Courtside with Stage Manager Myles C. Hatch

Edited for Length and Clarity by Moira O'Sullivan Directing and Dramaturgy Apprentice Moira O'Sullivan spoke with stage manager Myles C. Hatch about transferring The Great Leap from the Hangar Theatre to Portland Stage.

Moira O'Sullivan (MO): For those who don't know, what does a stage manager do during a production?

Myles C. Hatch (MCH): The best way I could relate it to people is that they're like a conductor of an orchestra. So you're the person who's making everything happen, making sure that the lights and the sound happen when they're supposed to during the show. You're riding the wave of the performance. The actors are human beings, so they are flexible. They go with a moment and their intentions can change, depending on what they're getting from their fellow actors or the audience. And I'm making all of the different things around them happen in sequence with them, so that you get a full picture. Stage managers are with the production from the very first rehearsal all the way till it closes. So we're the constant, along with the cast. We're keeping an eye on everything to make sure that it all happens the way it's supposed to and that the audience has got a consistent story. You allow for growth, and discovery, but within the parameters of what a director has given for the project.

MO: During the show, you are sitting in the tech booth in the back of the audience. What are you doing in there while they're acting?

MCH: Yeah, so while you're watching the performance, I'm above you in the booth. I am connected [by a headset system] to my people who [operate] the lightboard, the soundboard, the deck chief, the wardrobe people. I'm executing cues, which make everything happen around the actors. I'm calling cues [for] slides and sound and projections, for this one in particular, and some flown scenery elements, and I'm executing all these cues along with the crew. So when you're watching a show, and you see there are four actors in the show, well, there are five other people besides them that you never see who are making it all happen.

MO: In three words, how would you describe the energy of the rehearsal for this show?

MCH: Collaborative, supportive, intuitive.

MO: What's the difference between stagemanaging at the Hangar and here at PSC?

MCH: There are a lot of differences. The Hangar is summer stock, and summer stock theaters are on a much more compressed schedule than regional theaters [like Portland Stage]. So everything's on a very serious timeline, it's all truncated; you don't have as long there as you would here. So time is precious and you really need to get it done quickly. The other difference between the Hangar and here is that [the Hangar has] a three-quarter thrust, which means the actual stage that the actors perform on comes out into the audience. And the audience is on three sides. So the director directed the show there to take into account that you could have people to your left or to your right, and that you constantly need to maneuver yourself so that you give them the best product, the best viewpoint. Here, it's a proscenium stage, which is the concept of a fourth wall. It's a flat front and there's this invisible wall between the audience and the actual end of the stage. It's a different way of perceiving how you would stage it. The actors are very aware of that transition from one style to another, which is the biggest challenge of the whole thing. Our lighting and sound and projection designers were here before the cast got here, to put it all in, and now they're redoing it, tweaking it, making it work for this space.

MO: Are you in charge of keeping track of all those changes? Or reminding them or helping them adjust?

MCH: Yes. They're all depending on me to tell them, “No, it used to be there,” or “Now because you've just changed this, you need to put a new lighting cue between this cue and that cue, because it's no longer going to work.” It's another opportunity for all the artists as a collaborative group to come up with a new vision. It’s about flexibility, being able to adjust on the fly and create a new way of getting from point A to point B, so that the actors and the designers feel like they are creating work that they want to put on this particular stage.

MO: What's your favorite part of the process?

MCH: My favorite part of the creative process is the actual run of the show. You've gone through a rehearsal where you figured it all out, a tech process where you put it all together, and then once you get the show open, it's that wonderful feeling of a new audience every night coming in to see your production. It's different every night. If you have four actors in the show, the audience is the fifth character; they absolutely inform and influence how that show's going to run. If you've got a crowd full of people who just want to laugh at everything, and think it's all hilarious, that's cool, and totally different from an audience that’s like, “Oh, I really got the nuance of that moment and I'm really thinking about that point in history now.” So, the power of the work to inform, educate, change people's perspective, that's what I really get into. I really enjoy seeing that night after night.

MO: What has been the most challenging part of doing a co-production?

MCH: The most challenging part of doing a co-production is that you are working with two different institutions and each institution has its own established ways of working. No two theaters are run exactly the same way. I was actually hired by both the Hangar and Portland Stage together because I'd worked at both theaters. You have to be able to

Portland Stage’S thegreatleaP walk into a new space, pick up on all the points you need to [know] about how they're going to function: who's really responsible for this aspect, who's really responsible for scheduling, who's really running this department or that department. It's always different. People have different skill sets, so your organization gets put together in a different way. But the fine points, the minutiae of how everybody navigates [a production], the culture that you're walking into, how they all respond to each other, is something that a stage manager has to pick up on right away, and be able to go, “Okay, I see this is how you all work, and this is how you are used to working.”

MO: What are you most excited for audiences to experience when they see The Great Leap?

MCH: I'm excited for [them] to see the subject matter. It has many layers to it, but I'm excited to see what they take away from it. Whether it's the historical aspects or the familial relationships or all the revelations that happen through the play, it's always interesting to see, “Oh, they figured it out.” And then that gets their mind going and they're thinking about all these other aspects. So, the show in the end is a cohesive whole of all these wonderful ways to make your synapses fire and think about stuff that you might not have thought about, especially about things in history that happened many years ago.

MO: If your team (the cast and crew of The Great Leap) gave you a nickname on the court, what would it be and why?

MCH: The Terminator. Because a part of my focus and job is to help everyone come to the decisions and resolutions that get us to move forward. So I'm terminating all the stuff that we don't need to talk about. Sometimes you get so caught up in something that you're working on, and it's like, “This is not gonna get resolved right now, we’re going to move on because we don't have time for this. Y'all clearly need to think about that.” I’m determined to terminate.