What’s it like to stage manage Candide?
Kate Hanley loves theatre, >help her family, movies, and beer – but not always in that order. She is our extraordinary stage manager for Candide – the demanding, complex musical on stage at the Arden now through October 19th.
What’s it like to stage manage a show of this magnitude? She writes all about it in her own blog: Life With a Cocktail.
Visit her blog for a behind the scenes view! Want to know more? Ask your most burning questions and get the scoop from this expert insider.
Kate,
I’ve read all of your blogs in one sitting tonight. I admire the work of Stage Managers … truly among the many unsung people in any production. Candide was wonderful on Opening Night and we look forward to seeing it again in a few days. Thanks for writing about the complexities, and the joys, of something you really like to do. All of your hard work has paid off.
It was an intense and wonderful show. The strength of all the voices blew us away. In addition I was fascinated with the simplicity of the set, the changeability of the chalk, the power of a piece of fabric….a superb concept!
I enjoyed the show – the staging, the voices, the philosophy – enormously, but could have done without the snide commentary on homosexuality. Priests abusing young noviates is not the amusing event the contemporary direction would have it, nor is the attraction of one male character for another necessarily hilarious. Playing to the prejudices and preconceptions of a contemporary audience does Moliere and Bernstein a rather considerable diservice, and a rather unnecessary distraction from the ideas they have given us. Homosexuals are not put on this earth to amuse the rest of us.