Promises, Promises production stage manager Michael J. Passaro calls PLSN just after his show has brought Molly Shannon in the key supporting role of Marge McDougall. It's the same role that won Katie Finneran her second Tony Award this year. While oftentimes bringing in a new cast member, even an ensemble player, can induce extra effort from cast and crew, this transition went fairly smoothly. The advantage was that director Rob Ashford and his creative team and associates were in Los Angeles, where Shannon lives, as they prepared Leap of Faith for its L.A. run. The pre-rehearsal time before her New York rehearsals with scene partner Sean Hayes made everything work more fluidly.
Challenges of the Craft
The job of a stage manager is always a juggling act. As Passaro points out, once the creative team has left a production, everyone working in the theatre on a given night fall under his jurisdiction. He is the one to keep the show running, and in this age of technological innovation, his job is both easier and trickier. "We certainly wouldn't be able to stage Rob Ashford's production of Promises, Promises as he envisioned it without the enormous amount of automation that we have in all departments; scenery, lighting, sound," asserts Passaro. "We wouldn't be able to do that accurately and safely eight times a week. We're at the forefront of it and also at the mercy of it, to some degree."
But technology is one key to a show that, despite staying true to its traditional musical theatre roots from the original production four decades ago, is jazzed up with a couple new (if familiar) songs, faster choreography and quicker and more dazzling scene changes. "As I'm approaching my 23rd or 24th year stage managing – this is my 20th Broadway show – I'm always amazed, despite all the technology that we have to work with, coordinate and organize, it really still is a mom and pop business at its heart," declares Passaro. "It is still handcrafted to a great degree, and it's still a one-off. It's not mass-produced. It is still made by people for people in a live setting, and to that end, my greatest challenges are always in coordinating a team of people to put on a show eight times a week. Always the challenges to me are how to motivate that team, how to work with the different personality types, how to speak all the different languages that the crew, actors or producers might have and be the central translator of all that information."
Passaro has many languages with which he must be proficient. He estimates that the number of lights cues for Promises, Promises alone reaches 450 to 460, including numerous point cues. In terms of automation cues, one cue in some sections of the show can move up to 15 pieces of scenery, whether it's something that the audience witnesses coming on and offstage or whether it is something that moves invisibly and silently backstage, like light ladders, winches or dogs getting into the right positions for the next setup.
"Be that as it may, every single one of the transitions in Promises, Promises is done in front of the audience's eyes," says Passaro. "We never go to black out or bring a drop in. It all materializes in front of the audience. In that respect, stage managers have also become what I like to call ‘associate choreographers' because we have to make the scenery move, dance and work with the music. Rob [Ashford] is a dancer, choreographer and director, so he especially is very specific about when things start to move, when things land and even internally when things are moving within phrases of music, so were very conscious of that. We could not have been able to achieve that without the automation that we have."
Safety First
Coordinating so many people requires not only precision and attention to detail but also concerns about individual safety. When it comes to safety, Passaro has no qualms about interrupting the show in case of a technical glitch. It has only happened once on Promises, Promises but happened a few times with the car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. "I am not one of those guys who's like, ‘The show must go on'," he reveals. "Or that we must have a backup plan for every foreseeable thing that could happen with 85 automated effects. There's just no way. You could spin yourself out of control trying to figure out backup plans for scenarios that may never happen, or when they do present themselves, are completely different than any other kind of plan you could come up with. Frankly, I don't waste my time trying to figure out any of that stuff when it comes to this sort of thing. All we try to do is make sure that people are safe – cast and crew, audiences in some cases – and move on as quickly and as safely as we can."
The veteran stage manager has moved his way up the Broadway ladder since he landed his first stage managing gig on Starlight Express in 1986. While he has seen many technological changes since then – theatrical automation was just coming into play on that production – the human element has been the one important constant. "To me, difficult, challenging or easy always comes down to the personalities," declares Passaro. "We have a fantastic group of production managers and crew [on my current show], but the technology itself has come so far that we've had very few problems; none really to speak of, on Promises, Promises."
On A Steady Rain, which he stage managed last year, the technology was minimal and easily dwarfed by the presence of the play's two high-powered stars, Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman. "There were very few things to move in A Steady Rain," recalls Passaro. "It was 90 minutes long with no intermission. The two actors went on stage, performed the play and then we went home." It was business as usual, "except that we had two of the biggest movie stars currently in the world performing on that stage. They were the nicest men you'd ever want to meet – completely down-to-earth, totally separate from the characters they're famous for, gentlemen in every respect of the word. But they also came with a lot of staff and security, and our job was the coordination of those elements to make sure that those guys were safe when they walked in the building and could just concentrate on performing a difficult play. Our job was to make sure that that was a safe space for them emotionally and physically, so they didn't have to worry about anything when they walked in the door except doing that play eight times a week."
Learning the Ropes
Passaro is clearly quite adept and seasoned at his profession. Ironically, he never planned on being a stage manager. Back in 1986 he had been working for a general management firm at the time called Gatchell & Neufeld, "which was one of the last of the mom and pop general managing firms. Peter Neufeld, one of the principals of that firm, told me, because I wanted to be a company manager, that I should be a production assistant on one of their shows or a show to see how it's done in the trenches. Work with a stage manager and see how the shows were put together before I sat down behind a desk with a calculator and figured out payroll."
The young Passaro took Neufeld's advice and snagged himself a production assistant job on Starlight Express around the age of 23 or 24. The show was so complicated that the company soon asked Passaro to come on board as a stage manager. "I didn't even know what a stage manager did," he confesses. "All I knew back then was that they were paying $850 a week, and that was a lot of money then. It still is to some people. And here I am 20 odd years later. You learn by doing it."
When asked about the advice he would offer to up-and-coming stage managers – which he does with his class at Yale University – Passaro says, "You will learn more about stage managing by anything other than your experiences either working directly in the theatre or going to the theatre. By that I mean it's about how you handle people, personal issues and personal challenges. At the end of the day, it's a one-on-one mom and pop business. For example, working at McDonald's in high school taught me more about team leadership than any early theatre experience I had or any class I had in stage management or theatre. Go seek out those experiences. If you're a college theatre major who's interested in stage management, the classes that you take in history, art history or accounting, all those classes you take outside of theatre will probably prepare you more for a career in the theatre and stage management than anything you know right now."
The production stage manager feels that a positive aspect of college programs is that they give "a seal of approval and a seal of legitimacy to a full-fledged career in stage managing. Years ago, I think people – perhaps [with] the generation before mine or perhaps some in my generation – always looked at stage managing as a stepping stone, and certainly it can be that. One of the things that I talk about with my students at Yale is that the skills you require as a stage manager are so valuable in the corporate world. I've seen it and experienced it myself. The skills of leading a team toward a common goal, to get a curtain up at eight o'clock every night or on an opening night – those time management and team leadership skills are absolutely invaluable and all come together in crystal-clear form as a stage manager so that you can transport those skills to other entertainment-related careers or not. But I do think the college programs are good because they do give a legitimacy to it. You can have a very fulfilling career as a stage manager, and that's great."
