Ask My Friends – Theatre and Opera from a Stage Manager

My temporary assistant Kat Slagell leaves me this week to continue to pursue her career as an opera stage manager. I thought this would be a great opportunity to write about the differences in Opera and Theatre from a Stage Manager. Kat is a great stage manager that works all over the nation stage managing operas. When I studied Stage Management at Webster University, I always thought it was interesting that the Stage Managers actually tell the performers when to go on stage. Here is what Kat had to say.

“Greetings, fellow Jared Neff fans. You’d think the world of opera and theatre are similar enough, and they are, but stage managing is completely the same, yet totally different between the two performance genres.

The first difference is lifestyle. Unlike theatre, where most regional companies have a large enough season to fill your whole year with maybe one different place in the summer, opera requires you to move around much more. Sure, there are big houses like Chicago or The Met that operate in the same manner, but most companies either have an intense (often rep) season spread out over a few months, or they have single shows spaced throughout the year. Either those shows are spread out enough that you can fit other productions between them, or the company hires different people for each show. The result is a vagabond lifestyle filled with airports, freeways covered in snow storms, hotels, and getting lost in the Target because you thought you were at the one in St. Louis, but really you’re at the one in Nashville. Not for everybody, but I, personally, love it. I enjoy getting to go to different places for as little as three and as many as nine weeks. Unlike a tour, you are actually living in that city for the time you’re there, so, if you’re lucky, you can acquire a number of second homes. I drive to literally all of my jobs, so I visit friends and family on the way that I would normally never or rarely see.

The second difference is practical functionality of the two genres. Opera is fast and almost always big, and I love that too. It’s common for opera rehearsals to be three weeks long, that’s including tech. There is really no table work since it is expected that the singers come to rehearsal with their entire parts memorized and characterized. As far as size goes, even smaller operas typically have larger casts because there is usually a chorus of at least twenty to thirty people and any number of supers (non-singing roles). The last play I saw had a large cast for a play, 29 total. Once you start adding all those people, they need costumes, props, and the scenery to perform on, so managing all those elements is exciting and challenging.

When it comes to the running of performances and rehearsals, as an ASM you’re much more involved in all of the entrances and exits. Literally every time that anyone goes onstage, whether it’s principal singers, chorus, dancers, supers, or zoo animals, one of the ASMs cue them, as well as check that they have all of the correct props and costumes. In the same vein, if you’re the stage manager, you page everyone to the stage every time they have an entrance. When you’ve got a big cast and a lot of other pages and cues to call, this can really keep you on your toes.

Finally, one of the biggest differences for me is the music. Opera has been around for so long for a reason, it’s good music. This is not to say that some plays like Shakespeare haven’t stood the test of time or that today’s musicals won’t be around in hundreds of years, but so much of theatre is based on seeing the actors to get the full experience. Opera is about the orchestration and the singing, which can be experienced anywhere you can hear it. It never fails to happen that I’ll be very involved with the running of an orchestra dress rehearsal or a performance, and then I’ll be able to stop for a second and just listen. There is nothing that compares to a live opera, and I’ll think how lucky I am that I get paid to listen to the same thing every performance that people pay hundreds of dollars to see once.

Is one genre better than the other? Absolutely not, but they are different, something I didn’t know until I started working opera. Hopefully this posting has let you in on some of those differences.”