The Many Faces of Events
The thing about events is that they are usually very short and they pay a lot of money. As an Off-Broadway stage manager, I can make as much in a day on events as I did a week in the Off-Broadway arena. In the early 1990s a lot of my friends started doing them and they began to invite me along.
There are events that you do alone, and there are events that you do with one assistant and there are events that have 15 or 20 stage managers. There are events that you do in a hotel in New York City and there are events that take you around the world. There are gala awards ceremonies, business conferences, pharmaceutical and car reveals, festivals, company holiday parties and political events. I have done them all and I am still having a great time.
One of the first events that I did was the ChaseBank Christmas Party. It was always a two-day event at Chase headquarters in Brooklyn. It was one of the events with 15 or 20 stage managers. The lobby was decorated and we had jugglers, acrobats and Santa Claus. There was a stage that rotated choirs and acts, and each of the conference rooms on the second floor had attractions with a stage manager for each room. We did this event for eight years. The group of stage managers that participated loved doing this event every year and we became close friends.
A wonderful thing about events is that they can recur each year and they can be meaningful & impactful. I was asked to join the 9/11 memorial reading of the names on the second year and participated in most of them since. I worked on the Clinton Global Initiative from the second year until it ended 11 years later. Other events that I did multiple times that were meaningful and or very exciting: Career Transition for Dancers, IBM Golden Global Circle Conference, U.S. Open Tennis opening and closing ceremonies, Brennan Center for Justice Awards Gala.
One of the Producers of the Chase Party went off to become a producer on her own and she hired me for many of her events. One year we went to St. Thomas and did an event with The Beach Boys, another year we went to Charleston, S.C for a Democratic Presidential event with candidates: Beto O’Roarke, Pete Buttiegig, Cory Booker & Elizabeth Warren. And in between we did awards ceremonies, festivals, and even did a bat mitzvah in New Jersey that cost about $2,000,000.
Political events have a different flavor and don’t always have a format that needs a stage manager. I have been lucky enough to do all types. I first started out by volunteering for Geraldine Ferraro’s Senate campaign in 1992. I was asked to join the staff a couple of months later and learned to fundraise and build events.
Events are not all work especially when you are working out of town. Doing a big event with many sessions happening at the same time with stage managers in each “breakout” room allows you to hang out with each other after hours. And some events have wonderful extra-curricular activities.
