Humor: Stage Managing the World

[missliz]

I don't know, as much as I enjoy my job, it's a real treat to NOT organize things. Every year, when my friends ask me what I want to do for my birthday, I say "not to run the show"- letting someone else plan is lovely (but sometimes hard for me to be passive!)

[rpicket6]

I am DEFINITELY in the SMing the world category.

I almost obsessively check my cell phone for the time, and each time I calculate what the end of a 10-minute break would be, as well as the 5-minute mark.

I was taking a science class once, where we had weekly quizzes. Each test was timed at 20 minutes. The professor sat in the front and announced, "10 minutes," "5  minutes," "3 minutes," and "1 minute," and it took all of the strength in my body to not respond enthusiastically with "Thank you, 10!"   All the strength.

I watch TV or movies--ESPECIALLY movie musicals, and I try to anticipate where cues might be, and thus when they would be called.

My one roommate is INCREDIBLY disorganized. When we leave in the morning for classes, I literally do a 'prop check' of her stuff. Do you have your purse? Your glasses? Your keys? Your tap shoes? Everything.

Also, I am DEFINITELY in the category of organized prompt book, messy everything else. In high school, my parents referred to my room as having a carpet of clothes. My car tends to pile up with empty water/soda bottles, empty fast food bags, textbooks and notebooks, and sometimes even shoes and clothing.

[dallas10086]

Can't say that I have either. The closest thing I come to it is when I'm putting on my white socks, my first thought is always, "They'll be able to see me in the dark." 

[centaura]

I don't know, as much as I enjoy my job, it's a real treat to NOT organize things. Every year, when my friends ask me what I want to do for my birthday, I say "not to run the show"- letting someone else plan is lovely (but sometimes hard for me to be passive!)

I would have a similar problem to this when I'd get home from tours.  On tour, I always ended up making most of the restaurant decisions, because no one wanted to make any suggestions.  So, when I came home the last thing that I wanted to do was to have to decided on a restaurant to eat at.  But, all my friends, and especially my mother, would try to force me to pick the restaurant that we'd eat at.  For my mother it was my coming home treat - she never ate out, so going to a restaurant was a treat for her, and I couldn't ever get it in her head that after eating in restaurants for 9 months straight, coming home and eating in a restaurant wasn't the top of my "treat" list.  For my friends, they were just in awe of how many restaurants I was familiar with.  Being forced to be the one deciding on the restaurant just made me feel like I was at work and not taking a break.

-Centaura

[BenTheStageMan]

I have a SM friend who does checklists and daily calls each day for herself.  She keeps these in a binder, which I guess is the prompt book for her life (I have not seen what else goes in this binder, just the daily checklist section).  I've been somewhat inspired by this, and I'm putting together a binder that has all the important information about my life in it (medical records, etc.).  I'm not good with checklists in my non-theatre life, but I like the idea of a prompt book for my life.

Edited to Add: The daily to-do list is referred to as her "Parade of Daily Adventures" and apparently is a Fly Lady concept.

[Tynumber5]

I've done the whole calling cues at traffic lights and calling when the salesperson is going to talk to a customer, but I've never really thought of it as calling cues before. (And not that I have I will.) It's always just been a fun way to guess what people are going to do or to try to get the timing of the light.

Just as a few other people are saying, I'm not at all organized in real life, but extremely organized in the theatre. However, even though my room is a mess, I still know where everything is; it's just on my floor or under my bed, not in the drawers that I have for it.

[jbode0781]

Whenever I'm going out with my family and my dad says "The car is leaving in 5 minutes!"  I automatically say "Thank you 5."  Then if I'm the one saying "we're leaving in 5 minutes" I get confused when I don't get a "thank you" reply.

Also whenever I'm meeting friends at a concert, movie, whatever, and they try to tell me where they are I have to say "so wait are you stage left or house left?"

[late_stranger]

I called traffic lights before I realized I was a stage manager. Now I know why...

I tend to make lots of to-do lists, but only when I'm working on a show. I also tend to take over when my family is trying to get out of the house on time. I'm slowly training them to follow orders. We've been improving.    I'm also the default announcer at parties. If it's too loud, the host will come to me, and I'll make sure that everyone hears. It's rarely worse than a dressing room full of actors.

[kbressman]

I don't know about calling traffic lights (although i did do a fake call to journey in my car once on a road trip with some light designers but that's another story) But I do have a fascination with office supplies. I remember my room mate and I going through a store and seeing a recycled paper spiral notebook that had pockets on the front AND back cover. When I was showing off my find to her (A scene designer) she said "You know why you like this? Because you're a Stage Manager." And I feel nothing but pride in that statement.

[late_stranger]

Oh, the office supplies get me too - I will spend HOURS, if necessary, finding five notebooks of the same style and different colors. Last year before school, I went to Staples and there were PILES of this one style of notebook in four colors - green, blue, red, and black. There was ONE yellow, at the bottom of a pile that mostly had a different style in it. I found that yellow, because I had five classes that required a spiral notebook.

[dallas10086]

A few weekends ago I was at a friends' wedding, and I would say over half of the attendees were employed by local theatres. A few of us were seated outside and the coordinator came up to our group and said the bride and groom would be coming in five minutes.

Without a thought in my mind I said, "Thank you five!" followed immediately by, "Oh my god, I can't believe I said that." Everyone at the table laughed except my husband, who had to be told why it was funny.

I've never done that before...I blame the people I was surrounded by and the conversation I was having at the time 

[late_stranger]

Three times in the past couple of days (I've just realized), I've been confusing stage and regular directions. It's getting to be a problem.

[nerdfighter]

Just as a few other people are saying, I'm not at all organized in real life, but extremely organized in the theatre. However, even though my room is a mess, I still know where everything is; it's just on my floor or under my bed, not in the drawers that I have for it.

Haha, That's totally me!  I am a mess outside the theatre when it comes to organizing my room and things like that.  However, I have my own system of knowing where everything is.

Though SMing has done things to my brain that surface in the real world: I am chronically early for everything (at least 20 minutes).  I definitely think of a red light as a standby and a green light as a go... I can't help it. When I painted my bedroom, I spiked all my furniture to ensure that it went back to precisely the right place.  I constantly check the time.  I always have a pen, a time-telling device and a flashlight on my person.

A couple of times, I have "just happened" to have things in my trunk that a normal person would not have: A T-square, a bulletin board, 2 sewing kits, an emergency shovel and broom, countless other things.  These things listed have come in handy in non-theatre situations.  How cool am I?

In other words, life imitates art in a big way in my life...

[brdwayluver]

By the end of my time in college my friends would joke with me that I was the stage manager of the department.  Our department was really close and we did a lot of things together.  I always seemed to be the one making sure everyone was with us or was doing ok at parties (probably because I knew I needed them in for the next evening's performance  ) I still continue to do it now and my friends now will yell at me saying "you are not the stage manager right now, relax!"

[jrbucci]

Ok so my roommate is a psyc major and we passed in the hallway to our room. He was coming back to the room and said he forgot a pen. I responded with, "Black, red, or blue?" as I looked at my jacket pocket.

One day pulling out of the parking lot I told a friend to turn stage right...it corresponded to the actual direction of stage right for the theater i was leaving at the time.