My Experience as a Zoom Stage Manager
What a strange world we’re living in these days! I have a daily Google alert for “stage manager” and during quarantine, I stumbled upon an interview with the Pandemic Players — this caught my attention.
I’ve spent the last couple of months teaching at a university and managing productions for our theater department. But when the pandemic caused us to cancel our spring play, it seemed like we might have to move to online theater in the coming semester.
Sadly, after budget cuts, I found myself jobless. But, being the proactive person I am, I realized I was the only one in our department who’d shown interest in understanding how digital theater worked, and decided to pursue it as a freelance gig.
I noticed that there were job listings for stage managers needed for small online productions. However, these seemed to always require digital experience — something that was hard to come by, given that it’s rather new. I mean, what even is this OBS everyone keeps talking about?
So, I dove deep into the digital theater world. I followed the Pandemic Players’ work, I interviewed their stage manager, and even started looking into other upcoming digital theater productions.
Eventually, I found a friend who was putting on a digital performance. They had no stage manager listed on their playbill, so I offered to work for free. I was convinced a stage manager could still be useful in this new scenario and I was eager to learn.
We put on a digital performance of The Yellow Wallpaper. The friend had his own company and his wife had made a script of a short story, so we didn’t need to manage copyrights.
Our team was assembled from friends and recent grads. We paid everyone via donations and split whatever we made equally. I didn’t expect much – I thought I might make around $8. But I was pleasantly surprised when I made $75!
We held auditions via video submissions and live on Zoom, which turned out to be a joy to run. Despite our low pay scale, people showed up for auditions!
Rehearsals were much like in person, with the added challenge of needing to manage video on and off times. We even managed to make the script’s technical issues seem fitting, since the story included a ghost and themes of mental discordance.
Despite my worries of screen burnout, we managed rehearsals of 80 minutes with 10-minute breaks and it worked just fine. And to my surprise, managing rehearsals digitally didn’t feel that different from managing in person.
There were technical challenges. If an actor’s feed froze or disappeared, I would read their lines briefly. Most of the time, the issue resolved itself within 30 seconds or so. Whenever issues arose, we had contingency plans in place so the show could go on.
The budget for the production was minimal. We had to invest in some tools and equipment like green screens and a Pro Zoom account. In total, our production cost was just under $200.
Despite the challenges and the steep learning curve with new technology, I’ve learned a lot with this digital theater experiment. Understandably, the future of theater might not entirely consist of digital performances. But it’s more than likely that elements of online performances will be integrated with traditional live performances.
It was an experience that perfectly showcased the skills needed in a theater production, from character analysis for actors, collaborating and designing for designers, to taking notes and maintaining smooth communication for stage managers. We all had to think creatively and outside the box more than ever.
You can check out The Yellow Wallpaper on the Dunvegan Productions Facebook page if you’re interested. That was my journey in staging a show during a pandemic!