The relationship between the stage manager and the director is a very intimate one.  They are constantly in touch with each other.  The stage manager must know everything and it is important the the director trust the stage manager implicitly.

The first person to take me under wing and teach and trust me was Marshall Mason-the Artistic Director of Circle Repertory Theater.  After assistant stage managing the first production of the 1973-74 season he hired me to production stage manager the next show, which he was directing.  I stayed on for the season in various other positions.  Including acting in one of the shows.  He trusted me and I became a stage manager because he did. We are still in touch.

Stage Managers often have directors that they continuously work with, I was lucky to have three. Word Baker, Kevin Conway & Gerry Gutierrez. My relationships with them crossed over into more than just our theater lives.

Word Baker
In 1977, I was stage managing and running the lights for a cabaret show that Word Baker created. Shortly after I started he got a job at The Public Theater. Word and I got along very well and he thought we would be a good team for this new Gretchen Cryer & Nancy Ford musical, “I’m Getting Act Together and Taking It On The Road”. He put my name in to the Production Stage Manager. The production manager at The Public Theater, Steve Cohen, did not want to hire me. Word insisted. So, I had to go in for an interview with Joe Papp. Joe finally said yes but made sure I knew he was “giving me my big break”. I got the job and after a short run at the Public Theater, IMGMAT went into a commercial house and ran Off-Broadway for three years. I worked with Word on many other productions of it, including the sit-down companies in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Word and I worked on workshops, including “Cowboy” that another friend of Word’s wrote and Joe Papp gave us space to do at the Public Theater. But I never got to do another full production with him. He was funny and fun. We were great drinking buddies and even traveled together. Once we went to D.C. to see a friend of ours in “Barnum”, and we stayed at the Watergate Hotel. Another time we were out for a drink and I got a call about a date with a new beau who was taking me to The Four Seasons for dinner. I didn’t have a proper out-fit, he gave me money and off I went to Bonwit Teller’s. I came back with a full new ensemble; skirt, sweater, shoes and a Bill Blass winter coat. In San Francisco my opening night gift was a jeweled handbag from Gumps. We remained friends till his death in Dec 2003. He always had wonderful friends. I still maintain some of those friendships and we share wonderful stories. (See the interview with Rod Kaats in my look and listen section)

Kevin Conway and I met in Philadelphia in 1971 when both of us were acting in shows at the Walnut Street Theater. Kevin was playing McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest” and I was doing props and understudying “No Place To Be Somebody”. We picked each other up and I spent the night with him. I snuck out about 6AM and did not see him again until 1973 when I became the ASM on “When You Comin’ Back Red Ryder”. Kevin was playing the lead. I did not say anything about our time in Phila. during rehearsal and he didn’t either. Then one night when we had moved into the theater, he called across the communal dressing room, “Marjorie, whatever happened to you that night?”. We all laughed and Kevin and I became great friends from then on.

In 1975 I took a cross-country road trip ending up in LA. It just so happened that there was a company of “Red Ryder” opening at a new theater in Westwood. I called the director, Ken Frankel to say hi and tell him I was in town and did he and Kevin want to have a drink? He said yes and he would call me the next day. He did call but it was not to get a drink. He said they were losing their stage manager and did I want to join the company. It was a full AEA contract and I was thrilled. I was getting to work with Kevin again. The show was a great success and Kevin and I began our mutual respect for each other as colleagues, and friends.

When we came back to NYC three of us from the LA “Red Ryder” Company and one from the New York City Company were hired for a play at Manhattan Theater Club called “Life Class”. It was an amazing play by the British writer David Story, which took place in a life drawing class in a technical college in Northern England. I was the stage manager, and Kevin played the lead. This was one of the most wonderfully talented companies I had ever and would ever work with (see the page in the “mapping the legacy” section of the Legacy). We were quite the hit, even named one of the 10 top plays of the year, but we never did get to Broadway.

We collaborated on projects when he started directing, sometimes I was his stage manager and sometimes his assistant. We partnered together on a revival of “Short Eyes” at 2nd Stage Theater. In 1985 I went to San Francisco for two years with Greater Tuna and decided to go to college. I came back to NYC in 1987 and took a job as a house manager. Kevin and I crossed paths in 1990 at The Minetta Lane where I was house managing and he was playing the lead in “Other People’s Money”. I graduated in 1990 and went back to stage managing. In 1991 Kevin got the job directing and starring in it at the Pasadena Playhouse in LA. He took me along as the PSM. We spent almost all of 1991 in LA. The last play we did together was a very bittersweet (event). It was a play by Bryan Goluboff called “In Betweens” and Kevin was directing. It was a very volatile piece about male sexuality. We had a very hard time casting it and even harder time rehearsing. Kevin got fired and the play never opened.

Gerry Gutierrez and I met over the phone in 1992 when I was on staff for Geraldine Ferraro’s Senate Campaign. He was going into the hospital for surgery and I did not meet him in person until I was called to interview for an Off Broadway play at the Public Theater. When I met Gerry in person I reminded him of our phone conversation and the rest of the interview was about how angry he was that Ferraro lost that race. I did get the job. We became great friends despite the wildness of the production process of Connie Congdon’s “Dog Opera”. We started previews three weeks late and only got to run a of couple of weeks. Gerry then, asked me to be the stage manager on his next show, which was “Northeast Local” by Tom Donaghy at Lincoln Center. We had a much gentler production and a wonderful cast: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Anthony LaPaglia, Eileen Heckert and Terry Alexander. The design team was: John Lee Beatty, sets, Brian MacDevitt ( who had designed “Dog Opera”, Lights, Otts Munderloh (who had designed “Dog Opera”, Sound and Jane Greenwood, Costumes. But the real event of the production was the trial of O.J. Simpson. Gerry was fascinated with the process (he wanted to be a lawyer at one time in his life). His friend Gloria Muzio would fax us updates all throughout the day. (See my interview with Bob E. Gasper, my assistant, in the Look and Listen Section). The last show I did with Gerry was in 2002, “Boys and Girls”, at Playwright Horizons. This was also the last play I stage managed until 2021.

Our friendship moved into a personal one. Dinners, politics and schmoozing until his death in 2003.

Gerry’s & Kevin’s lives crossed in 2002. See my video in the Look and Listen section.