Automation may be tasked with governing many of the moving parts of a modern Broadway production, but it probably won't be replacing stage managers any time soon…Michael J. Passaro, stage manager for Broadway's Promises, Promises, notes that once the creative team has left a production, everyone working in the theatre on a given night fall under the stage manager's 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. 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." Passaro adds, however, that "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. 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."
-From "Inside Theatre" by Bryan Reesman, PLSN, Dec. 2010
