Jun 10, 2026 · 47 min · 12 segments
The show must go on! Or must it…? After the director and the designers all leave and the house lights go down, the theater is the stage manager’s domain. They’re an air traffic controller and flight…
Narda E. AlcornGuest
Courtney B. VanceHost
Ben PfisterGuest
Peyton GunnerGuest
Taylor OlivaGuestWhitney Manel RoyGuest
A.K. HowardGuestFrom 1992 to 1995, Narda E. Alcorn was a student at what was then called the Yale School of Drama.
I applied to the school because I had seen August Wilson's Fences on Broadway, my first Broadway play, to see that there was somebody who was writing about Black people, really, it just blew my mind.
And then it was my second year that I met him, which has been the most pivotal relationship in my career, in that I then spent from 1995 until 2005, until August died, primarily working on his work and often with him.
But in her first year, Narda was the assistant stage manager on the Yale Repertory Theatre's production of The Colored Museum.
In the church at Yale Repertory Theatre, we were teching something, it was dark, and I actually fell off the stage.
But I was so afraid that folks would be angry with me or think that I had, you know, made a mistake or screwed up that I didn't want anybody to know.
Because it was dark, and I have very dark skin, I just made my way back to the stage as if nothing ever happened.
And the environment was such that instead of calling out and asking for help or asking folks to stop, I didn't.
What else could she do? You may have heard the saying, the show must go on.
am proudly the chair of the stage management program at David Geffen School of Drama.
And she works hard to make sure students don't experience the same fear of speaking up that she felt that night in 1992.
And now we're really trying to create a culture where folks can be authentic in who they are.
And that means that we're going to make mistakes and we're going to not know and we're going to...
And we now want a culture where students can shout out and raise their hand and say, help, or I need help, and just not feel paralyzed by fear.
I don't believe that the job of a stage manager is to ensure that the show must go on.
If everything goes right when you watch a play, if everyone makes it on stage, if all the lights happen with good timing and you hear all the sound and you have a great experience, that's the stage manager's job to make sure that we've cultivated a space where an audience can enjoy that.
One of the biggest tasks we took on as a stage management team was to make sure that that floor, from opening night to closing night, stayed as white as possible.
And they can do it all by creating a safe, positive environment where artists thrive.
Ideas such as the show must go on, ideas such as the show being more important than the people, is that actually benefiting artists or is it actually harming them?
In this 10-part series, we'll explore 100 years at the David Geffen School of Drama, where it's been, where it's heading, and how each of the school's programs individually and collectively trains the next generation of artists.
Revolution is always in the air.
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From 1992 to 1995, Narda E. Alcorn was a student at what was then called the Yale School of Drama.
I applied to the school because I had seen August Wilson's Fences on Broadway, my first Broadway play, to see that there was somebody who was writing about Black people, really, it just blew my mind.
And then it was my second year that I met him, which has been the most pivotal relationship in my career, in that I then spent from 1995 until 2005, until August died, primarily working on his work and often with him.
But in her first year, Narda was the assistant stage manager on the Yale Repertory Theatre's production of The Colored Museum.
In the church at Yale Repertory Theatre, we were teching something, it was dark, and I actually fell off the stage.
But I was so afraid that folks would be angry with me or think that I had, you know, made a mistake or screwed up that I didn't want anybody to know.
Because it was dark, and I have very dark skin, I just made my way back to the stage as if nothing ever happened.
And the environment was such that instead of calling out and asking for help or asking folks to stop, I didn't.
What else could she do? You may have heard the saying, the show must go on.
am proudly the chair of the stage management program at David Geffen School of Drama.
And she works hard to make sure students don't experience the same fear of speaking up that she felt that night in 1992.
And now we're really trying to create a culture where folks can be authentic in who they are.
And that means that we're going to make mistakes and we're going to not know and we're going to...
And we now want a culture where students can shout out and raise their hand and say, help, or I need help, and just not feel paralyzed by fear.
I don't believe that the job of a stage manager is to ensure that the show must go on.
If everything goes right when you watch a play, if everyone makes it on stage, if all the lights happen with good timing and you hear all the sound and you have a great experience, that's the stage manager's job to make sure that we've cultivated a space where an audience can enjoy that.
One of the biggest tasks we took on as a stage management team was to make sure that that floor, from opening night to closing night, stayed as white as possible.
And they can do it all by creating a safe, positive environment where artists thrive.
Ideas such as the show must go on, ideas such as the show being more important than the people, is that actually benefiting artists or is it actually harming them?
In this 10-part series, we'll explore 100 years at the David Geffen School of Drama, where it's been, where it's heading, and how each of the school's programs individually and collectively trains the next generation of artists.
Revolution is always in the air.
