Who Needs a Stage Manager?

If you are running a small music festival, why do you even need a stage manager? The bands know what time they are supposed to start playing. You can trust them to arrive and load-in their gear on time, and then be sound-checked and ready to play when they are scheduled, right? This might be true for most of your bands, but all it takes is one or two bands that are having trouble sticking to their time slot to throw your event off-schedule. But that’s not really a big deal, right? In my experience, having a person in a stage manager role is the difference between an event that can feel a bit messy, unpredictable, and fatiguing, and a memorable event that crackles with energy and excitement. The support, structure, and predictability that a stage manager can bring to a festival helps to create a container where real magic can happen.

Everyone benefits from stage management: the audience, musicians, sound engineers, volunteers and support staff, and festival organizers. A frequent challenge of festival organizers is getting people to actually feel motivated to leave the comforts of their TV and TikTok and endure potentially awkward social mingling. It's uncertain if this risk will pay off in getting to enjoy the magic of the performer-audience experience. An organizer will publish and promote the bands ahead of time and a prospective audience member might finally get excited to go because they see that their friend's band is playing. If the event is running off schedule, the member may find themselves feeling stressed and uncertain. Can they risk leaving the performance hall to grab a bite to eat, or will they potentially miss their favorite band? Keeping the schedule predictable can make an audience member feel like the risk they took by leaving their house was worth it. Musicians can feel some trepidation about lugging their gear for an hour to play for half an hour, and a stage manager can make this risk feel worth it.

The stage manager might be the first festival official to engage with a band. A good stage manager will offer a warm and friendly greeting and can help set the tone of the rest of the festival experience for the band. The stage manager can help the band understand when and where they should load-in. When they should start trying to track down their wily fiddle player and wayward drummer. Would you like some water? Hands water bottle. Oh, you forgot your capo? I got one right here. Many musicians and artists bristle at structure and being told what to do, but the healthy stress of being held accountable to a start and end time can feel like a container that helps a musician focus and bring forth the best of what they can give. Performances feel sharper and more urgent, and the energy coming off the stage raises the vibes in the room.

A sound engineer loves a good stage manager. Many sound engineers find themselves in the role of de-facto stage manager. Having to juggle running sound for a six piece band with three singers and a surprise last-minute guest ukulele player while trying to track down the next band is kinda stressful. Having a stage manager on hand means that the sound engineer can just focus on sound and maybe squeeze in a quick pee break between the 5th and 6th bands.

At any given social event, some folks enjoy themselves right up to the end. But as the night wears on, other folks find themselves just being there by obligation because they are supporting their friends, volunteering, or fulfilling some other kind of support role. Without a stage manager, events are virtually guaranteed to run late. Feeling forced to have to stay longer than you were anticipating can feel like a drag. Might make you not want to come back next year.

Finally, a festival organizer that has done lots of work in the months leading up to the event may not want to do that much work during the event. Having the flexibility to delegate the stressful time-sensitive stage duties to a sound engineer and stage manager can make the experience of running the event much more relaxed. The organizer can come and go as they please and not worry about things falling apart if they want to go take shrooms with their friends or take care of a kitchen volunteer emergency.

The Delicate Art of Band Wrangling

If you are going to stage manage, the most important thing to bring with you is the right attitude. For me, this looks like friendly and supportive directness. It means being informed by the lived experiences and needs of performers, audience members, and sound engineers alike. You have to be willing to be politely firm and assertive but also flexible and willing to yield. Most of all, you are there to be present for the folks baring their hearts up on the stage.

It’s a good idea to prepare ahead of time:

1. Have an up-to-date schedule handy 
2. Save clear pictures of every band to an album on your phone ahead of time. You don’t want to be trying to load the event Instagram page in the middle of the woods on a shitty cellphone signal.
3. Have a watch or clock handy so you aren’t constantly looking at your phone
4. Have bottled water with lids handy – you don’t want to hand a band cups of water because these are destined to end up being kicked in to the sound engineer’s expensive stage gear
5. You will probably need rags or a mop for the inevitable spill
6. You will be surprised at how often having an extra guitar capo, guitar picks, drum key, and clip-on tuner on hand will save the day. I have been known to bring an extra LR Baggs preamp to spare the audience from a shrill fiddle.
7. Bring a head lamp. You might have to track down bands milling around in the dark having a smoke.

The day of the event, you will be repeating these steps for every band. You will be typically working with two bands at once. The band that is currently playing and the band that is about to play.

1. Start tracking down the next band as soon as you can. You saved their pictures to your phone, right?
2. Introduce yourself to the band and let them know that you are the stage manager
3. Ask them if they have informed the sound engineer about their sound needs and if anything has changed. Ask them if they have added a last minute guest dobro player that the sound engineer doesn’t know about.
4. Let them know that they need to have all of their band members and gear loaded in 15 minutes before their start time
5. Let the band know that they must end on time, otherwise they cut into the sound check time for the band that follows them. This makes them feel responsible for upholding a commitment to another band and to the festival as a whole.
6. Offer to help the band load on to the stage if you sense that they could use extra help. You might be more familiar with the backline than the bands themselves, so check with the drummers, guitarists, and bassists to see if they need anything.
7. Once a band has been sound checked or line checked, check in with the sound engineer first and then let the band know that they can start. It’s usually OK for bands to start a little early if they want to but don’t have the band start so early that there is a long awkward gap after they finish playing.
8. Once the band has started, start tracking down the next band
9. Once you have tracked and prepped the next band, return to the stage area and listen to the current band attentively. What a musician treasures most is an attentive and sincere audience. Having an event staff person in a managerial role listen attentively feels extra affirming.
10. Keep checking on the next band to make sure that they are loading-in on time. Politely and firmly remind them about the schedule if needed.
11. Give your five minute warning to the current band
12. If the band keeps playing past the end of the set, clearly and politely signal that their time is up. If they ignore your signal and keep playing, signal one more time and then yield if they insist on continuing to play. If the next band does get squeezed a bit or the event does go off schedule it’s not ideal but also not the end of the world.
13. Sincerely thank the band for playing and check to see if they can use help loading off of the stage. Offer to help if you see that they are taking a while to load off.
14. Rinse and repeat!

If you are doing your job right, the bands will thank you, you will overhear folks commenting on how smooth everything seems to be running, and the event organizers will ask you to come back next year. Now go wrangle some bands!