision the ethereal fog covers a swampy bog filled with unknown dangers. Or the fog is the danger, a mist that creeps into your lungs and soul and takes your life without realizing it. And then you shudder and try not to think about the torments in your own mind.
At the end of the night, I know the frame and the wall and the treadmill and mist and fog and bear combined to say something big about the human experience through a combination of little moments.
