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- FIND ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGERS. Ideally there is one ASM (counting you!) per day of the week which there is rehearsal. If rehearsals are Sun-Thu, you want 4 ASMs in addition to you. If there is not one ASM per day of rehearsal each week, then you will have to work out a rotating schedule later for doubling up on rehearsals. For IAP shows, usually there are no ASMs and you will be at every rehearsal.
- Talk to the producer to find out what times auditions will be and where they are. You are required to be at auditions to help read lines (more on this later).
- Give people audition times! At least 2-3 days before the first audition, make a schedule of who has which time slots. On their application actors will mark what times work best for them - do the best to make everyone happy (this is not always possible, though). Also, when making this schedule, communicate with the director to see how he wants to run auditions. Specifically, ask how much time he wants to give each person (typically we allot 15 minutes). When emailing out, make sure to emphasis what they need to do:
- arrive 15 minutes early
- have their completed audition contract
- have a monologue prepared (it does not need to be memorized)
- Ask the director which slides he wants printed out. Print 4 copies of each slide: one for the actor reading it, one for you, one for the director, and one for the producer. Slides are excerpts from the play used by the director to see how an actor plays specific characters. For term shows, the director may not provide monologues initially. Ask them to, and if they have none you can pull from past productions (ask the officers to pass these along to you).
- Figure out which ASM is doing which reherasal day. As soon as you havve a finalized list of ASMs, send an email asking which days they are free. Assign days to ASMs. (This can be done anytime before the first rehersal, but the earlier the better).
- Meet with the director to discuss some logistics. Some topics you need to discuss include:
- How many breaks in a rehearsal, and for how long?
- How would the director like to be reminded of time constraints?
- How should actors be corrected (lines, blocking) if they mess up?
- How should rehearsal warm-ups be done, if any? By director (or actor) at beginning of rehearsal? By each actor individually before rehearsal?
- Work with the director to create a rehearsal etiquette policy to be handed out to all actors at the first rehearsal.
- Longer or more complicated scenes need more time. Ask about length/complexity of the scenes (i.e. if scenes can be broken down into smaller rehearsal blocks). You'll ask him about scenes one final time before read through, in case he makes any changes
- Figure out when designer run and off-book date will be (!!!!!!!)
- Meet in person with all of your ASMs in order to relay any important information from the above task. Additionally, explain their roles during rehearsal and production phase. Make sure to get their phone numbers and save them in your phone.
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