The stage manager

People are doing things on and around the stage all day long. Here, the stage manager is ‘boss’. During the performance, he or she sits in the wings at a huge table covered with buttons, giving cues to everyone concerned; cueing the lighting and sound technicians, calling the soloists to the stage and ‘dropping’ the curtain. Lighting designers make increasing use of moving light, whereby the position, colour and shape of the spotlight can be controlled by computer. So placing and changing colour filters is practically a thing of the past. On the stage floor, in the fly tower, in the wings and behind the stage, the stage crew have a mammoth task in building and striking the sets, laying floors, hanging drops and flats and doing scene changes. And they have to do all of this without the audience noticing a thing.