Stage Managers Quotes

• This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.

  Carl Jung

  Dream, Actors, Creation

  "General Aspects of Dream Psychology". Book by Carl Jung, 1916.

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rock star bullshit. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with your dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you leave tearing it down. They should get your salary, and you should get theirs.

  Henry Rollins

  Stars, Thinking, Rocks

  "Black Coffee Blues". Book by Henry Rollins, 1992.

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no definitive list of the duties of a stage manager that is applicable to all theaters and staging environments. Regardless of specific duties, however, the stage manager is the individual who accepts responsibility for the smooth running of rehearsals and performances, on stage and backstage.

  Laurence Sterne

  Running, Responsibility, Theatre

  4 Copy quote

• An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props, and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.

  Jeremy Irons

  Love, Age, Acting

  "Oscar, Tony, and Emmy Award-Winning Actor". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. October 27, 2000.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a kind of classlessness in the theater. The rehearsal pianist, the head carpenter, the stage manager, the star of the show-all are family.

  John Kander

  Stars, Theatre, Rehearsal

  51 Copy quote

• An interesting difference between new and experienced stage managers is that the new stage manager thinks of running the show as the most difficult and most demanding part of the job, whereas the experienced stage manager thinks of it as the most relaxing part. Perhaps the reason is that experienced stage managers have built up work habits that make then so thoroughly prepared for the production phase that they [can] sit back during performances to watch that preparation pay off.

  Laurence Sterne

  Running, Jobs, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• The staff, stage managers, ushers all behaved as if they respected the actors.

  Estelle

  Actors, Staff, Ifs

  16 Copy quote

• EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.

  Thornton Wilder

  Doe, Saint, Realize Life

  23 Copy quote

• Whether you are a writer, or an actor, or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That's what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else.

  Lee Hall

  Play, Theatre, Trying

  "Songs for a Sunderland sex-farce". Interview with Charlotte Higgin, www.theguardian.com. September 16, 2008.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Adam Rapp

  Ideas, Sometimes, Okay

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I went to drama school but it was very hard to get work until I was made assistant stage manager.

  Brian Blessed

  Drama, School, Assistants

  Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The inability to delegate is one of the biggest problems I see with managers at all levels.

  Eli Broad

  Inability, Levels, Problem

  Eli Broad (2012). “The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking”, p.42, John Wiley & Sons

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The cast, staff, and crew of a live theater work together toward a common goal: a good performance. Thus, theater is necessarily a group effort. However, it is never a group effort of vague fellow committee members, but of associated autocrats-a playwright, a producer, a director, a stage manager, designers, and, above all, actors. Each accommodates the others, and may overlap others in function when necessary. But each autocrat assumes distinct responsibilities and accepts them completely.

  Laurence Sterne

  Responsibility, Goal, Effort

  4 Copy quote

• You can't make theater happen without actors. The actor is the central ingredient in making theater happen. Audiences may come to theaters to see the work of stage managers, directors and producers, but the only people who can communicate theater magic to audiences, through ideas and emotions, are the actors. They are the only ones who can communicate this by themselves, and if necessary, they can get along without you. But you can't make theater without the actor.

  Laurence Sterne

  Ideas, People, Magic

  4 Copy quote

• I guess the story that best defines us [with Bud Yorkin] and our relationship goes back to the [Dean] Martin and [Jerry] Lewis show. The four stage managers on that show became major TV creators and directors - John Rich, Jack Smight, Arthur Penn and Bud Yorkin.

  Norman Lear

  Directors, Bud, Stories

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I dropped out in middle school. I dropped out in, towards the beginning of the ninth grade. And then I started studying -I started taking acting classes at a, well first I was like in a community theater at that time in Torrance, California, so I finished up like my season with that community theater just acting in, you know, acting in a small part on this play or a big part on that play or a stage manager or assistant stage manager in another play.

  Quentin Tarantino

  School, Class, Play

  "Quentin Tarantino: 'Inglourious' Child Of Cinema". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 28, 2009.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a writer, I am not goddess of the universes I create. I am at most a stage manager of the plentiful gifts which tumble out of the horn of plenty, which is to say there is a source so sweet and forgiving and generous that I pray every day to let that source be my guide.

  Rebecca Wells

  Sweet, Forgiving, Praying

  4 Copy quote

• I got a note from the stage manager one night that someone wanted to meet me. And it was Steven Spielberg.

  Corey Reynolds

  Night, Notes, Wanted

  4 Copy quote

• We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being. -stage manager, in the play OUR TOWN

  Thornton Wilder

  Stars, Years, Play

  Thornton Wilder (1957). “Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker”

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Play, Perfect, Actors

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pages were always supposed to be off-camera - we were supposed to be invisible. But I had a moment where I saw a kid who was ready to flip himself out of the balcony, so I ran down and grabbed him and put him back in his seat. I remember the stage manager taking me aside and saying, "Can you please never do that again? I know you were saving his life, but we have you in the shot."

  Anne Sweeney

  Kids, Saving, Down And

  Source: www.elle.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• My very first professional job was with a theatre company in 1965 and the first job they gave me was literally shovelling sh*t. I was an assistant stage manager and they told me to clear out the prop store. I opened it up and no-one had been in there for 25 years and it was inches deep in rat sh*t. So before I could get anywhere I had to clear it up. I thought, 'All these years of training, the best drama school in the world, and this is what I'm doing.'

  Martin Shaw

  Jobs, Drama, School

  Source: www.mirror.co.uk

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?

  W. G. Sebald

  Dream, Reality, Lakes

  29 Copy quote

• I dont 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 couldnt make it to the play. I didnt think anything of it.

  Glenn Ford

  Thinking, Play, Actors

  53 Copy quote