When I mentor young stage managers, one of the most frequently asked questions I hear is “How do I get my Equity card?” Usually I tell young people that my story isn’t much help. I was just in the right place at the right time. It’s only recently that I’ve realized that the true answer for almost all of us is “Right place, right time and hard work!”
In love with all things theatre from a very young age, I discovered stage management while in college. I had fortunately landed at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a state university with a small undergraduate theatre program and a resident LORT theater. (My mother was under the impression that I was going there for the excellent journalism school.) I remember clearly the Equity stage manager telling my freshman class “My job is about communication.” Sign me up! And so my four years of college became my four-year intensive internship; assisting on all the PlayMakers Repertory Company productions and stage managing the department shows, while being mentored by experienced and remarkable Equity SMs. After my junior year, and thanks to the support of my mentor and professor, I secured a prized summer internship at the Williamstown Theater Festival. Then in December 1984, PlayMakers needed an additional union stage manager for its three-show rep. My hard work paid off. Halfway through my senior year of college, I signed my first Equity contract as stage manager for Cloud Nine and assistant stage manager for Measure for Measure.
Right place, right time, and a whole lot of hard work.
It was an extraordinary and heady feeling. I was no longer looking for a job. I had a career, a real grownup career that would include health care, a pension and a minimum living wage. I could point to my Equity membership when family and friends asked what I was going to do when I got out of college. The legitimacy that union membership offered helped them all to understand that stage management was more than my extracurricular activity while pursuing a college degree. Williamstown was eager to have me return in a professional role, and the staff at PlayMakers now treated me as a colleague rather than a student. I could say that I was a professional stage manager, and I proudly added those three validating letters – AEA – to the top of my résumé.
Originally published in Equity News, Spring 2017.
