Students will demonstrate their ability to generate a production calendar and contact sheet by creating one for a hypothetical production.
Materials needed:
• Prompt Book
Facets of Understanding:
• Explanation • Application
Enduring Understandings:
• Importance of preparation
Essential Questions:
• How can a stage manager make life easier not only for themselves, but for the cast, crew, and production team?
Hook: (15 minutes)
Tell students to get into groups of two to three, and tell them a little story. Essentially, you need to tell students a story where an actor or crew member was hurt during rehearsal and that it was their job to make sure that the person received proper care. You can make this story up or you can pull it from your own experiences, but either way, give groups a few minutes to come up with a solution.
Step 1 – Discussion: (5 minutes)
Ask students what their solution was. Be sure and push them for a complete answer, for example, if a group says that they would call the hospital, ask them if they have the number for the hospital handy. Eventually, work your way around to the fact that a stage manager must always be prepared and should have any information that they might need at their fingertips.
Step 2 – Instruction: (30 minutes)
Pass the prompt book to students so they can look at the contact sheets. Explain to students that there are usually a few different contact sheets. A cast contact sheet, a production team contact sheet, and an important numbers/emergency contact sheet. Talk with students about the importance of this information. Also show students the production schedule. If you have different versions of a production schedule, that would be ideal so students can see that there is more than one way to do it. Talk with students about the importance of running a scene more than one time. Remind them of 1min per page and 10 min per page rehearsing. Have students read the calendar and contact sheet section in the SM packet. Or, simply look at the examples in the appendix.
Final Assessment for Lesson 2: (40 points – formal paper due in class)
Take students into the computer lab and let them work on their contact sheets and their production calendars. Let students know that these are due at the beginning of class next time. 20 points for the contact sheet, 20 points for the rehearsal calendar.
