My name is Jeff, I’m one of two or three Stage Managers who work for The National Ballet of Canada. This is the Stage Manager’s console at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. It is in the downstage left corner of the stage, or if you are sitting in the audience, just out of the view on the right-hand side of the stage. During performances, the Stage Manager sits here and wears a headset that allows them to communicate with and call cues to the Lighting Board Operator, Follow-spot Operators, Stage Carpenter, Head of Flys, the other Stage Manager or Assistant Stage Manager and other members of the crew. There are three video monitors that are a part of the console, which allow me to see the whole stage from the front (as the audience sees it), see the Conductor in the pit and also (with an infrared camera) see the stage during blackouts to keep track of moving scenery and dancers. Underneath the large monitor in the top of the console, there is a set of cue lights that I can use to signal various elements, such as the Conductor, carpenters, or electricians. I use them once in a while, but Stage Managers working in opera and musical theatre tend to use them more frequently. There is a microphone on the left side of the desk to make pages in the dressing rooms and rehearsal halls and another microphone for pre-performance announcements.

Throughout West Side Story Suite, we have been working with some technology that we almost never see in classical ballet – radio microphones. Several dancers in “America” and “Cool” sing, so they are wearing the same kind of microphone commonly used in musical theatre. One of our electricians who normally deals with lighting is also a terrific sound engineer and he is mixing the microphones used by the dancers, as well as the ones that additional singers use from the orchestra pit. This photo is of all the tiny transmitters waiting to have fresh batteries added before a performance.

(Photos by Jeff Morris)