I used to be a Stage Manager. I may yet do it again if I have the energy. I still love theatre though I have less patience for it.

My small family were all in show business. My mum was a triple threat: dancer, singer, and actress. My brother went to the same stage school as my mum, but he gave up acting soon after he left and became a successful agent. My stepfather is an actor. My Godfather was an agent. My first wife was a dancer. My second wife is an actress.

I dotted around from job to job but was always around theatre. I worked on crews in the West End for many years on shows like 42nd Street, Brigadoon, Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera, and a few others. I really loved crewing. Terrible money, but an amazing lifestyle. We “worked” for about 3 hours a day, and it wasn’t really work. We just had to hang around the stage, move heavy things every so often while keeping quiet, and wear black. We often failed to do most of those tasks. We were always too loud, forgot our dark clothes (our “blacks”), and the sets were never that heavy. We’d also miss cues all the time and cover for each other. Being crew was a wonderful job and one of the best times of my life. I still miss it and miss my friends from back then. It’s also one of the few times in my life I’ve worked in a testosterone heavy male environment and felt comfortable. I’m not sure if it was just my age, but I’ve always preferred the company of women or gentle men, but when I was working on stage crews that was never an issue. Perhaps the mix of sexualities and carefree attitudes that comes with theatre tames even the butchest among the male species. I worked with men that if not for theatre would be serving hate crime time, but thanks to being on a stage crew will happily share a pint with headliner drag-queen Betty Swallows - as long as they’re buying.

Most of my time as crew was spent drinking at the Nell of Old Drury pub (or the Opera Tavern if we were desperate), playing table tennis in the green room, watching the footy on a 28-inch color TV, playing pool on a torn up old mini snooker table, or playing cards between cues while the show was running. On Thursday night we’d get paid - a brown envelope with about £100 in it that was supposed to last all week but usually made it to Sunday if I stretched it. The weekend was spent going to raves or clubs, taking drugs, occasionally eating (depending on the drug of choice), and rarely, sleeping.

At some point, it dawned on me that I wanted to do this forever, but I couldn’t sustain that on a mostly empty brown envelope. I needed a more official title than just “crew”. I became aware that some of the techies backstage had offices. Most of the people in theatre offices were chubby and smelled funny, but there were a few that drank wine instead of beer and were good at pretending to be adults. Although they did seem to mostly be lesbians, there were a few disappointed men among them, and judging by the lack of holes in their shoes, they were getting paid more than a pittance.

The Stage Managers.

I liked them. Specifically, I liked the women and the gay men. I felt comfortable in my own skin around them. They seemed to be okay with me being irritating and juvenile. None of them felt the need to bully me or had any inclination to flex their power in front of me. The women either found me funny or didn’t see me as a threat, and the gay men flirted with me, or we had a connection because I had been mostly raised by a gay man, or they too didn’t see me as a threat. I couldn’t say the same about the straight men in Stage Management. They were pretty much the same as I’d come to find as outside theatre - impatient, aggressive, chaotic, irascible. Fortunately, there weren’t a lot of straight men in Stage Management and that fit me just right.

I ended up studying Stage Management at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It was a great college that I under-utilized. My issue with being unable to accept the value of mentorship held me back, but I still learned a tremendous amount despite my educational shortcomings. The school performed admirably with me, better than I deserved, and somehow their teaching stuck. To this day I know how to cleat a flat, sew a zipper, set props and run check lists, take shorthand blocking notes, and how to make a cast feel like everything is under control when the set is quite literally on fire (which once happened at the Players Theatre and THIS is the first time I have mentioned it). I got close to getting kicked out of college a few times, mostly for trying to make the wrong people laugh because I don’t know when to shut up. I almost dropped out once until my brother told me that I need to complete one thing at least once in my life. Somehow, I graduated (I think - I actually don’t remember how college ended) and went out into the world to get paid £105 per week.

I started worked in small theatres around London. I did lots of fringe stuff, and a few festivals. Several jobs didn’t pay me until I went knocking on doors, threatening to beat people up if they didn’t hand over the cash. This must have been laughable as at no point have I ever looked or sounded even remotely capable of violence, but we’re all capable of dramatic turns when the rent’s due. I also used to hang out with some genuinely rough people so maybe I picked up a few I savory turns of phrases. I checked “The Stage” for work, signed on to the dole when nothing came up, or worked part time jobs in between gigs.

I had a couple of temporary Assistant Stage Manager jobs in the West End but nothing permanent - until I got a full-time Stage Management job at the Bush Theatre. The artistic director at the time was Dominic Dromgoole, an excellent director who went on to run the Globe Theatre. I believe I managed to irritate him at some point as well. I can’t remember exactly what I did, I just I have a feeling that if I ever meet him again, I probably owe him an apology. I have that feeling with a lot of people from my past. Maybe that’s just living.

I worked at the Bush when they put on the Wexford Trilogy, three utterly spectacular plays by Billy Roche that made me want to write plays. I had written before, but without any focus or purpose. After seeing “A Handful of Stars”, I realized I wanted to write a play. The production had an all-star cast too - in a tiny 99-seat theatre in Shepherd’s Bush. I was an ASM on the trilogy, helping set up between shows. They would rotate between the three productions, and then on Saturdays perform all three in one day, one after the other. A remarkable event.

I went on to stage manage other shows at other theatres. I stage managed a tour of “Mother Courage” with the national theatre education department. I wasn’t well suited for the role; the deputy stage manager should have been in charge (I can’t remember why I got it and not her). The tour made a lot of memories, and I discovered many loves on the road: Tom Waites thanks to a lounge pianist in a hotel in Belfast and Taj Mahal thanks to a lady who somehow not only knew him, but had jammed with him, in her house, where I sat, in her tiny cottage in Kendal, Cumbria.

I did a few shows in the West End again and ended up working on “She Loves Me”, which turned out to be my last show in the UK before I emigrated to the States in ’96.

It feels like I did so much in the eight years before I left England, and have done so little since in comparison - though of course that isn’t true. I’ve had two other entire careers since I moved to America and am just starting out on my third, but every second of one’s youth feels like a lifetime.

Now I find myself writing once again, hoping to write a play even half as good as that vibrant, electric wonder that poured out of Billy Roche all those years ago. I have read it again in the intervening years. It’s still wonderful, and it’s hard to explain why it leaps off the page, but it does. You can feel everything Roche felt in every line. It’s bold and raw and honest. I don’t know if it holds up and I don’t care. It’s what I want my writing to be.

I have no idea what that has to do with Stage Management, but I was a Stage Manager when the play came into my life. Not every story ties up in a bow, you know.

Stage Damagement