Student Blog: ASMing: Always Sleepy (wo)Men

My past few weeks have been spent in the theatre every night, enjoying the privileges of sitting backstage and wearing the comms headset.  I simply never brought enough snacks to eat, was constantly re-wearing my show blacks every day, and told everyone I encountered that I was “so tired”. I was an assistant stage manager!  This was something I had seen done countless times, but never was able to do myself.  I had always wanted to try my hand in stage management, and this semester it was finally my chance.  It was a contemporary dance show, something that I initially thought I would find boring and mundane, but grew to love.  As a musical theatre person through and through, if there isn’t someone parking and barking whilst others are jazz-squaring around them, then I’m most likely bored.  This show, entitled Choreographic Works, was put on by the 2nd and 3rd year Performance Dance students at TMU, and over these few weeks, I felt my appreciation for dance growing on a daily basis.

This show had a suspicious lack of prep work that had to be done, and other than showing up to the auditions, I really was off the hook for a lot of work.  I loved the auditions, and I felt something so exciting being on the other side of the table for once. I had auditioned for things before, but never been privy to the behind-the-scenes.  After auditions, rehearsals began in full swing for a week, which were pretty much self-governed by the dancers and student choreographers.  My real work began the following week during tech, where we enjoyed hours and hours of lighting levels, and myself and the other ASM got exceedingly good at sweeping and mopping the dance floor.

During this time, I was spreading myself too thin and somehow doing tech for another show at a different school across town, and half the time I felt as though I was running on empty.  This showed, and I felt myself having to check my crankiness at times, and tell myself to breathe.  Despite my internal sleepiness, show week rolled around with a sense of completion and pride!  The show was a hit, and we struck the stage on closing night with laughter and admittedly, some bossing around.  

I have decided to continue to broaden my stage management knowledge, and would love to be in a similar position again soon.  As someone who is decidedly right brained, I love a spreadsheet, and look forward to building more cue lists and running grids.  Stage Management is so organisational, and the paperwork alone is fun to me.  This experience was made better with the lovely crew that was also working on this show.  The rest of the stage management team (Kate, Kiera, and my bestie Makela shout out) all had more experience than I did, but made it a point to be so helpful and kind to me when I had questions. The backstage morale was high, and I even felt myself becoming friendly with the performers on stage!   I will always be a costume girl at heart, but this is not the last stage management will see of me.

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