The Hidden Art of Stage Management

When I'm going to call the opening pattern of a show, from the moment where I'm about to take the house lights down, I have considered and planned out an audience experience.

Yeah.

So from the moment that the house lights go down, that starts the anticipation for what's going to happen.

So I need to match and try and create a mood that leads into the curtain open.

I think you've described something, that magic that I discovered as a kid going into the theater and feeling it always begins before the show starts.

It does.

You set the table with the pre-show look, I guess is one way to talk about it.

Often with us, it's just a curtain.

Yeah.

With a closed curtain.

But some of our shows are open curtain shows.

It's true.

And you have to begin the journey before the first downbeat.

Yeah.

From the minute the audience sees something, it needs to start to help build that.

So even from the moment of waiting those moments for the audience to quiet, to start the tune so that we get a nice clear sound and then taking the lights out.

on the dying of the second tune.

So everything kind of quiets together and you bring people to a kind of a calm state, an anticipatory state.

And then the start, I'm thinking about how to make sure that we start in a good way, as you often say.

I love that so much.

And I really resonate with that because I believe you do that all the time and it doesn't happen by accident.