Posted August 8, 2024

Behind the Scenes – Cheryl Hoover

Cheryl, you’ve had an epic career as a stage manager, and you just recently retired from Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre. Can you tell us about some of the places you’ve worked and some of the stages you’ve managed?

I’ve spent a lot of my career at the Citadel Theatre, which has actually three different theatres within the Citadel venue, which is pretty cool, but I have worked across Canada from Newfoundland to Vancouver. I’ve been up to Dawson City. I’ve been at the National Arts Center in Ottawa. I’ve worked in Toronto, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. I’ve worked in pretty much every province except, I think, P.E.I., so I’ve been pretty lucky in that way. I spent about ten years of my career living out of a suitcase, just traveling sort of from job to job. I settled in Edmonton, and that’s when I started as resident stage manager at the Phoenix Theatre. And then from there I went to the Citadel, which is a large regional theatre. So, when I was ready to not live out of a suitcase that became my place to be.

I think most of our readers will have a pretty good idea of what a stage manager does. But if you had to define a stage manager’s role in a sentence or two, what would you say?

There are two important “halves” to being a stage manager. One is the rehearsal organizational skill, and that involves being the director’s right arm in terms of keeping track of everything that’s required by the actors, the designers, the technicians, etc. to make the director’s vision come together. And then there’s the second part of it, which I would equate to being an air traffic controller, where you are overseeing the actual performances and directing all of the technical aspects, making sure the actors are doing their job correctly, making sure the stage crew is running cues when they’re supposed to happen, that kind of thing. So to me, those two make up the perfect stage manager.

Can you tell us a little bit about your work at the Citadel?

I first started as a stage manager at The Citadel in 1995, which seems like a long time ago. From there, about seventeen years ago, I got promoted to Director of Production. So, I went from being a stage manager to hiring stage management and designers and overseeing all the technical elements of all the shows that the Citadel put on their stages.

When you were hiring stage managers, what sorts of skills or personality traits did you look for?

I looked for people who, number one, were people persons, because communication is such an important part of stage management. And people who are organized. But I also want them to have a well-rounded background. I find that stage managers who have worked in other aspects of theatre—in props building, or in costumes, or lighting, or whatever—have an expanded viewpoint of everything that it takes to put shows together. Whereas, if you’re hiring someone who has only been a stage manager, yes, they know what the other elements are, but to have actually worked in other areas just makes the communication that much better. They’re just better team players.

What drew you to a career in stage management? And how did you train for it?

I grew up in a family where, even though nobody worked in the arts, they felt the arts were very important. When I was a child, we went to see plays, and went to museums and art galleries. I was always interested in the arts—but I grew up thinking I was going to be a librarian. That was my dream, always, from the time I was old enough to read. And after high school, I went to university and started in a library program, but I really did not connect with my supervising prof. At the semester break, I decided it was not working for me. But I had a paid semester and I thought, I’ll just take classes that I like and then I’ll go to a different library school the following year. And so I signed up for a bunch of theatre classes because I always loved theatre, and next thing I knew, it was four years later and I had a degree in stage management. So I kind of fell into it. After I graduated, I thought, “I’ll give myself two years to get my Equity card. If that doesn’t happen, then I will go back to library school.” Within a year I got my Equity card so I thought, “Oh, I’ll try this, see if I can get work. And it just all sort of fell into place. And then I woke up and it was 39 years later!

What is the most difficult part of the job, would you say?

Oh, wow. I’m going to say that it’s probably making sure everyone’s on the same page. It’s the stage manager’s job to ensure that the show continues to reflect the director’s vision, and, as a show grows, it naturally will change a little bit. So your job is to oversee and give notes to actors or technicians to bring the show back to closer to that vision. And it’s sometimes hard to communicate with someone who thinks that they’ve given the greatest performance ever, when, in fact, they’ve taken a sharp left turn when they should have just stuck to the game plan. So, I think that you have to be confident enough to give a criticism constructively. But you know, actors are such wonderful beings. You don’t want to dash their hopes, but you need to communicate that they’re they’ve just gone off-base a little bit and bring them back. So I think that’s a hard part of the work.

On the flip side of that, what’s your favorite thing about being a stage manager?

My favorite thing was always the rehearsal hall. Because that’s when actors will be their most vulnerable and give some of their best work; the things that I’ve seen and felt in a rehearsal hall… And as much as the show is going to come together and be fantastic, sometimes stuff that happens in the rehearsal hall stays in the rehearsal hall and never makes the stage. So I love being in the room and creating that as a team. Theatre can only be created with a team; even a one-man show still requires a whole team of people to put it together, and that’s just stellar, to know that you’ve had a hand in that creation.

You mentioned earlier about all the various places that you’ve worked. What’s the most unusual gig that you ever had?

Well, I spent close to a year on tour with Andy Jones, and he was doing a one-man show, which we rehearsed and performed in Newfoundland. Later that year we got booked at other venues, and we did a sort of a Western Canada leg and we ended up in Whitehorse. From Whitehorse we got booked into Dawson City—and this was in January. Even with our minimal set, with everything we had to take, we couldn’t fly it into Dawson City, we had to drive it. So we rented a van in Whitehorse. And of course, it was January, the dead of winter, so it was about -40. The sun is only up for about three hours at that point. So, we left Whitehorse at like eight in the morning and it’s pitch black. And when I mean pitch black, I mean it was pitch black because there aren’t a lot of streetlights. I think the sun rose about 11:00. As we drove, the sun set again at two in the afternoon, and we still weren’t there. Neither of us had ever driven on this road before. So there we were, driving this stupid van with all this stuff to get to Dawson City. It turned out we were playing the Oddfellows Hall, which was the town gallery and performance space, as well as a meeting place for people.

And so when you say, what’s the oddest place…I’ve played the Oddfellows Gallery! It was quite a memorable trip. I think we passed a sign that said something like, “This is the last gas for the next five hours.” It was pretty foolish of us to drive in January from Whitehorse to Dawson City. But I mean, it was fantastic. I’m so glad I got to go there. What an amazing community! And so welcoming. We just had a blast there. So that was really cool.

Does stage managing spill over into your personal life? Do you have all your kitchen utensils in a drawer with an outline drawn around them, or do you organize the tug-of-war at family reunions? Are there any ways in which you are a stage manager in your personal life?

You can ask my husband. My house is so unorganized. He likes to say that procrastination is my religion. At work I was the complete opposite, but when I come home, it is not like that. Although I will say at family reunions and stuff, I am bossy boots. You know, herding groups of people around to do certain things. So, the bossy boots part, certainly, is in my personal life, but not the organizational part.

Can you tell us a backstage story about something that went wrong during a production or something that almost went wrong?

Oh, the one that first pops into my mind is when I was teaching at the Citadel, we were doing our yearly production of A Christmas Carol. It was very close to the original Dickens, set in Victorian times, and it had an unbelievable set. The first scene took place in a cemetery and the second scene was a busy London street scene. The scene change took about ten seconds: the cemetery wagon, which had a long cable, got pulled off the stage by a couple of crew members, and then a huge revolve came moving downstage with carolers and shoppers, etc. So, one night, the cemetery wagon, as it was exiting, rolled over its own cable and got completely stuck. I was calling the scene change in the booth, with an infrared camera showing me what was happening onstage. On the infrared monitor, one of the crew guys came on and said, “The cemetery wagon is stuck on its own cable!” And all I could do was watch. More crew people came running onstage, and because it was so dark, one of the guys couldn’t see the first crew guy who was trying to move the cemetery wagon, and he tripped over the first guy and did a huge pratfall. Nobody was hurt, but I was watching all these people on the monitor, and I was laughing because I felt like I was watching Keystone Cops running around trying to fix this problem—in the length of the sound cue music, because as soon as the music cue ended, the lights were going to come up to reveal the London street corner. And it was hilarious because I was laughing while trying to call cues; and while I was laughing, these guys were trying to solve the problem and they were not amused that I was amused. The audience, of course, never knew anything was wrong because they were just sitting in the dark listening to music. And, finally a couple of the guys—just obviously pure adrenaline—they came in and reefed on the wagon and whipped it off of the cable and got it offstage in a split second and everything was fine.

Did the scene change last longer than usual or did they make it in time?

I mean, it probably lasted a few seconds longer, but there was always breathing room in the sound cue. As the cue is fading away, there is supposed to be a little bit of music as the lights are coming up; that didn’t happen. But it was quite funny.

Do you have any advice for somebody who either is interested in getting into the profession or for somebody who’s just starting out?

See shows—as many as you can of every genre, whether it’s dance or opera or whatever. Be a volunteer usher so you can see shows for free. I just find that expanding your horizons of what a show can be or what is achievable is so important, from little independent productions to big regional ones. That’s a good way to learn about different types of performance. I’d encourage you, if you’re going to a theatre school or a university, to find time to see as much work as you can and go to galleries or concerts or whatever. Just see art, because it can open your mind to new things.