Little Shop of Horrors
In the middle of my sophomore year of college, I realized that my favorite parts about costume design and wardrobe heading were the parts that closely related to stage management. I decided to get a “secondary” in stage management which is basically a minor. Fast forward to senior year- I decided to assistant stage manage the production Little Shop of Horrors. At CCM, our assistant stage managers really function as liaisons with the various other departments. In all my previous experience, I had been the costume/wigs/makeup liaison simply because I knew the intricate details of how those departments were run. For this show, however, my best friend Clare Jaymes was the other ASM. She had previously only ever been the scenic/props liaison. We decided to switch it up a bit trading our comfortable positions. She would take on the costume/wigs/makeup departments with help from me and I would take on the scenic/props departments with help from her. In the end, we both learned how to work in unfamiliar territory while being able to help teach the other.
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Something that made this production such an invaluable experience is the director’s vision. Thom Christopher Warren was a guest director and decided to try something that would seriously push CCM’s comfort zone. He wanted to turn our Little Shop of Horrors into a “B” Horror Film. Literally. He called in his friend from New York Joe Sebring to come shoot a black and white video for our finale of the plant literally taking over the world and eating our cast. The theater design and production department does not typically work in filming. We did not have typical filming tools and we did not know how to capture the desired effect. Luckily, Joe knew how and worked with the designers, cast, and SM team to create a film. A unique thing about filming is you need to have time to edit it before you can show it to audiences. That meant that the costumes, wigs/makeup, props, and scenic had to finish their designs about three weeks early so we could have time to film. That put a heavy restraint on all design departments. As a stage manager, I was a vital link between the director/videographer and the departments about what was and was not possible. In he end, the movie came out great and I was able to get first hand film experience.
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A props list is a literal list of every single prop in the show, when it is used, who uses it, and anything else particular pertaining to the prop itself. This is the main document used to communicate between the props artisan and stage management. I created this document to keep the props department up-to-date with the latest needs of the show. It went under 10 revisions in total.
Scenic run paperwork is the main document a crew uses to run a show. Every set change and prop handoff is listed along wth where in the show it takes place, how long you have to do it, and who is assigned to each task. The crew has a couple of days of training and then they are required to make every change on the document. This paperwork was made by me and then I used it to train my five person crew.
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