Virginia Children's Theatre Hires Emily Fruendt As Resident Stage Manager

Brett J. Roden announced today that Virginia Children's Theatre has hired Emily Fruendt as Resident Stage Manager for the organization. Fruendt will begin with VCT at the start of the upcoming 2021-2022 Season.

As Resident Stage Manager, Fruendt will stage manage all VCT mainstage productions, ensuring that each production is executed in a safe, efficient, and timely manner while maintaining artistic excellence and integrity. Stage management duties include rehearsing and maintaining each production, assembling and maintaining an accurate prompt book, and running/calling the technical elements of each production.

"We are so thrilled to welcome Emily Fruendt to the staff at VCT," says Roden. "She comes with a wealth of knowledge in multiple different disciplines in theatre and brings along a love and passion for children's theatre. She is bubbly, fun, driven, professional and very well organized - a great fit for a resident stage manager."

Emily is a Kansas and Oklahoma native who graduated from Oklahoma City University in 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Performance and minors in Stage Management and Directing. She found her love for theatre at a young age by performing in children's shows at Topeka Civic Center and practicing scenes from Hannah Montana in her living room. In high school, she had the opportunity to perform in the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland in a show titled Dark of the Moon. That experience solidified her dream of pursuing theatre as a career and now she gets to live that dream as the Resident Stage Manager for VCT! Amidst her Type A personality and being the hangout scheduler of her friend group, Emily fell into her love for stage management her sophomore year of college. Since then, she has stage managed for shows such as Art, Clean Slate, Clowns, Lovers, and Women in Pants, and most recently, A Christmas Carol at Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, whose production was recognized by The New York Times and the BBC. She also served as the Production Manager for the Festival of New Works 2021 at OCU. When she's not doing theatre, she loves spending time with her rescue cat, Mocha, creating new spreads for her bullet journal, and watching Pixar movies.