NT : Go Backstage : Departmental Profiles : Stage Management

Stage Management

The Invisible Force
Stage management at the National
By Heather Neill, May 2005

See Stage Management in discover: Making Theatre

“You learn”, says Jane Suffling, a National Theatre stage manager of some 20 years' standing, “how to appear not to be there”. Given her bubbly personality and throaty laugh, one has to assume that her apparent disappearance requires consummate acting. Stage managers do seem to have to play many parts – as administrators, psychoanalysts, liaison personnel, crisis managers, keepers of records and holders of hands – but none of the roles involves acting. Not on stage anyway. Once upon a time, hopeful young thesps might grab the opportunity to sweep the stage of a regional rep as the first step on the ladder to stardom via a job as assistant stage manager (ASM), then acting ASM, playing a maid or spear-carrier between organising the props. Nowadays, stage managers are more likely to have a degree in their subject and to have been hooked on a backstage career from the outset.



While most in the profession are freelance, almost all those at the National are permanent staff. They tend to stay, enjoying variety combined with security and the excitement of knowing that they are likely to be dealing with the best in the business. Jane Suffling, just back from touring the country with Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, says she has had “a brilliant year” including Jerry Springer – the Opera, David Hare's topical Stuff Happens, Katie Mitchell's Three Sisters, and Measure for Measure in a co-production with Complicite. And now she's sworn to secrecy as Mike Leigh's as-yet-unnamed play takes shape in a hall near London Bridge.



Most of the time, the 24 permanent members of the NT stage management department stay together in teams. Each consists of a stage manager, in overall charge of the production, a deputy (DSM) who controls all cueing – of actors, scenery, lighting and sound – from a sound-proof box at the back of the stalls, and two ASMs, who are responsible for props and the general smooth-running of the show, in the wings. All four provide support during rehearsals, with the DSM making notes on the script to mark line-changes, cuts or points where a particular movement or effect takes place. Together with diagrams and sketches (often these days backed up by a video), this will later become the “bible”, a historical record and a means of recreating a show if necessary.



Eight performances a week in three theatres as well as tours and one-off events inside and outside the building, provide quite a planning challenge for the department under the leadership of Mark Dakin, the Head of Production. But as former stage manager and now Company Manager Rosemary Beattie knows, there are pleasures to the job. She says that, 20 years after she managed her last show personally, she still misses the buzz: “When the actors take their curtain calls, you know that in some small way you have contributed to the success of the production. That's real job satisfaction.”



The National tries to spread the load and provide variety for the teams, giving them stints in all three auditoriums. His Dark Materials was exhausting, with dozens of scene changes, hundreds of costumes and a variety of effects and technical challenges. And it played eight performances a week with none of the respite that the usual rep system affords at the National. After such concentrated effort, the stage management team – expanded to seven, with one person solely responsible for puppets – deserved a change. Emma B Lloyd, now stage manager on Brian Friel's Aristocrats in the Lyttelton, says it is “rest and recuperation” in comparison. During His Dark Materials she had to go on stage to explain brief hold-ups a couple of times when the computer controlling the elevator inside the drum revolve needed rebooting, but the worst time was just after Christmas when cast members succumbed, one after the other, to a debilitating virus. The knock-on effect, when an understudy had to cover for a principal in this company of 35 actors, some of whom might be playing as many as 10 characters, could cause several hours' work for Lloyd. “If someone was off I'd have to text the understudy covers to tell them they were on, then get the right information to front-of-house so that the programmes could be slipped, then alert the wig and costume departments – and so on.”



Lloyd says that it's part of the job to be able to anticipate, “to know what's needed before you're asked”. Stage managers have to adapt to different directing styles and the needs of actors: “Some seem casual, others you have to leave alone.” Lloyd's colleague Janice Heyes, who has helped the transfer of Simon Stephens' play On the Shore of the Wide World from the Royal Exchange Manchester to the Cottesloe, agrees. She sees preventing problems as an important aspect of the job. She had been set on a career in engineering, but, while temping as a dresser on a production of 42nd Street in Blackpool “noticed a girl in the corner wearing headphones who seemed to be in control of everything and I thought: 'I want to be her'.” She trained at the Guildhall and has been at the National for seven years. As a DSM Heyes had control of the cues, but with On the Shore of the Wide World she is now experiencing being in absolute charge for the first time, as Jane Suffling (whose team she is usually in) adapts to the unique ways of Mike Leigh. His rehearsals are so secret that even she is not always in the room, but outside awaiting texts from him on her mobile phone.



Improbable, in the persons of Lee Simpson and Phelim McDermott, presented their stage manager, Trish Montemuro, and her DSM Fiona Bardsley, with another unconventional way of working when they rehearsed comic gore-fest, Theatre of Blood. The actors recorded their lines, moving by stages from a monotone to a highly dramatic rendering. Then they rehearsed wordlessly to their taped voices. “It was a freer way of working and by week three the lines were beginning to stick.”



Do things go wrong? Of course. Scenery has been known to stick half way down. The Olivier drum revolve was, in the early days, a byword for disaster. There was a backstage fire on the press night of The History Boys and, while the audience got free drinks, an SOS went out for mops and towels to soak up the sprinkler water on drenched props and set. One way or another, it is a fortunate stage manager who doesn't some time have to step out front and make the dreaded announcement that there will be a delay.



But performances usually run like clockwork. A mid-run matinee of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba is a perfect example. David Milling's team are in soon after mid-day to reset, checking and double-checking the props on tables in the wings, each item in a square marked out with white tape on a black cloth. As essentials such as Martirio's cigarettes and a toy lamb (named Rupert) are ticked off by the ASMs, Ali Biggs and Harry Guthrie, sounds echo around the theatre – telephone ringtones, tolling bells, recorded shouts – and lights flash in sequence. Katy de Main is the DSM in the control box, running through the cues. Later she makes the calls to cast, sound and lighting technicians and front of house. She activates a red light for standby in the relevant department or in the wings. If this isn't “stabilised” by being switched off, she puts out a call: someone isn't ready. Then it's green light for “go”.



Vicki Mortimer's set looks substantial enough to live in, and indeed real water sloshes and real plants stand in pots on real tiles. But there are a few hidden tricks: the bell-rope is safely operational in the first act, but Harry Guthrie makes sure it breaks in the third, while two canes await Penelope Wilton as Bernarda, one perfect, the other ready to snap.



A few minutes before curtain-up the cast arrive. They are surprisingly relaxed, some whispering joke rudery about the stage management team in cod Spanish accents before going on to act out Lorca's gripping, emotional tragedy. Casts vary, I'm told. Some actors prefer to avoid so much as eye-contact during a performance. The stage management team also make casual comments between the cues, via their headsets, but nobody takes a risk. Furniture positions are marked, a spare key placed beside the cupboard – Ali Biggs says she has been called the Spares Queen – and, in the first interval, sheets tagged as laundry or for sewing, are positioned, while Guthrie rethreads the treadle sewing machines for Act II.



Soon it's all over, the storm and rain correctly cued, the recorded gunshot spot-on, the bars and foyers warned by Katy de Main in time for the crowds to emerge. Then it's time to reset for the evening's performance.



Once in a while the backstage world mixes satisfyingly with that on stage. During a performance of Jerry Springer, Jane Suffling was warned by the conductor that a particular sound had stuck and, when the orchestra stopped playing, an alarm would carry on. She dashed on stage, in her headset, like a television floor manager, shouting, “Jerry, Jerry, we have a problem.” Michael Brandon told emergency jokes, the noise was silenced and nobody in the audience spotted that anything had gone wrong. As Emma B Lloyd puts it: “It's an art, being in charge but not letting people think you are.”




© Heather Neill, May 2005



Heather Neill is a freelance critic and theatre writer