When I was asked to write this blog post, it was suggested to me that I use it to give current and future interns a look into what my job backstage entails. Since I started as one of the Rep as one of two stage management interns in August, I have been asked what my job backstage is roughly 10 times. And honestly, I still don’t have an easy, or good, answer to the query.

Most people wake up with a reasonable expectation of what their workday will hold for them. In fact, many of my non-theatre friends find it unnerving if they don’t have some inkling of what tasks their bosses will ask them to complete that day. This was never a career characteristic that appealed to me, however. That wasn’t for lack of trying. After spending five years working in a large library (resulting in my uncanny knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System) and another three years spent as an architecture student, I was fully prepared for a comfortable, predictable work week. I’m still not sure what made me take the leap of faith away from architecture to theatre my Junior year in college. All I knew, is that I was going to throw myself into it full force and not look back.

Two years later, I find myself sitting backstage during a dress rehearsal of Seattle Rep’s production of The Brothers Size trying to form the words to explain my job. A job I love, but that seems to always escape general summary. The challenge of stage management is that your job will vary greatly depending on the show and the people you are working with. As an intern for the Rep, I have been incredibly lucky to experience three shows so far, that each differs greatly in the job requirements former.

For The Brothers Size, for example, my involvement in the tech process went something like this:
The first day of tech, at around 9am, I met up with the ASM, Props Master, and Master Properties for prop check-in. This is the time that the 50 or so tires that were used as props and scenery in The Brothers Size were moved into the theatre. All the tires except for about 6 were set in a pile up stage. The thing to know about this pile is that the actors climb on it, stand on it, sleep on it, take tires off of it to sit on, or stack into various shapes as needed. This was not your ordinary pile of tires. It was a very specific structurally planned pile that had taken about three weeks to work out in the rehearsal hall. The challenge of the next two hours was to recreate the same pile of tires on a distinctively different stage.

The main responsibility of the ASM and intern during a Bagley Wright tech is to keep track of everything happening backstage and any movement of props and scenery onstage. We direct the crew on where to restore props to when we rerun scenes, update the deck run list with any fly, motor, quick changes, prop handoffs, and where actors are entering and exiting and make sure their pathways are clear for their exits. For this particular show, I was put in charge of tracking the movement of the tires and rail moves while the ASM tracked costume pieces and motor cues.

-ASHLEY ROLPH, stage management intern
Read more from Ashley’s world back stage later.