They are the lynchpins of every Broadway production and national tour. Yet few people outside the Broadway community know what the company manager’s job is–or that it’s an aspect of Broadway that is particularly female-friendly.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Company Managers: Women at Work
They are the lynchpins of every Broadway production and national tour. Yet few people outside the Broadway community know what the company manager’s job is–or that it’s an aspect of Broadway that is particularly female-friendly.
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Well the competitive person in me is really excited that the people at Columbia were shocked and scared of 7-11 hours, because I'm pretty sure if you told a CMU SOD student that was their day they would cry of happiness. It's always nice to get that little reassurance that I am not working all these hours for nothing, they are for practice. I really don't want to rant about women because I already did that this week and I try to limit myself to one feminist manifesto every 7 days. What the women in this article talk about more than anything else, including being women, is communication. I always rate ability to communicate as one of the most important skills a person can have in any field at any level. It is something that I have always felt pretty good at but only because I am constantly trying to get better at it. When I present someone with a problem or explain something to them I try to always follow it with "does that make sense?" or "do you understand" even if I am telling someone my grocery list, I need to know that they get what I am talking about. I am a big proponent that communication is the single most important skill in the world, because it is not job or even work specific. Being a good communicator helps you at all times, and that is what I took for this article, it's nice to be good at your job, its great to be a woman and good at your job, but being a good communicator is paramount to all that.
Company management is such an interesting position. And I feel like, it’s hard to appreciate good company management until you experience it. This summer was the first time I had ever worked with a company manager. Often you hear that production management is a catch all department for the stuff that no other department wants to do. But, the company management department this summer did so much that I would have never guessed fell on their plate, but someone has to do it. I thought that this article was extremely insightful to a position that it is not particularly taught in schools and often feels so out of reach as a career. I feel like there is this mysterious feeling that surrounds general managers, producers, and other senior administration of shows. I would love to see more exposure of these careers so people like me who may have an interest of a pursuing this type of job one day have an idea of what they may be getting into.
People often forget about Company Management, but it is one of the most important jobs in a Broadway theatre and touring show. I think it is very interesting but it makes sense that most Company Managers are women. Especially on tour they need to take care of everyone in many aspects of their lives. They need to coordinate their travel, their hotels, their health, their paychecks, and more. It definitely takes a certain type of person to dedicate so much time to their job like Company Managers do. It seems like it is a lot harder to company manage on tour than it is on Broadway because there are so many more things you need to worry about and people do not have separate lives after the show. Women are generally more caring people, which makes them better candidates for company managers and cause them to stay longer in the job because they enjoy it more.
My favorite part of this article was comparing touring company managers to camp counselors. I love the image of a company manager with a clip board & a whistle, handing out sleeping bags. I understand that I company would be extremely important, especially during tours. Touring is the actors life, and someone has to help make sure everything is set up. I agree with Sam, that being a company manager on a tour seems more challenging than on a Broadway show. If anything, while touring there are probably just more tasks to be done.
I love that women are nearly equally represented in this career as men. I do not, however, like that this article makes it sound like this one of their "places" in the theatre. Yes, this article acknowledges that women are working their way up various career paths and that is great. I just wish that this article didnt make it sound like company managing was a job that fits women.
The number of women in tech theater is almost hilarious it’s so low. This lady is kicking ass and I love it because she isn’t talking about how hard it is to do her job because she’s a woman, or how difficult it was to get her job because she’s a woman, she’s just the best, and thats why she does what she does and she gets paid what she does. Thats not to say that it’s not important for us to talk about how difficult it is for women to get jobs in some businesses, or that there isn’t sexism in every day life, or work place assault isn’t prevalent or any of those things. However, we have to stop treating women in power like they are the only ones that will ever be there, and we have to cherish it before it’s taken away. It’s not going away, and as much as I like to know that women are making progress and I like to see the stories about them succeeding, I hate reading sappy articles about how difficult it was for them to get where they are. It’s hard. It’s hard for all women. We can acknowledge that it’s hard without making ourselves the victims, because the longer we are victims the longer the people who are victimizing us have power. We have to put on our big girl pants and say “today someone told me I couldn’t do something” or “today a guy at work said something inappropriate to me” talk to our friends about it for two minutes and then figure out what we are gonna do to fix it. Men need to change, the culture needs to change, and the only way we speed it up is by quitting acting like the world is not fair for us. It’s not. I understand that, I feel it everyday. But we don’t get to change it if we roll over and wait for it to change for us. Do your job, do it well, fight for what you deserve, and then much like this woman, act like it’s all just part of your day. Because thats the ultimate goal isn’t it? For us to stop writing articles about women in power and just know that they are there because duh of course they are there we are EQUAL? There is a way to accomplish incredible things and present them as though they are incredible, for anyone, not just a woman.
^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS IS THE WRONG ARTICLE SORRY SORRY SORRY!!!!!! IT BELONGS WITH A DIFFERENT ONE. SORRY SORRY SORRY!!!
Yeah, company management is insane. It is such an interesting position within the theatre world, and yet to me it is sometimes the most uninteresting. I feel like I could really thrive as a company manager with the skills I have; I'm good with money, I totally geek out about union rules, and I can manage travel and housing well. I think the thing that keeps me from really considering it as an option is that I really like to be personally involved in the process. The idea of being up in the office doing payroll while a show is coming together just sounds a little boring to me. It's also strange that their hours are so long from handling all the business AND being a "representative" of the producers. I don't really think those two roles need to be the same person. In fact, it may be easier to walk that "thin line" of representative and liaison if they weren't the same person. I love that men and women are equally represented in the company management world, but it also really annoys me that there's a whole section dedicated to WHY women are good at this job. Honestly, how are you going to tell me that a woman specifically is good at this job because she will stay late to get the job done? That's not being a woman, that's being a great manager, and men can do it too. I think the sooner we stop seeing headlines that say LOOK A WOMAN DOES THIS JOB and start seeing women's names crop up throughout articles as though it *isn't* shocking that a woman can do the same job as a man, the better.
When I was in La Jolla this summer, the CM asked me, with my camp counselor background, why I didn't apply for the company management internship and I couldn't really give her a straight answer. Reading this article didn't clear anything up for me. When you're working as a company manager, you have to be involved in the details. You have to be on top of the details. Whether it's society or biology, it seems that women have more of a knack for keeping track of every little thing. I'm not here to talk feminist theory because I'm tired of defending myself but I digress. I think women make better company managers because we're able to maintain relationships with many different people at once. One quote that really resonated with me was, "It’s not so much a gender issue that now separate us, it’s more a generational issue,” when talking about hours. I think it has to do more with what stage of your life that you're in. Older adults may have the time and the resources for childcare than, let's say, a new parent. Young people right out of school either have a ton of stamina (usually if they're coming from a conservatory program), or still need to build it up (education notwithstanding).
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