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 MFA PROGRAM IN STAGE MANAGEMENT
The MFA in Stage Management provides a contemporary approach for
students who wish to pursue careers as professional stage managers. The
program’s curriculum is designed to expand upon two central principles:
1. Stage managers must have portable, flexible, and scalable skill-sets that
allow them to work in a variety of arenas.
2. Modern stage management requires its practitioners to embrace the
concept of the SM as a “hybrid CEO/COO,” an executive-level
position that is at the top of any production’s organizational chart.
The coursework uses methodologies specific to commercial (Broadway) and
not-for-profit theatrical stage management as a foundation. This allows
students to build best-practices in many other areas: opera, dance, television,
and corporate events (to name a few). Courses in dramatic literature and all
aspects of theatre practice are mandatory; enrollment in relevant classes outside
the Theatre Program is encouraged. Students are expected to develop a
thorough comprehension of union regulations and theater administration, as
well as a working knowledge of various theatrical aesthetics that enhance
creative development on a production.
A major focus of the program is on leadership training: setting the tone, driving
the process, and delivering results. Current trends in workplace culture, team
dynamics, and human-resource management are actively analyzed and
discussed across all program platforms.
Classroom courses are augmented by practical experience that gives students
hands-on participation in the production process, in both academic and
professional situations. Stage management students are required to work on
departmental presentations, as well as complete at least two internships in
professional theatre. Individually designed field studies allow for the
exploration of ancillary interests in other realms of entertainment management.
Finally, the program gives students the opportunity to build contacts with
subject-matter-experts who are working at the highest industry levels; this gives
graduates a leading-edge when they enter an intensely competitive job market.
PAGE 1 SAMPLE CURRICULUM
Fall Semester – Year 1:
Introduction to Stage Management – Michael Passaro
Theatre Management & Administration I – Julie Rossi
Special Topics in Stage Management – Bonnie Panson
Seminar in Stage Management – Marybeth Abel
History and Theory of Theatre – Carol Rocamora
Spring Semester – Year 1:
Collaboration – Anne Bogart
Directing for Stage Managers – Peter Lawrence
Stage Management Seminar: Metropolitan Opera and American Ballet Theatre
– Ray Menard and Danielle Ventimiglia
Practicum: Trends in Contemporary Theater – Abigail Katz
Critical Issues in Stage Management/Focus on Contracts – Laura Brown
McKinnon
Fall Semester – Year 2:
Advanced Stage Management: Plays – Linda Marvel
Advanced Stage Management: Musicals – Ira Mont
Special Topics in Stage Management – Bonnie Panson
Field Study
Spring Semester – Year 2:
Special Topics in Stage Management – Michael Passaro
Advanced Stage Management: Next Steps – Diane DiVita
Stage Management Seminar: Metropolitan Opera and American Ballet Theatre
– Ray Menard and Danielle Ventimiglia
Additional Requirements: 2 Professional Internships; 2 to 4 Production
Assignments, including the stage management of up to two departmental thesis
productions in Year 2; Collaboration Weekend Workshop.
*Recommended Electives include Issues in the National Not-for-Profit
Theatre, Viewpoints, History and Theory of Comedy, Promotions and
Audience Development, Fundraising and Marketing, Critical Writing for the
Theatre, Budgeting and Reporting, Models of Dramatic Structure, Press,
Publicity and Audience Development, Planning a Theatrical Season.
PAGE 2 Stage Management Thesis Project: Students must satisfactorily complete a
40-page thesis in order to graduate: a position paper with a viable thesis statement
that is supported by research, experience, documented sources, and (if
applicable), interviews, statistical analysis, and exhibits. Ideally, the thesis will be
based on actual recent and practical production or work experience; however,
students may choose to write about historical, economic, and/or sociological
topics that are directly related to stage management. Traditional “prompt”
books and/or production diaries can be used as supporting documentation.
AEA Eligibility: Two stage management MFA students per year will be
eligible to join the Actors Equity Association through their participation as
stage managers for the Classic Stage Company’s Young Company production.
This production is held at CSC’s downtown venue every spring.
FACULTY
MICHAEL J. PASSARO (Adjunct Assistant Professor; Concentration
Head, Stage Management) has over twenty-five years experience as a
Production Stage Manager for theatrical productions – on Broadway,
regionally, and worldwide. He is currently the PSM for Evita, his 22nd
Broadway show. Some of his other credits include the original Broadway
productions of Starlight Express, The Will Rogers Follies, Angels in America, The
History Boys, A Steady Rain, (starring Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig), Promises
Promises (with Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth) and the recent revival of
How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying starring Daniel Radcliffe. Michael
also has significant experience as a producer of corporate events and as a
project manager for experiential environments, working for various production
companies and clients around the world. Over the past fifteen years, his
continuing work with Jack Rouse Associates includes projects for Chevron,
Novell, Dell, The Fort Worth Zoo, the NCAA “Hall of Champions” in
Indianapolis, IN and the US Open’s “Octagon Retail Store” at the Tennis
Center in Flushing-Meadows. Other production companies/clients include:
Williams-Gerard Productions (Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb), Empire
Entertainment (Disney, Pfizer), and Production Glue (Bloomberg LP). In
addition to his recent appointment at Columbia, Michael has taught at the
Graduate Program in Stage Management at the Yale School of Drama.
MARYBETH ABEL (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has had a career in the
theatrical industry marked by 30 years of consistent employment. Highlights of
her Broadway career include Production Supervisor for 10 years of all the
PAGE 3 North American companies of Les Misérables, including the Broadway
Company. B’Way credits as PSM: Wicked, Cyrano de Bergerac, Sweet Charity, La
Cage Aux Folles, Sly Fox, Fosse, Les Misérables, Five Guys Named Moe. Favorite OffBroadway shows include Under the Bridge & Adult Entertainment. Among her
favorite touring and regional credits are Cats and Guys and Dolls, The USO
Department of Defense: Best of Broadway, Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera--four
seasons, over 25 major musicals. Ms. Abel has been a guest lecturer for
numerous universities as well as The Educational Theatre Association, she has
taught with the Educational Theatre Program at NYU; and was developer and
educator of a dramatic arts program within the Archdiocese of NY. She is a
mentor to working professionals across the country. Born and raised in
Pittsburgh, PA; married 29 years; mother of a male 16 year-old high school
senior; and resides in New York.
ANNE BOGART (Professor; Concentration Head, Directing) is the
Artistic Director of the SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese
director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. Recent works with SITI include Trojan Women;
Under Construction; Antigone; Who Do You Think You Are; Radio Macbeth; Hotel
Cassiopeia; Death and the Ploughman; La Dispute; Score; bobrauschenbergamerica; Room;
War of the Worlds; Cabin Pressure; The Radio Play; Alice’s Adventures; Culture of
Desire; Bob; Going, Going, Gone; Small Lives/Big Dreams; The Medium; Noel Coward’s
Hay Fever and Private Lives; August Strindberg’s Miss Julie; and Charles Mee’s
Orestes. Operas include Carmen and I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Glimmerglass);
Nicholas and Alexandra (Los Angeles Opera), Marina: A Captive Spirit (American
Opera Projects), and Lilith and Seven Deadly Sins (New York City Opera). Bogart
is the author of four books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book, And Then,
You Act and Conversations with Anne.
LAURA BROWN MCKINNON (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has
worked on Broadway for over nine years. Starting out with Gene O’Donovan
and the technical supervision firm of Aurora Productions, she served first as
assistant to the technical supervisor and eventually worked her way up to
associate technical supervisor on over 68 Broadway productions and First
National Tours. These productions include: The Who’s Tommy, A Christmas Carol
at Madison Square Garden, The King and I, Titanic, High Society, Hamlet, An Ideal
Husband, Master Class, Stanley, Not About Nightingales, A Doll’s House, Skylight,
Judas Kiss, The Blue Room, Sideman, 1776, Closer, and Amy’s View. After six years
in the technical supervision end of theatre, she decided to go back to stage
management. Her Off-Broadway stage management credits include Chesapeake
with Mark Linn Baker at Second Stage, Hedda Gabler with Kate Burton for the
Williamstown Theatre Festival and The Unexpected Man with Alan Bates and
PAGE 4 Eileen Atkins at the Promenade Theatre. Her Broadway stage management
credits include The Price, Rose with Olympia Dukakis, 42nd Street and The Crucible
with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, as well as numerous substitute stage
manager positions all over Broadway. She is currently a lecturer in Stage
Management at the Yale School of Drama.
DIANE DIVITA (Adjunct Assistant Professor). B’way: Lombardi, Hamlet
with Jude Law, Impressionism, Coast of Utopia, Absurd Person Singular, Drowning
Crow, Ma Rainy's Black Bottom, King Hedley II, Sound of Music, How to Succeed In
Business Without Really Trying(1995 version), Dream, Broken Glass. Off-B’way:
Recently Dogfight directed by Joe Mantello at Second Stage Theatre,
Roundabout Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Company, MCC, Westport
Country Playhouse, Bay Street Theatre, plus many Regional Theatres,
throughout the country. Currently, Diane is an instructor at Yale for the thirdyear MFA Stage Managers.
ABIGAIL KATZ (Adjunct Assistant Professor) currently serves as Literary
Manager for Atlantic Theater Company. She previously held the position of
Literary Associate and Dramaturg for The Civilians, where she worked on
productions Brooklyn at Eye Level, This Beautiful City (The Vineyard Theatre)
and Paris Commune (The Public Theater). She was also Producer for Voice &
Vision, a company devoted to developing women theatre artists. Other
companies she has worked with include Classic Stage Company, New
Dramatists, Snug Harbor Productions, and the New York Musical Theatre
Festival. She has been a teaching associate/guest lecturer in theatre at Barnard
College, and has taught at The New School, PlayPenn, Playwrights Foundation,
Samuel French Institute and New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. She
also heads up the Arts Committee for the Alumni Career Task Force for The
Dalton School and serves on the New York City team for the American
Theatre Archive Project. A native New Yorker, Abigail received her MFA in
dramaturgy from Columbia University School of the Arts.
PETER LAWRENCE (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has been Associate
Director or Production Supervisor for Shrek, Spamalot, Sunset Boulevard and for
the Broadway revivals of Gypsy, Annie Get Your Gun and Man of La Mancha. Mr.
Lawrence was the Executive Producer for Miss Saigon and Les Miserables, and has
directed or re-staged the U.S. Tours of Spamalot, Social Security, Broadway Bound,
Rumors, Lost in Yonkers, Sunset Boulevard, Spamalot London, and the Asian tour of
Miss Saigon. He has originated twenty Broadway productions as Production
Stage Manager, and has taught in the Drama Departments of Transylvania
College, The University of Hawaii and Columbia University.
PAGE 5 LINDA MARVEL (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has been a Production
Stage Manager for over 22 years, managing the Broadway productions of Fela!,
33 Variations, The Little Dog Laughed and this spring’s upcoming Hands On A
Hardbody. Off-Broadway, Ms. Marvel has managed the premieres of Athol
Fugard’s The Train Driver, directed by Mr. Fugard, Eve Ensler’s Emotional
Creature, Sam Shepard’s The God of Hell and Michael Weller’s Beast as well as
productions at Second Stage, Playwrights Horizons, Signature, NYTW, MCC,
and TFANA. Her many Regional credits include productions at La Jolla
Playhouse, Long Wharf, Center Stage Baltimore, Olney Theatre and Pittsburgh
Public. Ms. Marvel is the Production Supervisor for Seven, a documentary
theatre piece about women working for human rights being performed in
Europe, Asia and the United States.
RAYMOND MENARD (Adjunct Assistant Professor) attended the New
England Conservatory of Music, Rutgers University and received a BFA from
the Pratt Institute. Early in his career he worked as a Music Supervisor for
NBC, on the staff of the Sarasota Opera and the Washington Opera and as
Staff Director and later, Artistic Administrator for the New York City Opera
where he received the Julius Rudel Award. Since 1987 he has been employed as
Stage Manager with the Metropolitan Opera and now holds the title of
Production Stage Manager. Ray has helped shepherd projects to the opera stage
directed by Franco Zeffirelli, Hal Prince, Jack O’Brien, Frank Corsaro,
Andrei Serban, Bart Sher, Robert Lepage and John Dexter among others.
Among the noted conductors with whom Ray has worked are James Levine,
Valery Gergiev, Colin Davis, Seiji Ozawa, Herbert von Karajan, Pierre Boulez
and Carlos Kleiber.
IRA MONT (Adjunct Assistant Professor) started life as an actor but has
been stage managing professionally since 1987. He is the Production Stage
Manager of the upcoming Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. His other
Broadway credits include Ghost the Musical, Relatively Speaking, the revivals of
Arcadia, La Bête, A Little Night Music and The Norman Conquests, Young
Frankenstein, The Producers (from the first day to the last), the revival of Jesus
Christ Superstar, Smokey Joe's Cafe, the revival of The Sound of Music, Disney’s
Beauty & the Beast, Sacrilege, Love! Valour! Compassion! & Cyrano - The Musical. He
has done five national tours; M. Butterfly, Catskills on Broadway, Fame - The Musical
[the 1st time], MOMIX Dance Company, and The Boys Choir of Harlem. Off Broadway credits include Full Gallop, I Do! I Do! and shows at Manhattan
Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons and the Vineyard Theatre. Around the
country, Ira has worked at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, the Cambridge
PAGE 6 Theatre Company, Theater Factory St. Louis and the summer stock circuit
(Westport, Cape & Ogunquit Playhouses). He directed Full Gallop at the
Philadelphia Theatre Company, was the Production Consultant for The Sound
of Music in Australia and was the Production Supervisor for MCC Theatre for
seven years. Ira is a past Chair of the Stage Managers’ Association and
continues to be a member. He has lectured at Yale, Rutgers and Julliard and is
an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University. He has been a
Councillor of Actors’ Equity since 1996 and is in his fourth term as the 3rd
Vice President (an office held by a Stage Manager). He is also the 1st Vice
President of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and he serves as a Trustee
of the Equity-League Pension, Health & 401k Plans. Ira is a native of Brooklyn,
NY where he still lives with his wife of 22 years, Jill Cordle (also a Broadway
stage manager), his 15 year-old daughter and his 12 year-old son. He has
appeared on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and he made his feature film
debut in The Producers, the new Mel Brooks movie musical.
BONNIE PANSON (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is presently the
Production Stage Manager for Bring It On, the Musical, now on Broadway after a
12 city USA tour. She has served as Production Supervisor or Production Stage
Manager or Stage Manager for 26 Broadway shows including Spider-man, Dance
of the Vampires, Private Lives, Blast!, Seussical, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Civil War,
Candide, On the Town, Bring in 'da Noise..., The Tempest, Kiss of the Spider Woman, She
Loves Me, Starlight Express, The Odd Couple, Merlin, Pirates of Penzance, and Tintypes.
Off-Broadway:Lucky Guy, A New Brain, Return to the Forbidden Planet.
CAROL ROCAMORA (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is a teacher,
playwright, translator and critic. Her three volumes of Anton Chekhov’s
complete translated dramatic works have been published by Smith & Kraus.
Her new play, I take your hand in mine...., based on the correspondence of
Chekhov and Olga Knipper, premiered in September 2001 at the Almeida
Theatre in London starring Paul Scofield and Irene Worth, and opened in Paris
in October 2003 at Peter Brook’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, under his
direction, starring Michel Piccoli and Natasha Parry. Dr. Rocamora has been
the recipient of the David Payne Carter Award for Teaching in Excellence at
the Tisch School of the Arts. Formerly, she was the founder and artistic
director of the Philadelphia Festival Plays at Annenberg Center. Dr.
Rocamora’s biography, Acts of Courage: Václav Havel’s Life in the Theatre, was
published in 2005. She has written about theatre for The Nation and the New
York Times, and currently contributes to The Guardian and American Theatre. She
has recently completed Rubles, a collection of original plays inspired by
Chekhov’s short stories. She is currently working on a biography of Chekhov.
PAGE 7 JULIE ROSSI (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has been the Director of
Academic Administration, Theatre at Columbia University’s School of the Arts
since 2008. Prior to Columbia, she held various positions in theatre
management including as Director of the Gaelen Center for the Arts at JCC
MetroWest, Director of Individual Giving at Manhattan Theatre Club, and
Engagement Manager of the Broadway National Tour of Fosse. She has a BA in
History of Art from Yale and an MFA in Theatre Management & Producing
from Columbia. She has taught as adjunct faculty in the MFA theatre
programs at Yale and Columbia.
DANIELLE VENTIMIGLIA (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is currently
the Production Stage Manager for American Ballet Theatre, where she has been
a stage manager since 1997. Her ABT tenure includes countless world
premieres and galas in historic opera houses and international venues,
including the Herod Atticus at the Acropolis in Athens, the new Royal Opera
House Muscat, Oman, and the National Grand Theatre in Beijing. She enjoys
working with the highest caliber of dancers, choreographers, and designers in
multiple new productions each year. In addition to ABT, she has been PSM or
Production Coordinator for several emerging choreographers, most recently
Benjamin Millepied and Christopher Wheeldon, on international tours that
included 6 world premieres and the opening night gala of the Winspear Opera
House in Dallas. In addition to stage managing, she has been instrumental in
assisting AGMA negotiations for the past several ABT contracts, and has
lectured at Hunter College and mentored and advised young stage managers for
many years.
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