As of next week, following government guidance we will be returning to the buildings and for the remainder of this term a blend of in person and online teaching. With that in mind, we have our final post as part of this series looking at how our students have adapted to the difficulties of producing theatre and performance in an online setting. This week its second year Kate Buxton we hear from, who is telling us all about her work as a Creative Producer on ‘Pieces of Us’ which you can watch from Monday 8th; https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/spring_2021/pieces_of_us/
3 days prior to starting my allocation for the beginning of the Spring term we suddenly went into another lockdown, meaning my role suddenly changed from being an ASM in person for a full company of actors on Love and Information to being a Creative Producer through a screen for 3 actors. Although this wasn’t what I was expecting, I had been really enjoying watching ‘Staged’ starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen during lockdown, and so was quite excited about working in a similar way with these projects.
‘Pieces of Us’ (which was so new and uncharted territory when we started this term that it didn’t even have a name), is a series of short films, one produced by each of the third-year actors. My role as Creative Producer involved me meeting with my three actors to help them with aspects such as copyright, continuity, and their personal welfare.
I worked in conjunction with other stage management students, some of whom were creative producers for other actors, and Rose Dayan as one of the Company Managers in order to work through anything which was a bit more difficult to sort out.
Each day I would meet with each of my actors to discuss where they were at with their film, and what their next step was to move closer to the finished product. This could mean setting small tasks for them to achieve before we next met the following day, or larger milestones for them to work towards. This could be something small like timing a read through of their script, or something larger like getting a scene typed up, complete with stage and camera direction.
Working online has brought its own challenges on top of a role I had never done before, and it was important to me to make sure my actors were taking time offline and not be looking at screens. Therefore, in each meeting I would either ensure they had a task to do which wasn’t online (such as location scouting on their daily exercise or making a mood board on their bedroom floor), or work out a time with them that day they would take off screens and just relax. Another challenge that working online brought was that one of my actors didn’t have very good Wi-Fi, and so I would often have to find multiple different ways of communicating with them before I found one that would enable us to work together, yet maintain the conversation for longer than 30 seconds!
Although at the start of term I wasn’t very comfortable going into this role. It seemed a large leap from the Assistant Stage Manager roles I had been doing up until this point, it soon became very clear that the skills that I learnt from those roles transferred easily to this. Having the support network of the rest of the stage management team meant even when I felt I was sometimes out of my depth I always had someone to reassure me I was on the right lines, and offer a hand to find a way forwards.
Being in Stage Management you are always relying on your team, as without every member a production wouldn’t be as good as it can be. However, I feel only by being so isolated at home, and only being able to speak to each other through a screen, have I truly realised how lucky we are as Stage Managers to have this team around us and how valuable they are, to not only bring the best out of a production, but the best out of you.
Stage Management Team of POD – Silk St Theatre Stage Management Team of the Autumn Opera Triple Bill – Silk St Theatre
STAGE MANAGEMENT 