Stage Management Kits

This year when I was SM-ing my school musical I gave my ASM so vitals a notepad and pencile sharpie things of that nature. I was curious isnce I would like to go into stage management proffesionally do any of you have suggestions of what I should have in my magic bag of tricks aside from the basics ?

 

Hey,

i dont have the website with me but if you email me i will give you the website, but what i tend to carry is things that will keep me entertained such as my ipod, dvd player, picture of my loved one, laptop, DUCKTAPE, SHARPIE's, and any other little thing that you can fit in a standard backpack to carry all over the place

_____________
Derek Gaul
D.M.G. Productions
[email protected]

 

My kit doubles as my office/emergency kit.
Writing materials, headache medicine, post-its, sewing kit, a few kinds of tape, bottled water and a Leatherman are usually in there.

 

Cough candies too. Nothing worse than a persistant cough in the middle of the show. Oh, and wet naps, as odd as that sounds. They come in handy.

 

Generally it is good to have some basic small office supplies as well as a small first aid kit.

 

Typically I carry around a mini-first aid kit in my SM kit as well. Then there's the usual, gaffer tape, extra batteries, pencils, paper, extra copy of the script, post its, water, money, and a sugar supply (candy, energy tablets, anything to keep the energy up). I also always have a couple extra LED lights and my leatherman always with.
Hope that helped!

 

Thanks for the tips guys

 

Thanks, I usually am pretty good about being prepared mostly because I am slightly obssesive and will wake at all hours of the morning to ready myself for rehearsal, as any good techie knows sleep is for the weak. Thanks for the tips. Any furthor comments on sm-ing feel free to post or email me!

 

sleep isn't for the weak at all, sleep is for all those boring classes......

I have combined my bag for school and my bag for tech stuff. in it right now is a flashlight, leatherman, c-wrench, a few zip ties, a gel swatch book, a microphone (my personal one that I lent to the school that i'm now taking home), an adaptor to go from headphone out to RCA, a laser pointer (to point things out to people), and a pad of paper.

in the other half I have exam review packets and my laptop and iPod..... but thats not as important...

 

Recently discovered some great additions -

chalk
china markers
scaled ruler
index cards

The chalk and markers are good for taping out floors and modifying rehearsal spaces temporarily. The china markers can also be used to mark gels if necessary. Ruler is good for figuring out groundplans, as well as drawing lines in prompt book... The index cards can be used for giving out notes at the end of reh. A choreographer I worked with used to write a single note on a card (he went through tons of these things) and at the end of the night he would give each person a stack of cards. This made things move along nicely - no one wants to sit at the end of reh listening to notes when you can get them in a nice simple format. The actors discovered that they could even clip the notes to the pages of the script they applied to, so they could study them outside of reh!

 

I really like the idea of note cards especially when working with people your own age as a student people might not react so terribly to criticismn if it was given so that no one else heard it less embarassing and what not.! Thanks

 

Giving out actors notes at the end of the rehearsal is also more personal. And they're less likely to forget because it's written down as well. That's something I kind of overlooked because I'm so used to doing it that I forget that others don't. :?

 

Don't forget tums, tissues, safety pins, electrical tape, flash light, three extra copies of the script, bobby pins and my ever faithful holy water
DramaMom