Stage Manager

 

Current

  • Company Stage Manager at Ballet Hispánico

My Management Philosophy

  • Set a tone in the room that is focused, lively, and safe, and keep things moving.

  • Based on the specific production, read the room and focus on the production’s needs moment to moment.

  • Anticipate the needs of the production and support my fellow artists the best that I can.

  • Be proactive and use my best judgement.

  • Maintain constant open lines of communication and relay changes and important information as they occur.

  • The littlest details are important, and know that I’m not above sweeping the floor, making coffee, sharpening pencils, etc.

  • Understand that the Arts is a highly emotional career path, and people carry the weight of what’s happening in the world with them to the rehearsal room.

  • When emotions are running high and team members may be stressed, do my best to take nothing personally and keep things moving forward while leading with empathy.

  • Live performance is unpredictable. Be ready to “ride the wave.”

  • Learn something new about myself and my job on every production.

  • Support my SM friends and keep competition to the side.

What goes through my mind calling Jesus Christ Superstar

Scroll to view my journey into Stage Management

Music

Music has always been my main motivator in life and in my career. It fuels me and inspires me. Not only has being able to read music helped me countless times in stage management, but it also led me to theatre. I was lucky to have patient parents who allowed me to make noise throughout the house with my guitar, saxophone, flute piccolo and singing. I also had an excellent flute instructor, Becky Neal, who encouraged my Broadway rabbit holes. I collected flute sheet music from Wicked, Phantom, Les Mis, Disney and Harry Potter, which furthered my obsession with Broadway and led me to participate in high school theatre.

High School Theatre

Like many theatre artists, I landed in the performing arts by acting in high school theatre. I knew that acting wouldn’t be my path, but I wanted to be involved in the process of live performance somehow. I decided I needed to learn as much about theatre as I could, so I applied for an internship at the newly built performing arts center in my hometown.

Internship at the CCPA

The Coralville Center for the Performing Arts is where I fell in love with the backstage, and where I first heard of stage management. From working at the CCPA, I cultivated relationships with local community theaters who graciously taught me the ropes of stage management and helped me get started.

A lighting designer that I worked with at the CCPA, Jeff Crone, said “I think you’d be a good stage manager.” I didn’t know what a stage manager was, but I thought I would be good at it too.

Community Theatre

I will forever be grateful for the community theaters in Iowa City. It’s where I tried stage management for the first time with no experience. I met people who inspired me and taught me to be a stronger stage manager, and planted the seeds for long-term working relationships. I started as an ASM and quickly moved up to PSM. Looking back, I was an incredibly flawed and power-hungry stage manager, but community theatre provided me a space to fail safely.

UIOWA

Working in local theaters proved to me that there was no question I wanted to study stage management in college. With the connections I made with local theaters, I decided it was best to stay in the Iowa City area. Over my 4 years of undergrad, I worked with some of the strongest stage managers I’ve ever met - most notably the current Head of Stage Management at UIOWA, Melissa Turner. With the guidance from Melissa and my classmates, I was able to set and achieve long-term goals. I worked my way up from smaller productions within the university, to being PSM for a mainstage production, which was not a task that was often assigned to undergraduate stage managers.

Travel

It has always been a huge goal of mine to work internationally, so I made sure it would happen by registering for internship study abroad program at UIOWA. I know, I know, no one wants to hear about my sTuDy AbRoAd, but living and working in London was life changing. With Dash Arts, I gained the skillset to adapt to my environment and work in new cultures. While abroad, I capitalized on the opportunity to explore the theatrical history I had been learning about in my classes at UIOWA, and made visits to Athens, Paris, and Edinburgh.

Working Retail

During college, I worked at two local businesses - Plato’s Closet and Once Upon a Child. Both of them thrift stores, it was my job to look through people’s clothing, shoes, accessories, and even toys, books and baby equipment, to decide what we wanted to purchase from sellers and resell at the store. This job taught me a lot about empathy and choosing my words carefully. You never know what someone may be going through, or why they might be trying to sell their clothes - changes in body image, financial need, or even loss of a loved one…I also loved working for a local business led by a family in the community.Their support of me meant everything when I eventually left my hometown and moved to NY.

Final Year at UIOWA

My final year of undergrad I pushed myself more than ever. I achieved my long-term goal of SMing a mainstage production at the university (a goal I set early on in my freshman year), and worked with new local theaters, all while balancing schoolwork. In hindsight, without the pandemic, I probably would have burnt out, but my senior year of college was an effective segue from the educational to the professional world.

COVID

Like many in the industry at the time, the pandemic made me reconsider my entire career path. The timing of the pandemic felt very personal, as I was just about to complete my theatre degree and move to a place with more theatrical opportunities. For the next 18 months, I continued working retail, and saved as much money as I could. Things didn’t stay glum for too long - in summer of 2020, I started dating my partner, Toby, and a few months later, I adopted my dog, Rosco.

Juilliard

Early in the pandemic, I somehow remained hopeful and kept applying to stage management jobs all over the country. I received rejection letters from every single one of them except Juilliard. At Juilliard, I got to explore other art forms, such as dance and opera, which I had barely touched before. There I met incredible artists, worked on a production scale I never thought I would, strengthened my stage management philosophy, and got my first taste of working in NYC.

Freelance in NYC

Since Juilliard, I’ve been freelancing throughout New York. I enjoy freelancing because I get to meet tons of new people, and work on many different projects. I’m pleased that I’ve already fulfilled some of my career goals including touring with a Broadway musical and working internationally.

I’ve found myself mainly on a dance stage management path, though I’m focused on returning to theatre, opera, and anything else that might come my way. Music continues to be my main motivator in the arts and music-based art forms is where I thrive.

Being the Company Stage Manager for Ballet Hispánico has been an enlightening experience. I’ve learned how important it is to serve as part of a larger mission and learn as much as I can about other cultures. Being with a company for a marathon rather than a sprint has also allowed me to strengthen my role as a stage manager.

My dog, cat, and partner, Toby, are the perfect companions through this hectic career, and my main goal is to give them the best life they can have. I’m excited to continue building my community and work on more projects. I’m still finding the balance between work and life but try to focus on my priorities.

Click below to view my resume