As you can probably guess, I was the stage manager for The Brother’s Grimm Spectaculathon, in the Black Box Theatre. It was the first time I had been in charge, with a crew of 5, and a cast of… much more. On top of that, Brother’s Grimm was sheer madness! It was a tangle of interwoven fairy tales, characters popping back in and out of the play. Wrapping my brain around the script took a few rehearsals, but within the first few days, I had it down. To some degree…
Now, while stage managing can be quite a daunting position to take, (believe me, I was worried if I could manage all the responsibility) it is definitely worth it. Everyone is friendly and understanding, cast and crew alike. And, for me, at least, the actual show was the most relaxed part. At least then, as long as nothing goes wrong, you’re running down a script and simply have to pay attention to get the timing correct. Before the show was a different story… It is your role to count down the time till the doors open and till the shows start for everyone. Every time a walked the rounds of the backstage area, I got more and more nervous. A bit of stage fright, I guess, because everyone can see if the cues are off. Of course, hearing all the actors respond with “Thank you!” upon hearing the time left is a bit helpful for that.
I honestly didn’t know what to expect with this position. Well, I expected to completely panic and collapse due to the pressure, but that was a bit of an extreme possibility. But I truly enjoyed it. Partly because I liked the people involved, and partly because I proved to myself that I could actually do what was, in my mind, the most difficult position in TEC.
So go out and sign up for stage manager, if you want a rewarding, if challenging, position. There is nothing quite like it.
by Michael Kloc on Wednesday April 20, 2011
by Maggie Martino on Tuesday April 12, 2011
The most commonly desired position in TEC is the Stage Manager. A lot of people tend to think it’s the toughest job to get because you have to know everything. This could not be further from the truth. While a big chunk of knowledge about technical theater is definitely useful, what makes stage managing tough is the huge amount of responsibility you’re given. As Stage Manager, you’re required to be an example to every one of your crewmembers. You’re required to work as hard as you can to put on the best show possible. You’re required to be unafraid of the challenges you’ll face. But most importantly, you’re required to do your best.
One of the biggest challenges I face as a stage manager is stepping out of my comfort zone. I’m not a shouty person—my voice doesn’t carry and I don’t’ like when people yell at me—so when I learned on my first show that I would have to call times to the actors for their places (30 minutes till places, 15 minutes till places, etc.) I was a little apprehensive about it. The first time I did it was actually kind of funny—about four people actually heard me. I quickly realized that if I wanted these actors to respect me, I’d have to get over my hesitation to yell and be a lot louder.
Another way I’ve been required to step out of my comfort zone is keeping my crewmembers accountable for their responsibilities. If I had a crewmember who was late to rehearsal or neglected to do their job, it was my responsibility to handle it maturely and professionally. Pointing out what someone is doing wrong has never been a favorite thing of mine, so having to do that was tough for me to do.
Another challenge of mine as Stage Manager is responsibility. As just a crewmember, I’m very used to relying on other people to answer my questions and handle big problems. But when you’re the Stage Manager, you have to be the one everyone else relies on. You are the one people go to for questions, decisions, and opinions. Just about everything is up to you. This may seem really daunting (and believe me, it is), but to me, that’s one of the most rewarding parts of stage managing. When you’re faced with a terrifying situation, you face your fears and take on the challenge, and chances are good that you’ll come out with victory.
With stage managing comes massive amounts of pressure. Countless people are relying on you to do everything right and to put on the best show possible (at least that’s how it feels). All that pressure can be tough to handle, but it’s all worth it when you have an awesome crew supporting you through it all. All three of my crews, from Once Upon A Time to Spring Revue 2010 to The Government Inspector, were great groups of people who all gave me oodles of support and appreciation for the job I did.
The pressure can also make one tiny mistake seem like the end of the world. What I’ve realized is that you can’t expect yourself to be perfect, you just have to expect yourself to do your best. As backwards as this may seem, stage managing is actually a very humbling job, despite the power you’re given. You’re forced to accept the fact that the best you can do is the best you can do, and that’s all you can do about it. It’s also a very challenging job, because it requires you to find out just how good your best can be.
While Stage Manager is a job that comes with huge amounts of responsibility and stress, it’s one of the most rewarding and fun jobs I’ve ever had the chance to do. I’ve learned so much from the three shows I’ve stage managed, as well as from SM’s from other shows. I’ve gained so much more respect for tech theater, because I’ve seen first-hand just how tough it can be. I would encourage everyone to try stage managing at least once in your life, no matter how big or small the show. It’s an incredible experience, and it’s certainly one that you won’t regret.
One of the biggest challenges I face as a stage manager is stepping out of my comfort zone. I’m not a shouty person—my voice doesn’t carry and I don’t’ like when people yell at me—so when I learned on my first show that I would have to call times to the actors for their places (30 minutes till places, 15 minutes till places, etc.) I was a little apprehensive about it. The first time I did it was actually kind of funny—about four people actually heard me. I quickly realized that if I wanted these actors to respect me, I’d have to get over my hesitation to yell and be a lot louder.
Another way I’ve been required to step out of my comfort zone is keeping my crewmembers accountable for their responsibilities. If I had a crewmember who was late to rehearsal or neglected to do their job, it was my responsibility to handle it maturely and professionally. Pointing out what someone is doing wrong has never been a favorite thing of mine, so having to do that was tough for me to do.
Another challenge of mine as Stage Manager is responsibility. As just a crewmember, I’m very used to relying on other people to answer my questions and handle big problems. But when you’re the Stage Manager, you have to be the one everyone else relies on. You are the one people go to for questions, decisions, and opinions. Just about everything is up to you. This may seem really daunting (and believe me, it is), but to me, that’s one of the most rewarding parts of stage managing. When you’re faced with a terrifying situation, you face your fears and take on the challenge, and chances are good that you’ll come out with victory.
With stage managing comes massive amounts of pressure. Countless people are relying on you to do everything right and to put on the best show possible (at least that’s how it feels). All that pressure can be tough to handle, but it’s all worth it when you have an awesome crew supporting you through it all. All three of my crews, from Once Upon A Time to Spring Revue 2010 to The Government Inspector, were great groups of people who all gave me oodles of support and appreciation for the job I did.
The pressure can also make one tiny mistake seem like the end of the world. What I’ve realized is that you can’t expect yourself to be perfect, you just have to expect yourself to do your best. As backwards as this may seem, stage managing is actually a very humbling job, despite the power you’re given. You’re forced to accept the fact that the best you can do is the best you can do, and that’s all you can do about it. It’s also a very challenging job, because it requires you to find out just how good your best can be.
While Stage Manager is a job that comes with huge amounts of responsibility and stress, it’s one of the most rewarding and fun jobs I’ve ever had the chance to do. I’ve learned so much from the three shows I’ve stage managed, as well as from SM’s from other shows. I’ve gained so much more respect for tech theater, because I’ve seen first-hand just how tough it can be. I would encourage everyone to try stage managing at least once in your life, no matter how big or small the show. It’s an incredible experience, and it’s certainly one that you won’t regret.
by Travis Favaron on Tuesday March 01, 2011
There was a purpose originally given to the past president interviews currently on this website. That purpose was to give perspective on what TEC had done for the presidents that had loyally served it. Seeing as my interview was done while I was still in high school I could only guess at what I had learned. Now that I am nearing the end of my freshman year in college, I have gained even more perspective.
I walked down the halls of Westlake High School for the first time just like every other 14-year-old freshman. I had gone through middle school thinking that I knew everything I would need to know, felt as if I was on the top. Then I got to Westlake and realized that reality was very different. I found myself suddenly in a place where getting ‘lost in the shuffle’ wasn’t an uncommon thing. Luckily for me there was something that separated me from the rest of my class.
I was already involved with something, that something was the Technical Entertainment Crew. At the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, nor do I wish that I did (for fear that I would have shied away). TEC for the longest time has been somewhat for the ‘lost kids’, not meant to be demeaning in anyway but really to show that we tend to be the ones with nowhere else to belong. Looking back, I am stunned at the different kinds of people that we got to work together in my 4 years in TEC. There were basketball players, football players, baseball players, dancers, musicians, computer geeks, lacrosse players, and even a volunteer fireman. Despite all of that, we had this common love of spectacle. We wanted to put on the biggest, baddest show that had ever been seen.
You could say that TEC shaped me because I learned skills like lighting, sound, video, photography, etc. but I would tell you that you would only be scratching the surface. The things I really appreciated getting out of TEC were not tangible skills. I learned leadership, camaraderie, teamwork, respect and responsibility. Everything I learned outside of the classroom and in the theatre or TEC office could be summed up with those words.
From the beginning of my high school career I was pushed out of my comfort zone by David Poole and essentially kept out of it until I graduated. That was an extremely important reason why I grew the way I did. Being an officer all 4 years and TEC president for the last 2. I had to learn to adapt quickly. Going through all of the events, teambuilding, hardship, and celebration I gained a fair amount of confidence in myself. Learning the ability to believe in yourself and your own abilities to go on and accomplish great things.
Since getting to TCU, I have done what every college kid does, nap, eat, and make friends. I was able to take the confidence and camaraderie skills I learned while at Westlake and apply them in a whole new setting. Making friends would have been much harder had it not been for what I had gained from TEC. After TEC I also found handling my class workload to be fairly easy, (the lack of 11pm crew calls had to help). Plus this spring I started an internship with a company down in Austin doing some marketing work. Now sure some of these could have been possible without TEC, but definitely not as easy.
I have found that there are very few skills I learned while in TEC that haven’t transferred to college. Of course I will rarely if ever need to program intelligent lights to do a left to right chase on a Road Hog Full Boar, but I will always need the ability to bring a group together and make something special. For that I hope that everyone who is in or will be in TEC will get as much out of it as I did. I hope that the organization continues to flourish so that it will always be there to transform lives and bring in shy freshman and send out strong leaders.
If you haven’t seen the video shot between Boyd Stepan, and myself, see what he and I had to say about TEC last year.
I walked down the halls of Westlake High School for the first time just like every other 14-year-old freshman. I had gone through middle school thinking that I knew everything I would need to know, felt as if I was on the top. Then I got to Westlake and realized that reality was very different. I found myself suddenly in a place where getting ‘lost in the shuffle’ wasn’t an uncommon thing. Luckily for me there was something that separated me from the rest of my class.
I was already involved with something, that something was the Technical Entertainment Crew. At the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, nor do I wish that I did (for fear that I would have shied away). TEC for the longest time has been somewhat for the ‘lost kids’, not meant to be demeaning in anyway but really to show that we tend to be the ones with nowhere else to belong. Looking back, I am stunned at the different kinds of people that we got to work together in my 4 years in TEC. There were basketball players, football players, baseball players, dancers, musicians, computer geeks, lacrosse players, and even a volunteer fireman. Despite all of that, we had this common love of spectacle. We wanted to put on the biggest, baddest show that had ever been seen.
You could say that TEC shaped me because I learned skills like lighting, sound, video, photography, etc. but I would tell you that you would only be scratching the surface. The things I really appreciated getting out of TEC were not tangible skills. I learned leadership, camaraderie, teamwork, respect and responsibility. Everything I learned outside of the classroom and in the theatre or TEC office could be summed up with those words.
From the beginning of my high school career I was pushed out of my comfort zone by David Poole and essentially kept out of it until I graduated. That was an extremely important reason why I grew the way I did. Being an officer all 4 years and TEC president for the last 2. I had to learn to adapt quickly. Going through all of the events, teambuilding, hardship, and celebration I gained a fair amount of confidence in myself. Learning the ability to believe in yourself and your own abilities to go on and accomplish great things.
Since getting to TCU, I have done what every college kid does, nap, eat, and make friends. I was able to take the confidence and camaraderie skills I learned while at Westlake and apply them in a whole new setting. Making friends would have been much harder had it not been for what I had gained from TEC. After TEC I also found handling my class workload to be fairly easy, (the lack of 11pm crew calls had to help). Plus this spring I started an internship with a company down in Austin doing some marketing work. Now sure some of these could have been possible without TEC, but definitely not as easy.
I have found that there are very few skills I learned while in TEC that haven’t transferred to college. Of course I will rarely if ever need to program intelligent lights to do a left to right chase on a Road Hog Full Boar, but I will always need the ability to bring a group together and make something special. For that I hope that everyone who is in or will be in TEC will get as much out of it as I did. I hope that the organization continues to flourish so that it will always be there to transform lives and bring in shy freshman and send out strong leaders.
If you haven’t seen the video shot between Boyd Stepan, and myself, see what he and I had to say about TEC last year.
by Jesse Anderson on Wednesday December 01, 2010
The Westlake Technical Entertainment Crew has been honored by Stage Directions magazine in their “High School Theatre Honors Roll Call.” Click here to read the article on TEC and the other four honored programs, and to discover why TEC was selected as the best high school program in the southwest!
by Julie Maury on Wednesday December 02, 2009
Stage managing, the most stress, yet most fun you will ever have…
Stage managing a show, whether an amazing Black Box show, a breath-taking PAC show, or simply a good choir concert, is a lot of power. And as my favorite superhero Spiderman once said “With great power comes great responsibility.” Being a stage manager is unlike any other position on the crew because you must not only lead everyone else but you must be your own leader. You must embrace the fact that you have the power to answer your own questions as well as those of your fellow comrades. TEC, being an organization completely run by students, enables you as stage manager to make the decisions that need making. Of course Mrs. White, Mr. Bernstein, Mr. Strange, and Mr. Poole are always available to answer any questions and help you make these decisions, but taking it upon yourself to find the answer brings a whole new world of accomplishment into view. Now, as rewarding as this accomplishment may be, there’s also a somewhat of a scary side to it. What if I make the wrong decision? Am I doing this right? Is this good enough? When these inevitable questions pop into your mind, you can’t help but feel nervous about being so accountable. But don’t worry, I have the solution! A quote from another one of my heroes, Mrs. White. This came about on the wonderful day of my first night working as stage crew for the Holiday Spectacular. Now considering how the PAC was under construction at the time, this show took place in the PE Gym, and under these special circumstances, everyone in the audience, only 10 feet away from the stage, was able to hear the loud crushing of two huge Christmas presents crashing together. Who’s fault? Mine. Getting a little apprehensive I managed to smash my box, as well as the dancer inside of it into the one in front of mine, and to my great embarrassment, everyone saw. As we finished the scene change and ran off stage, I couldn't help but freak out, but Mrs. White was there to help me out with her wonderful words of wisdom. She told me that the reason she loved theatre so much was because whatever happens happens, it’s a live performance, there is no turning back, so all you can do is make the best of it, and if you mess up, oh well! Just do your best and that’s all that really matters!
Stage managing a show, whether an amazing Black Box show, a breath-taking PAC show, or simply a good choir concert, is a lot of power. And as my favorite superhero Spiderman once said “With great power comes great responsibility.” Being a stage manager is unlike any other position on the crew because you must not only lead everyone else but you must be your own leader. You must embrace the fact that you have the power to answer your own questions as well as those of your fellow comrades. TEC, being an organization completely run by students, enables you as stage manager to make the decisions that need making. Of course Mrs. White, Mr. Bernstein, Mr. Strange, and Mr. Poole are always available to answer any questions and help you make these decisions, but taking it upon yourself to find the answer brings a whole new world of accomplishment into view. Now, as rewarding as this accomplishment may be, there’s also a somewhat of a scary side to it. What if I make the wrong decision? Am I doing this right? Is this good enough? When these inevitable questions pop into your mind, you can’t help but feel nervous about being so accountable. But don’t worry, I have the solution! A quote from another one of my heroes, Mrs. White. This came about on the wonderful day of my first night working as stage crew for the Holiday Spectacular. Now considering how the PAC was under construction at the time, this show took place in the PE Gym, and under these special circumstances, everyone in the audience, only 10 feet away from the stage, was able to hear the loud crushing of two huge Christmas presents crashing together. Who’s fault? Mine. Getting a little apprehensive I managed to smash my box, as well as the dancer inside of it into the one in front of mine, and to my great embarrassment, everyone saw. As we finished the scene change and ran off stage, I couldn't help but freak out, but Mrs. White was there to help me out with her wonderful words of wisdom. She told me that the reason she loved theatre so much was because whatever happens happens, it’s a live performance, there is no turning back, so all you can do is make the best of it, and if you mess up, oh well! Just do your best and that’s all that really matters!
Now with that said, it’s time I tell you a little more specifically about stage managing Midsummer Night’s Dream. If you are aspiring to be a stage manager, the Black Box is the best place to start! Working in a smaller theatre and a smaller crew may be a better idea than going straight to Zenith. On my crew, specifically, I worked with seven other people, and it was an absolute blast! After spending a week nonstop with them, I got to know them really well, as a group, as well as individually and even got to make up an awesome handshake with each of them! One of my favorite parts of TEC is the fact that it’s just like a family! But instead of the occasional fighting that you may do with your brother and sister, it is replaced by a very high sense of respect for those who you are working with. Knowing that no matter your position on the crew, all of them are important for the show to run smoothly and that therefore you must respect those in positions above and below you. Another one of my favorite parts about stage managing is the interaction you get with the cast (actors/actresses)! In the Black Box, it is the stage manager’s job to call times. One hour till places! Thirty minutes till places! Fifteen minutes till places! Five minutes till places! One minute till places! PLACES!!! The sweetest part is getting to hear their unified response…”THANKYOU!” Here again you witness the respect shared within all of theatre, whether it be between the crew itself, or between the cast and crew, it is crucial for a good show, as well as for forming those tightly knit bonds with friends that you will cherish and keep throughout the rest of your high school experience.
Stage managing was an eye-opening experience that I will never forget, and although I was nervous to take the initiative and sign up, I’m sure glad I did because it taught me a lot and brought me a whole new appreciation for theatre tech. So if you’re hesitant, don’t be, take a chance, try it, you will love it, I promise!
-- your fellow techie
Julie Maury
Stage managing was an eye-opening experience that I will never forget, and although I was nervous to take the initiative and sign up, I’m sure glad I did because it taught me a lot and brought me a whole new appreciation for theatre tech. So if you’re hesitant, don’t be, take a chance, try it, you will love it, I promise!
-- your fellow techie
Julie Maury