On being a Stage Manager

My wife runs a ballet school. Each year the school has end of year performances at one of the major theatre venues in Canberra. I am the Stage Manager for these productions. I very much enjoy the role, but I have been unable until recently to explain exactly why. I now realise it's part of my psyche.

Although the connection will not be immediately obvious, I need to explain that when I was 19 (and an ANU graduate) I was a trainee commercial pilot. I also need to explain that I left the pilot training academy to pursue a career in IT, but I later obtained my Private Pilot's Licence.

I have only just in the past week realised the connection between enjoying being a Pilot and enjoying being a Stage Manager.

Here are the dot points:

• Both roles involve most of the time doing nothing other than keeping a monitoring eye on what is going on. This requires quite a lot of attention because it is easy to let the mind drift and lose focus on the important tasks. This is the "boring" bit, although it is vital in its own right.
  
  
• Apart from the "boring" bits, both roles need (in very short bursts of time) a lot of precise and complex actions to be undertaken quickly and accurately.
  
  
• If everything goes smoothly nobody comments, because perfection is the assumed level of performance. Pilots and Stage Managers never expect thanks. Basically not being noticed and the lack of complaints are the highest compliments there are.
  
  
• If anything goes wrong, no matter how minor, there will be many complaints and the Pilot or Stage Manager is automatically assumed to be responsible.
  
  
• To disprove the previous point, the Pilot or Stage Manager needs to build an unassailable defence.

(Of course a Stage Manager making a mistake will almost never lead to people dying, unlike a Pilot.)

Yet at the end of the day, the satisfaction when I responded to the final Air Traffic Control communication as I left the active runway with my callsign, and the satisfaction I now feel when my final call of "House curtain 'go'" is enacted in a timely manner, are very similar. It's over, and I've done the best I can do to assist with the big picture.

Moreover, I hope no-one has noticed my involvement at all, because that means I have done the perfect job.

Anonymity may seem like a dubious goal, but it means I have performed perfectly. Nobody will give me a Christmas present for my involvement, but as long as they don't complain or curse me then I'm happy.