How Not To Treat Your SM (or How I Have Been Treated By Some of my Crew & Cast)
Do not make fun of your SM for drinking a coffee every morning. You don’t know how much it helps to have that first warm little hug in the morning after staying up all night to work on stuff for your show.
Do not call your SM a “kiss-ass” for bringing coffee to the director. They buy us coffee, we buy them coffee. It is the great circle of show management. It’s not that big a deal. Grow up.
Do not call your SM overbearing for being picky with line notes. The majority of cues in the booth, backstage, and onstage are from lines. Paraphrasing, jumping around, and missing lines makes everyone’s job a lot harder. Just learn your lines.
Do not tell your SM they shouldn’t be nervous for the show to open. They want just as badly for the show to succeed as you do, and they put just as much work into the show as you did. It’s their show too.
Do not write on the cue sheets backstage. I don’t mean don’t write mistakes or changes on them because SMs miss things. They’re human. These kinds of changes are helpful for the SM to be able to go back and rewrite cue sheets to fit the show. But don’t doodle pictures or sign your name on them. It honestly can take hours to put together sign-in sheets, cue sheets, props lists, and music lists, and there is nothing more frustrating than putting the ghost light out while mentally going through an already huge to-do list, and passing by the call board to see that every posted piece of paperwork has been destroyed by thumbtacks and pens and needs to be replaced.
Do not back talk your SM. If they give you a line note, do not argue about it. Do not tell them that you said it correctly and that they are wrong. If the SM tells you as a crew member not to take cast members into the tech booth, do not take actors into the booth. If your SM gives the cast rules, such as staying within a designated area for rehearsal (stage, green room, dressing room, etc.) so you are available to be called on, or staying out of certain areas because they are designated for crew (tech booth, workshop, wardrobe shop,etc.) do not think that because you are their friend, these rules do not apply to you.
I DO NOT SAY THIS TO COMPLAIN! I say all this because nothing is more frustrating than coming in at 7:30 AM to do work before a 10 AM rehearsal, staying until 5:30 when everyone else went home at 4, and taking home whatever project you didn’t finish there home to work on until 2 or 3 AM, and doing the whole thing over again to be met in the ways listed above. It’s happened to me and it’s just plain exhausting. Don’t treat your SM poorly. Period.
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