Personally, I spend most of my time as A Stage Manager and so that is where my viewpoint comes from. Personally, I think a show works much better when the SM cues things. Especially, after having done a show at a professional theatre, I know that the board op often has a lot to do, especially during all of the tech runs. I have also op'd both LX and SFX and even though I wasnt cued, I can understand how people must feel having what they see as their jobs taken away from them, in part at least.
I know for a fact, that as for all of my theatres, life, the board op had been self-Qing so to speak, that when I started cueing them, there was a large amount of problems with it, and in fact the arguments havent finished yet...
But yes, on the whole all professional theatres are cued by the SM and as such, in my theatre at least, I don't really see why we shouldn't do it... especially as the board op is the one who says how professional we are!!
So basically, I think it is worth doing, but I can understand why people dont want to... after all, we're all creatures of habit aren't we??
Anyway, great topic!
I know for a fact, that as for all of my theatres, life, the board op had been self-Qing so to speak, that when I started cueing them, there was a large amount of problems with it, and in fact the arguments havent finished yet...
But yes, on the whole all professional theatres are cued by the SM and as such, in my theatre at least, I don't really see why we shouldn't do it... especially as the board op is the one who says how professional we are!!
So basically, I think it is worth doing, but I can understand why people dont want to... after all, we're all creatures of habit aren't we??
Anyway, great topic!