Posted: 4/24/16 at 10:57pm
This should be a thing. Stage managers are the actors of the backstage
Posted: 4/24/16 at 11:13pm
How would you evaluate the stage managers? Who would vote? What would the criteria be? Would they observe them backstage during a show? Because there's absolutely no room/space for people to be traipsing around backstage during a performance. Not to mention at a lot of the "big" shows it could be extremely unsafe with all of the moving parts.
Posted: 4/24/16 at 11:15pm
Stage managers are responsible for cueing. You can see how good the cues are
Posted: 4/24/16 at 11:19pm
Cues are almost never missed. You would need to attend multiple performances over long periods of time to even see a missed cue.
Posted: 4/24/16 at 11:27pm
Tony Awards generally measure the creative contributions made in different categories of the theatre. Stage managers, while vitally important (I can't believe I even need to state how important they are), are contributing more of a technical craft than a creative input. Stage managers deserve as much praise as possible, but to have a Tony category for them fundamentally makes zero sense.
Posted: 4/24/16 at 11:40pm
SMs are responsible for much more than cues. They are the the glue that holds the whole production together from before the first rehearsal until after strike. They understand, interpret, support and execute the work of the designers, performers, and directors; create the schedules for the various crews and rehearsals and keep everyone on schedule; juggle house emergencies, prop emergencies, scenic emergiencies, costume emergencies, skipped pages during a performance; they run understudy rehearsals and put-ins, deal with various union issues and on and on. The cues are the least of it.
Posted: 4/24/16 at 11:44pm
The problem is that the only people who are really in a position to vote on the best stage managers are the ones onstage, backstage, and working in the show's management, not the Tony voters.
Posted: 4/24/16 at 11:58pm
There are voters who work onstage, backstage and in management. The problem is that, unless you've been intimately involved in a production from the outset, you'd have no basis on which to judge the job the SM had done. And obviously the voters can't all be thus involved in every production of the season. A more viable idea would be an award for Props Master, whose work you can actually see onstage and evaluate.
Posted: 4/25/16 at 12:21am
Wilmingtom said: "There are voters who work onstage, backstage and in management. The problem is that, unless you've been intimately involved in a production from the outset, you'd have no basis on which to judge the job the SM had done. "
And they'd only be in a position to judge the stage managers on whatever shows they worked on themselves that season. It's not something you can see from the outside, unless something fails spectacularly.
Posted: 4/25/16 at 12:25am
Plus, there isn't always one person who calls a show if you want to solely base it on cueing (which is totally incorrect as mentioned in previous posts). For short runs, PSMs could conceivably call a large number of shows. However, take a show like Wicked, Marybeth Abel does not call every show. Her SMs call some of them. Tripp Phillips at AGGLAM didn't call all the shows either. So in short, just awarding a PSM wouldn't be enough. You would have to award their entire team - the PSM, SMs, ASMs, and PAs.
All that being said, Ken Davenport tried to give out awards one year for the "unseen" jobs - and never did it again from what I can tell. https://www.theproducersperspective.com/my_weblog/2014/04/announcing-the-first-ever-ghostlight-awards-for-the-people-behind-the-curtain.html
Updated On: 4/25/16 at 12:25 AM
Posted: 4/25/16 at 12:55am
They gave a special Tony to Peter Lawrence in 2013 for his 30+ years as a Broadway PSM, as they have variously to other non-category artists like hair designer Paul Huntley, Johnson-Liff Casting, Nancy Coyne, Martha Swope, even Vincent Sardi.
