On “Love for the Techies Day," production stage manager Jason Bassett calls the cues while Lin-Manuel and the company perform “Ten Duel Commandments” (without the dual turntables).
is hamilton so fucking perfect that they actually acknoledge and show appreciation for the tech crew? as someone who has spent high school backstage on sound, fuck yeah.
I actually run the crew at my local middle school. (our production of grease had 2 1/3 turn tables that we had to load from under a 3 foot platform -not fun btw..., a garage door, a full size foam car on casters, two hinged walls on either side of the side of the proscenium and at least 4 flown items) This whole thing, including the fly's were run by 8 6th-8th grade students with me supervising. I am proud to say the actors and the shows producers recognize the work done by the crew, the builders and the technical crew. It makes me sad when I hear of theaters where the tech crew does not get recognized so good on these guys!
+Camille Lombard my brother started as an actor and went into tech a few years later, he's now a stage manager and lighting designer (does lighting, sound or stage management depending on where he's needed) I wouldn't exactly call him shy, he's gone on stage in drag more than once :p
Lic021 haha that's fair! The previous tech manager in my theatre was also an actress and she was amazing on stage, but most or us techies would never go on stage :D
+burningphoenix36 hey go to hamiltonbroadway.com and they have the official ones, you can buy them online or at the show if you go, but those are all around $40. there are some cool ones on redbubble that aren't official designs, but they have shirts that Lin and the rest of the cast has bougjt
There's a show on the West End (I can't remember which one) which has 750 lighting cues throughout (it's a musical). That's considered a low amount...If this number has 23 alone....I don't even want to know how many are across the entire show...
I am so glad this exists. So many people have absolutely no clue what it is we stage managers do during rehearsal and performances. Now I can point them to this video, which has a brilliant stage manager showing us all up by calling cues - notice that he starts at LQ 450? And that he's calling a new cue every few seconds? This man is badass!
+QuikVidGuy Yes, exactly! Each cue is numbered, usually starting at 1. However, in some instances like dance concerts or musicals, you might start in Cue 101 and then start the next song at Cue 201, and so on. It's a way of organizing - cues go in order but you can skip numbers, if that makes sense.
i did a school production of peter pan and was stage manger along with another girl and we didn't get mentioned in the 'thankyous' in the last performance
As a person who does theatre, I would just like to thank any and every person who does any sort of backstage work for any shows. Us actors and actresses may memorise the lines and "put on" the show, but the crew is the reason the show goes on in the first place. Without crew there's no lights, no sound. There's no set if the crew sets the set. Sometimes people miss their queues because the crew makes sure that people are where they need to be. Every little thing that isn't a person onstage is crew and that's pretty damn amazing.
yep I agree! I’m not doing big performances at the moment and I haven’t done theatre in 2 years and 3 months (I’ve been counting because u miss it) but I have experience on it all so I totally agree with this! I wish everyone got credit at the end of all shows☺️
+Francis Carbone Ugh. I know, right? Everything, EVERYTHING they do just screams "we LOVE live theatre, and we want you to love it, too". So inspiring!
"If he doesn't say go at exactly the right time, we fly off the stage!" **crowd laughs** That's not funny. I'm a little horrified. He's totally right, those turntables are actually a very dangerous and very complicated bit of machinery and have to be called perfectly. If anything goes wrong, they could cause very serious problems. There's so much that goes on behind scenes that people don't understand. And when you have big, intense numbers like this, THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON ON THOSE HEADSETS. I wish more shows did something to make techies' jobs more known and their importance more known.
They are extremely dangerous and temperamental. I worked as a techie assistant/apprentice and one day during rehearsal the turntable desided to break by stopping and then suddenly lurching and throwing everyone on it off. from where we operate we can't see much of the stage so we just listen over the radio for cues so we did know that it wasn't working and just heard the panic from the cast. After this we got a bigger window which did help prevent some accidents.
Got to love revolves and automation. The Hamilton donut has some stupidly fast automation cues. The automation I opped in town was a serious speed donut and it can easily go very wrong with someone out of step....
Yep this facts right there. I’m only 13 but I’ve worked on turntables before for a production of Aladdin in front of 200 people! (The biggest crowd I’ve performed in front of) Obviously it wasn’t a huge crowd or huge musical as there’s as we were only kids at the time (11 and 12 year olds) but we were so scared to have to dance, act and sing while those turntables were moving because ANYTHING could go wrong like you’ve said and it’s absolutely terrifying! And on top of that during our performance we did a whole new world which meant we had a “magic carpet” so there was a lot of dangerous tech on that stage and a lot of people watching so it’s scary because we don’t want to get hurt but we also don’t want the audience and our family and friends witnessing it! so yeah😂
The crazy woman flailing her arms while ruining across the performance and kissing her ticket then running back pushing actors out of the way......yeah I wanna duel her.
tbh this is probably one of my favorite ham4hams besides the ladies of hamilton bc 1- They all look so adorable 2- ANTHONY RAMOS 3- ITS TEN DUEL COMMANDMENTS
As someone who does tech I can vouch for the “techies are shy” comment. Getting that guy to stand in front of a crowd is probably the hardest sell Lin Manuel Miranda will ever endure.
This was the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. As someone who wants to go into stage management, this was super cool. Seeing him call the cues during their performance gave me chills and put a silly grin on my face.
The whole time, I was terrified people were gonna run into each other. I've seen people try to do big choreography in a cramped setting, and it's not pretty. A few times, you can see Anthony actually stop mid-step because he's about to hit a company member. Lol
I think she was just trying to get through as fast as she could, she was obviously dropping something off for someone at the lotto booth. She was just a little flustered, and she looked embarrassed to be doing it.
+Gretchen Guimarin She was trying to get her name into the lotto. Honestly it just seems rude. Kind of feels like she just wants to go to a popular Broadway show rather than actually appreciate the performance, seeing as she paid no attention to the one being given by literally the entire OBC.
As a stage manager myself, this brought me a lot of joy. We are shy, that's why we stay out of the lights, but it's great to be appreciated, especially with a cue set this grand.
I see Oak and Pippa and Renee and Jasmine, where was Daveed?! I love that they put all this effort in to figure out a performance without their usual setup just to give props to the guy who has one of the most important jobs that no one knows about. Also, Anthony is an angel. There are very few celebs that I think could make me completely freak out if I were to meet them in person, but I'm pretty sure he's one of those few.
I have so much more respect for this cast after realizing this performance was in the midst of some messy and heavy arguing over compensation. The actors weren’t all necessarily getting along, they felt undervalued, and yet they still all performed for free with smiles on their faces.
As someone who's on tech crew and costume department at my school, I very much appreciate that they show appreciation for us that do all the behind-the-scenes work. We are the kind of people that typically get ignored so it's nice to get recognition
The “Most disputes die and no one shoots” give me so much serotonin. THE CHORDS ARE SO SEXY BRO WTF IT GIVES ME CHILLS I’m literally bouncing rn ohmygod
I’m onstage in my middle schools productions and I never knew that our lights people did so much. Our stage manager just gets us being the curtain in the right times and stuff. Our people in the light and sound booth do so much that you don’t even know some times. Being backstage is just as important
Me, an aspiring stage manager, being proud of myself at being able to understand the cues. (I have stage managed three shows but that was two school shows and an amateur panto, which we did cues differently because our kit isn’t as good and we have considerably less cues, I was mainly just telling them when the stage was ready for the lights to go up and music start and they went from there. So I only cued them in scene changes. Also, I’m 15 and first started tech when I was 12 because I used to dance in the shows but developed stage fright and feel safer backstage in the dark. So yes, I went from performing and having an okay amount of confidence to becoming shy and anxious and invisible.)
Shout out 2 hamilton for acknowledging every member who has helped with the shows success including those BEHIND the stage as well as those performing ON the stage!
As a techie and (hopefully) future SM on broadway this legit made me cry. It's amazing that they brought attention to the amazing work of stage managers! This isn't easy and like Lin said it has to be done perfect every night. Thank you thank you thank you. It was also just amazing to hear him call it.
Fandom Child We only have Pantomimes like Cinderella and they are usually quite bad and tacky. I wish they'd replicate good plays like Book of Mormon or Hamilton but the drama department doesn't have any budget. I know the school down the road that my friend goes to does awesome school plays.
I am shaking while watching this because 1) AH I LOVE THIS 2) I'm stage manager in our elementary/middle school talent show so YEET, RECOGNITION!! 3) that sunglasses exchange 4) everything about this!
The DSM/SM has so much power. It's great. Personally I love being on the fly floor and listening over cans to "Fly 1 stand-bye" Me: "Standing By" "Fly go" Me: Lowers/hoists the thing. The physicality of flying is just really nice. Plus you get a great view :D
