Teaching staff members, interns, and volunteers how to apply solid stagecraft methodology can have an impact that remains with them for a lifetime."We work as a team, we help each other, [and] we’re safe,” says Production Manager, Andrew Stone from Church on the Move, Tulsa, Okla.
Andrew Stone got his production chops starting in the late Eighties, touring with Christian acts. For him, one gig in particular illustrated just how important practicing good stagecraft is.
Before telling it, Stone warns that the story is “kind of morbid.” The tour involved multiple 53-foot trucks, one of which was full of Thomas truss, loaded with par cans and stacked four high. Every day before load-in, he relays, the production manager gave the crew the same speech: when you roll the truss down the ramp of the truck, the par cans will slide downward. Please place your hands on the sides of the truss so you don't lose your fingers.
One crew member didn't heed the PM's advice. Guess what happened next?
This experience has stuck with Stone, now production manager at Church on the Move in Tulsa, Okla. “This had nothing to do with gear, nothing to do with how you set up, nothing to do with the nuance of laying out the stage,” he recalls. “But it's the most primary thing. When those four people––volunteers––go to open the belly box of the truck and get the ramp out, that first thing they touch can cut them deeply if they pick it up the wrong way.”
Unsurprisingly, when he is teaching new recruits, interns, and volunteers the merits of stagecraft-related best practices, Stone emphasizes safety first. “If you show up with open-toed shoes, you're not going to help us do anything,” he says. “You're not going to help us push a case, you're not going to help us unload a truck, you're not going to help us roll cable––nothing.” If someone insists on being a hero, he adds, they're not going to work out. “If you're going to try to lift something you can't lift, or you're going to try to do something you don't understand, you are in the wrong place. We work as a team, we help each other, [and] we're safe.”
Recently, Stone says his team installed a number of extra fire extinguishers––more than the church actually needs––just to be on the safe side. “We follow OSHA guidelines, like when you move a lift, if you're going to stay under the minimum height, do you need a harness, or do you not need a harness?” Newcomers, no matter their level of experience, are required to watch how those who have come before them do their jobs. Church on the Move's production crew must also abide by a rule that's applied at public pools across the globe: no running. “It incites panic. Somebody is going to see you and try to figure out, why is he running? Is something wrong? Is there a fire? And it causes alarm where you don't need to cause alarm.” If something is falling, by all means, get out of the way––as calmly as possible. “[But when we run], that's when we make mistakes. That's when we get hurt. That's when we don't pay attention.”
Andrew Stone's Stagecraft Survival Kit
It's only when he's taught these safety practices that Stone shifts his attention to stagecraft as it relates to gear. If a crew member doesn't know how to roll a cable properly, for example, “you will sit in a room rolling cable until I'm convinced that you are going to get it right,” he says. Another stagecraft basic team members must know is the terminology applied to the stage itself: downstage, upstage, stage left, stage right, center stage, and so on. “Those are the terms that I want people to understand because that's how we're going to operate, and it all ties back to safety as well. If I told you to put something downstage center and you put it upstage, and a truss landed on it when it was brought it, that's a problem because you didn't understand the terminology.”
One could argue that Church on the Move is Church on the Move––a big church with the resources required to pay attention to practicing good stagecraft. But Stone dismisses that argument: doing things right doesn't have to be expensive. And taking the time to do them right up front can save a lot of headaches, as well as prevent crew and congregants from getting hurt. “You're never too small to start [exercising proper stagecraft technique],” he says. “If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. Now ‘right' can be defined a number of ways for your scenario: ‘right' doesn't mean you go and spend $100,000. ‘Right' could just mean you take a little time to draw a sketch of this thing you're going to build before you start using a hammer and nails.”
While practicing good stagecraft involves a lot of nitty-gritty details, for Stone, it also serves a larger purpose. “If it's worth doing, then it's worth doing right,” he underlines. “If you didn't pay attention to the way you set up and cared for and maintained the gear that you're using, that could mean the difference between success and failure for an event. Now, that's a big deal if it's a concert or a theatrical production, but in church, that's got an eternal value.” Equating the proper care of microphones with eternal value, he admits, may sound bizarre at first, “but me ensuring how we care about and maintain our equipment, and [how we] take care of the microphones and set up our stage, can result in an eternal impact for somebody [because we're] not interrupting them or being a deterrence to what they're in the room to hear. That's a big deal to me.”
And, teaching staff members, interns, and volunteers how to apply solid stagecraft methodology, he adds, can have an impact that remains with them for a lifetime. “I want to give [our young guys] a trade craft that is something they can carry [with them] for their whole life––this is not something I want them to learn and do just because they're here,” he explains. “No, I want you to do it right because this is something that you're going to carry with you, and this belongs to you. That's how people fed me when I was 20, 21 years old, just starting to travel, [just] starting to get some experience, and they were showing me the right and wrong way to do things. And I still rely on that stuff now, 25 years later. That, to me, is really huge.”
Church on the Move
