Stage Management Quotes

The great leaders have always stage-managed their effects.

I hope to continue working in film, television and theatre.

'The Taming Of The Shrew' is probably the first time I've worked in this country for about ten years, apart from theatre, and it's not for want of trying. It was so fantastic to work in London - it felt really glamorous.

I learned more about who I am and how to be a great worker - and a great artistic worker - from doing student theater. I was a stage manager. I was an assistant stage manager. I was on the running crew. I did probably 25 shows at Northwestern - all musicals, of course.

I'm a big believer in keeping the stage directions really tight.

I've had the experience of seeing what makes life easier for an actor and for the crew, and what makes it feel bogged down and challenging. We're all really fortunate that we get to make our living as artists.

I built stages and I did stage management - I think I built the sets twice, I happened to be good with a drill, which is a talent I didn't know I had.

If you can't get an acting job, then go backstage. Or take tickets.

I don't know how it is now but the assistant stage manager had to understudy several parts. You had to be ready to go on at any time if the actor couldn't make it to the play. I didn't think anything of it.

Almost all of what I learned about mounting and hosting a dance show I learned from Dick Clark.

If I wasn't so lazy, or if I had a roadie, I'd have a line of guitars on stage. I'd have a lap steel and a nylon string up there, but who wants to keep up with all that?

When I was going through school, I joined the Lyceum Youth Theatre, and that kind of cemented it. Through being in and around the building and watching shows, I realised that there was something I really loved about it, so I went into the stage management side.

I've directed a couple of times in the theater, but I wouldn't make a habit of it because it's too consuming.

When I gave a direction to an actor in the show, I know their whole journey better than a guest director could know it.

Sometimes when I'm directing, the stage manager will have a good idea and that's okay with me.

One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.

I want to toy around with producing a Broadway show.

So, the concept was a single-stage festival, and I open and close the festival to encourage people to stay for all of the other artists.

Then I left school at 16 and worked in Perth Repertory Theatre, which was quite nearby where I lived. And I worked there for about six or seven months, as part of the stage crew.

If you're a theater director, you're not going to be prepared for the technical side. And if you're a technical director, you're not going to be prepared for the acting side. The only thing you can do is go through the meat grinder of your first film.

I did a lot of small black-box theater in New York when I was starting out. I'd get a group of actors together to do workshops and readings. And I ended up directing three or four productions.

I always considered myself being an organizer. I'm very good at teaching singers, I'm very good at staging a show, to entertain people. But I never included myself. I never applied this to me as an artist.

And so I've always been fascinated by the technical end of theater, and a lot of my closest friends are not actors, but in the other end of the business.

My main interest in being a director, and the most important thing to me, is that world with the actors.

A lot of the world turns into checklists for me when I'm on the road. Like, OK, this person's alive, this person's fed, this person's good. Soundcheck is done. Everything becomes a checklist except for the actual show.