What Every Stage Crew Member Should Carry With Them At All Times

OnStage Blog: So, you’ve got your script and think you're completely ready for the show to start backstage. Well, let me save you a lot of trial and error and set you up for success on the things you absolutely 100% need if you’re working backstage.

Time's Up! Diversify The Stage Now!

Pollstar: Fitz And The Tantrums singer Noelle Scaggs, for much of her 20-year career, was already painfully aware of the many times she’d performed and been the only woman, and often the only Black person, on or behind the stage. By the time the nation was convulsed in May after the police killing of George Floyd, it was even more acute.

The Job Is to Be Invisible, Not to Disappear Entirely

AMERICAN THEATRE: “I really don’t want to be onstage,” Steve Eiman said to their sixth-grade English teacher during their first theatre experience, a rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Can I have the role with the least amount of lines?”

And so a theatre technician was born.

Now 26, Steve Eiman is a freelance, non-union general technician who works steadily in collegiate theatre, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway. Or, to be more precise, who was working steadily in those realms until COVID-19 hit.

Coronavirus: Behind the Scenes on Tours Shattered by COVID-19

Rolling Stone: Paul Klimson, a veteran audio engineer who’s worked with artists like Justin Timberlake, the Roots, and Eric Clapton, was putting together a docket of upcoming shows across multiple venues last week. Then, suddenly, they were all axed in one go. A “text came through that wiped out $11,000 in gigs between now and at least April 8th,” Klimson tells Rolling Stone.

Music Fans Show Solidarity for Backstage Workers in Tel Aviv

LiveDesignOnline: A star-studded line of music stars and artists performed during a protest concert in Charles Clore Park, Tel Aviv, titled “Behind The Scenes: An Assembly of Solidarity” to draw attention to the plight of freelancers, backstage technicians and all the zero-hours contract workers in the Israeli event industry whose livelihoods have been decimated as the music and live event industry has been paused in the fight to control Covid-19.

One of the (many) things that worry me most about the Broadway shutdown.

The Producer's Perspective: What’s going to happen to our workforce?

I’ll tell you what could happen. We could lose the very bright and creative personnel who we’re counting on to take Broadway to new heights.

The NY Times shared some of my nerve-iness in this article, where the writer talked about how so many NYC residents, especially the younger folks, fled NYC at the beginning the pandemic. And a huge subset of that group was from our very own arts and entertainment industry, since we laid off 78% of our workforce.

Building the Ideal Tech Team

Dramatics Magazine: MAYBE YOU’RE JOINING the technical crew for the first time. Maybe you’re a seasoned student technician ready to move up the ranks. Either way, to succeed in technical theatre — whether you want a leadership role (stage manager, house manager, student shop foreman) or just to deepen your current skills — you need to understand how to help your theatre director in three important ways: recruiting, maintaining, and building a strong team.

The Mechanics of Crafting Transitions

The Theatre Times: For ensemble pieces in theatre, where actors never once leave the stage, what becomes all-important are the transitions between scenes — how the action, settings and mood segue in transforming ways from one set-piece to the next. But often, even in projects with an extended period of rehearsals, transitions are sometimes afterthoughts put into place much closer to show-dates than might be considered desirable by an anxious stage manager.

Talent Versus Technicians: Changing the Culture of Division

www.theatreartlife.com: With all of the forward motion in the entertainment industry over the past few years, I just can’t believe that we still live in a culture of “Us vs. Them.” I’m talking about actors, musicians, “the talent,” vs. technicians. Even in my list, I’ve used a term I’m used to hearing: The Talent. Here’s the thing, I am also the talent. The spot ops are also “the talent.” The stage manager is also “the talent.” The deck crew, the A2, the board ops, the wardrobe techs, etc. are all “the talent.”

Backstage Video: A Look at Costume Quick Changes

Stage Directions: What does it take to be a dresser in the theater? In this very informative video from the National Theatre, watch some of its talented dressers change the costumes from Amadeus in under 40 seconds. (They even put a clock on the changes.) C’mon, we all have to show the dressers backstage some love! They have a tough, and often unappreciated job!! The Amadeus costumes were designed by Chloe Lamford.

Pittsburgh stagehand brings The Lion King home to the theater where he began his career

Theater | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: As the audience cheers during The Lion King's famous opening scene, where a breathtaking parade of actors in animal costumes march onto the stage of The Benedum Center for the Performing Arts to the music of Elton John’s “Circle of Life,” stagehand Pat Lohrer listens behind the scenes at stage right. He's making sure the applause continues by ensuring that the props are correctly placed and in working order, just like he’s done for over 15 years.

Young People Pushing Career Boundaries in Industry First Initiative

TPi: In an industry-first initiative, the events sector opened its doors to upcoming young talent with the ‘Get Into Events’ programme. A three-day training course run and hosted by youth charity The Prince’s Trust, in collaboration with specialist event crewing company Crewsaders and global creative communications DRPG, saw 12 candidates between the ages of 18 and 30 learn the ropes of the event crewing industry.

PRG's GroundControl Followspot System Wins Engineering Emmy Award

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: Production Resource Group LLC, (PRG), a world provider of entertainment and event technology solutions, announces it won a 2018 Engineering Emmy Award for its PRG GroundControl Followspot System.

Broadway’s Biggest Debut: King Kong

The New York Times: He’s 20 feet tall and weighs 2,000 pounds. He’s monstrous, but, his creators hope, also moving. And he’s coming to Broadway this fall.

King Kong arrives next month as the title character, and the one constant, in a $35 million musical which has been in development for nearly a decade, churning through scripts, songs and creative teams as the producers try to shape a show worthy of their title character.

Opening Cirque du Soleil show in Redmond canceled after audience sprayed with liquid

The Seattle Times: The opening show for Cirque du Soleil’s VOLTA show at Redmond’s Marymoor Park was abruptly canceled Friday night after liquid from below the stage sprayed the audience.

What It's Like to Be a Cirque du Soleil Safety Diver in "O"

Sport Diver: My dive students don’t look like other Open Water Diver hopefuls. For starters, they show up wearing sequins. And they never assemble their own gear.

That’s because my newbies are trapeze artists and other acrobatic performers working in O, the water-themed Cirque du Soleil show performed five nights a week in Las Vegas.

Historical Calling Technology: Cue Lights

Stage Directions: According to the Boston Daily Globe, in 1882 the Bijou theatre was the first theatre in the country to install and use electricity throughout the building. Some companies had already installed electric house lights, specials, etc. But the Bijou was the first to use electric light in every corner of the theatre. As a result, the development and implementation of cue lights followed shortly, which inevitably silenced the Prompter’s aural cueing methods and changed the way in which the audience experienced the performance.

Stage Managers And Human Reaction Time

TheatreArtLife: When I was first learning how to “be” a stage manager, I learned how to properly record blocking, how to lay out spike tape, and the best way to distribute a schedule. Nothing prepared me for having a direct impact on the physical well-being of my performers.

Why Does The Tech Crew Wear Black?

ProSoundWeb: If you’ve been around this production madness long enough to know an input from an output, you’ve heard the jokes. You’ve identified the truth. You’ve done the math.

Show crews almost always wear black, even when they don’t have to. Any exception to that rule is usually going to be someone very high or very low in the pecking order.

I’ve had this verified many times. Going dark becomes a choice. But until recently, I’d never considered why. Additional “deep questions” along these lines: Why is laundry day the same for production folks? Why do we panic at the smell of bleach? But I digress…