Download Theatre Stage Management Concentration brochure 111110a

CO L UM B IA UNI VERS I T Y S CHOO L OF TH E ARTS
T H E AT R E A R T S
M FA P R O G R A M I N S TA G E M A N A G E M E N T
The MFA in stage management is for students who wish to pursue careers in the theatre as
professional stage managers. The curriculum focuses on the skills specific to theatrical stage
management, but practical classes and contact with guest lecturers expose students to all arenas
available to a stage manager, including opera and dance. Students are expected to develop expertise
in rehearsal and performance practices and thorough comprehension of union regulations and
theatrical venues. They are required to develop a working knowledge of all aspects of the theatrical
aesthetic, and of the understanding necessary to enhance creative development on a production. To
that end, students take courses in dramatic literature and all aspects of theatre practice and are
encouraged to take relevant courses outside the Theatre Arts Program. Classroom courses are
augmented by practical course work that allows students to observe and participate in the
production process, both in academic and nonacademic situations. Stage management students are
required to participate in program events both in management and production positions, as well as
complete two internships in professional theatre.
SAMPLE CURRICULUM
Fall Semester – Year 1:
Introduction to Stage Management – Ruth Kreshka
Visiting Directors – Anne Bogart
Theatre Management & Administration I – Steven Chaikelson
Approaches to Stage Directing – Peter Lawrence
History and Theory of Theatre – Carol Rocamora
Spring Semester – Year 1:
Collaboration – Anne Bogart
Stage Management Seminar – Ruth Kreshka
Theatre Management & Administration II - Steven Chaikelson
20th Century Theatre – Christian Parker
Visiting Production Professionals – Roy Harris
Elective*
Fall Semester – Year 2:
Production/Tech Management – Gene O’Donovan and Peter Lawrence
Visiting Directors – Anne Bogart
Rehearsal and Production – Tom Kelly
Current Issues in Stage Management (Focus on the Straight Play) – Roy Harris
Elective*
1
a r ts .c olum b i a .edu
CO L UM B IA UNI VERS I T Y S CHOO L OF TH E ARTS
T H E AT R E A R T S
Spring Semester – Year 2:
Advanced Stage Management I (Focus on Opera) – Raymond Menard
Advanced Stage Management II (Focus on the Broadway Musical) - Ira Mont
Stage Management Seminar – Ruth Kreshka
Visiting Production Professionals – Roy Harris
Elective*
Year 3
Thesis and Internships
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.
Stage Management Thesis Project
Generally stage management students participate in a non-academic production, season, or tour.
Based on a journal of their experience, they complete a 25-page paper and present their production
book.
2
a r ts .c olum b i a .edu
CO L UM B IA UNI VERS I T Y S CHOO L OF TH E ARTS
T H E AT R E A R T S
STAGE MANAGEMENT FACULTY
RUTH KRESHKA (Director of Production; Concentration Head, Stage Management) feels graced
to have been able to help bring the words and works of Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaikin, Eugene Lee,
Beth Henley, George Walker, John Patrick Shanley, David Henry Hwang, Reinaldo Povod, Adrian Hall,
Truman Capote, Samuel Beckett and many others to the New York community. With Columbia since
1998, she is currently Director of Production and advises the Stage Management MFA students.
ANNE BOGART (Professor; Concentration Head, Directing) is the Artistic Director of the SITI
Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is the recipient of
two Obie Awards, a Bessie Award, a USA Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, and a Guggenheim
Fellowship. Recent works with SITI include Under Construction; 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 2.0. Operas include 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 three books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book
and And Then, You Act.
STEVEN CHAIKELSON (Associate Professor; Concentration Head, Theatre Management &
Producing). For the past eight years, Chaikelson has served as Concentration Head of the Theatre
Management & Producing Program. He is a member of the theatre faculty in the School of the Arts
and in the undergraduate theatre program at Barnard College. General management credits include
shows on and off-Broadway and around the United States: Evil Dead The Musical, Ring of Fire, Elaine
Stritch At Liberty, The Normal Heart, Private Jokes, Public Places (which he also produced), Harlem Song,
A Moon for the Misbegotten (starring Gabriel Byrne and Cherry Jones), The Price, Death of a Salesman
(Broadway and Showtime productions, starring Brian Dennehy), Fool Moon (Broadway 1995,
Broadway 1998, Kennedy Center 1999, etc.), Freak, Julia Sweeney's God Said Ha!, and the Los
Angeles productions of The Vagina Monologues and Fully Committed.
ROY HARRIS (Adjunct Assistant Professor). Broadway credits include: Rabbit Hole, After the Night
and the Music, Brooklyn Boy, Sight Unseen, The Retreat from Moscow, Morning’s at Seven, Wendy
Wasserstein’s An American Daughter and The Sisters Rosensweig, and O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, all
directed by Daniel Sullivan and the last four produced by Lincoln Center Theater; Twelve Angry Men
directed by Scott Ellis and An Almost Holy Picture directed by Michael Mayer (Roundabout); A Moon
for the Misbegotten and The Heidi Chronicles. Off-Broadway credits include: Gurney’s Sylvia and
Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain (MTC); Wendy Wasserstein’s Third, Jon Robin Baitz’s Ten Unknowns
(LCT); and many more. Author of Conversations in the Wings, Eight Women of the American Stage, and
most recently More Recipes & Reminiscence, a Celebration of My Friends in the Theatre.
3
a r ts .c olum b i a .edu
CO L UM B IA UNI VERS I T Y S CHOO L OF TH E ARTS
T H E AT R E A R T S
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.
TOM KELLY (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has been a professional stage manager for more than
thirty years, calling shows on Broadway and at Lincoln Center, at the Lyric Opera in Chicago and at
the Houston Grand Opera, at the New York City and Milwaukee ballets, and at major media and
cultural events around the country. He is the General/Production Manager for Center Line Studios, a
production services company, and teaches stage management at Rutgers University and Columbia
University. He lives in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
RAYMOND MENARD (Adjunct Assistant Professor) attended the New England Conservatory of
Music, Rutgers University and received a B.F.A. 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) has been stage-managing since 1987. His other
Broadway credits include the entire run of The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Jesus Christ Superstar,
Smokey Joe’s, The Sound of Music, Beauty & the Beast, Sacrilege, Love! Valour! Compassion! and CyranoThe Musical. His national tours include M. Butterfly, Catskills on Broadway, Fame-The Musical (the first
time), MOMIX, and the Boys Choir of Harlem. He has stage managed Off-Broadway at MTC,
Playwrights Horizons, and Vineyard; regionally at Pittsburgh Public, Cambridge Theatre Company,
Theater Factory St. Louis, and Westport, Cape, and Ogunquit Playhouses. Mont has directed Full
Gallop at the Philadelphia Theatre Company, been the production consultant for The Sound of Music
in Australia, and was production supervisor for MCC for seven years. In addition to being a vice
president of BC/EFA, he has served as chair of the Stage Managers’ Association. Mont has been a
councilor of AEA since 1996 and is currently third vice president (office held by a stage manager).
He is a native of Brooklyn, New York, where he still lives with his wife, Jill Cordle (also a Broadway
stage manager), 10-year-old daughter, and 6-year-old son. He has appeared on HBO’s Curb Your
Enthusiasm and he made his feature film debut in The Producers, the Mel Brooks movie musical.
4
a r ts .c olum b i a .edu
CO L UM B IA UNI VERS I T Y S CHOO L OF TH E ARTS
T H E AT R E A R T S
EUGENE O’DONOVAN (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the president of Aurora Productions in
New York City. Aurora is a production management company for the entertainment industry. Recent
projects include Shrek, Rock and Roll, 39 Steps, Spamalot (Broadway, Tour, London, Las Vegas,
Australia), Doubt (Broadway, Tour), Frost/Nixon, Year of Magical Thinking, and Deuce. Over the past
thirteen years, Gene has been the production manager for more than 100 Broadway productions and
associated tours as well as numerous Off-Broadway and corporate theatre events. He was the
founder and president of Hudson Scenic Studio.
CHRISTIAN PARKER (Assistant Professor; Concentration Head, Dramaturgy) is the Associate
Artistic Director at the Atlantic Theater Company, where he has worked since the fall of 2001. Most
recently at the Atlantic, he directed the world premiere of Leslie Ayvazian’s Make Me and the New
York premiere of Tina Howe’s play Birth and After Birth. He produced, directed, and acted in 10X20, a
festival of newly commissioned ten-minute plays by writers previously produced at Atlantic, to
inaugurate their new Stage 2 and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the company. Also at the Atlantic,
he directed Ken Weitzman’s Arrangements and Jeff Whitty’s The Hiding Place. Prior to his tenure at
the Atlantic, he spent several seasons as the Literary Manager at Manhattan Theatre Club. Christian
has also produced or dramaturged over fifty premieres of new American and British plays on, off and
off-off Broadway. He is fluent in Russian and is part of the national artistic advisory board for the
CITD New Russian Plays initiative. He has worked as well with Sundance Theatre Labs, The Lark Play
Development Center, Bread Loaf, and at Perry-Mansfield developing new plays. He holds a BA from
Middlebury College and an MFA from Columbia.
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.
5
a r ts .c olum b i a .edu
CO L UM B IA UNI VERS I T Y S CHOO L OF TH E ARTS
T H E AT R E A R T S
SELECTED ALUMNI ACCOMPLISHMENTS
FRED HEMMINGER (’06), Assistant Company Manager, Disney Theatrical Productions, The Lion
King.
BARBARA KIELHOFER (’08), Production Manager, T. Schreiber Studio.
ERIN KOSTER (’07) and MOLLY EUSTIS (’07), Stage Management team on Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando at
Classic Stage Company.
JAMIE KRANZ (’09), Production Stage Manager, Stagedoor Manor.
VANESSA POGGIOLI (’10), Production Assistant, Lincoln Center Theater, Sarah Ruhl's In the Next
Room, Asst. Technical Director, Bryn Mawr College 2010-11 season.
AMANDA RAYMOND (’11), Assistant Production Manager on The Merchant of Venice w/Al Pacino
at the Broadhurst Theatre and The Pee Wee Herman Show at the Sondheim Theatre, among others.
HEATHER SCHINGS (’08), Associate General Manager, Splinter Group Productions.
STEPHANIE WARD (’07), Production Stage Manager, National Tour, Ain't Misbehavin.
ANDREA WALES (’07), Production Stage Manager for director Alex Timbers on Bonfire Night
(NYSAF) and Dance Dance Revolution (Ohio Theatre).
6
a r ts .c olum b i a .edu