Stage Management Day

Matthew Hemley reported in The Stage that the Stage Management Association is organising a Stage Management day on October the 10^th; a day all about recognising and celebrating the work that Stage Managers do. Theatres are planning their own events; some are putting slips into the programmes recognising the crew members, inviting them into the curtain call or allowing them to take over the social media sites. He said;

“We have felt for a while that there ought to be some way of recognising the work backstage people do, and particularly what stage managers do.”

I thought this was amazing news as it gives a chance to show the general public what we do and how hard we work. There’s hope that it may come an annual event which would hopefully spread it further afield, and I would love to plan something myself if this happened.

However what about all the rest of the technical team; lighting, sound, set, costume, you get the general idea. Will they ever get recognition from the general public? They deserve it just as much as we do, after all theatre is about working together, and most people skip past the production credits in the programme without even a second glance.

I want to know your views; Do the technical team get enough credit for their role in a show? And expanding on that do majority of the cast get another credit? Will events like these help? I’m still undecided.