David McGraw is the head of Stage Management and Arts Entrepreneurship at University of Iowa. He sheds some light on the world of graduate training in stage management–what to look for in a program, and what you should be ready for when you get there.

Can you discuss how you came to pursue a career in stage management?

Stage management draws upon my strengths – organization, communication, conflict resolution, collaboration – while I work in the art form that feeds my soul: theatre.  I stage managed in college and at two summer stock companies before starting grad school.  Within three months after grad school, I earned my Equity card and have never looked back.

How important would you say your training has been to you in your career?

There are stage managers who question whether the MFA is necessary.  I would agree that not every stage manager needs the MFA, but it helps you develop the skills to analyze and to innovate.   Good internships can teach you how to stage manage; a good MFA program can teach you why certain methods work well, and how to develop new methods based on your own strengths rather than the strengths of your supervisors.  Prior to grad school, I had several good supervisors, but the leadership techniques that worked for them did not necessarily work for me.  Grad school gave me the safety net to try new techniques, some of which failed, but they helped me become a more balanced, stronger, and more confident leader on productions.

A lot of undergraduate students may have a general notion of what graduate training might be like for an actor or a designer, but what goes into a MFA in Stage Management? What types of classes and production experience make up the program at Iowa?

At the University of Iowa, we believe in adaptability as the key component of a great stage manager.  Your very first assignment is the Stage Manager Stress Test, which identifies the areas in which you need development.  You may already be excellent at some skill, but if you feel that you have more to learn, we will help you to further develop that skill.  Our students arrive with a wide range of experiences, so there is no single plan of study, but we do offer eight core classes between our two stage management faculty members plus advanced coursework in related fields such as arts management, production management, and entertainment design.  We also offer assistantships in Dance and Opera, so you can be paid while you learn to call shows in these two performing arts fields.  In addition to the regular production assignments, which include developing new plays, we take an annual research trip to a great hub city for the performing arts.  Our most recent trips have been to New York City, Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas.

What qualities are you most interested in when you’re recruiting MFA stage management candidates?

A willingness to learn and to take risks.  We sometimes get candidates who consider themselves already successful at stage management and simply want the degree.  We are not the right program for those candidates.  [Fellow faculty member] Melissa Turner and I act as personal trainers, helping our students break down their work so that they can build a stronger foundation as stage managers.  Iowa is an academically rigorous program, so we also expect applicants to be strong students as well.

How would you describe your own time in graduate school?

I did not enter grad school with the proper mindset.  I arrived wanting to prove myself and so I focused on demonstrating my strengths.  What I should have done was ask more questions and work outside of my comfort zone.  But, by my second semester, I was challenging myself.  In undergrad, you answer the professor’s questions.  In grad school, you are the one asking the questions.

In recent years, advances in technology have changed theater production in many ways. How has that affected the role of the stage manager?

Not enough.  Stage managers tend to adapt other technology to our needs as there are relatively few programs or apps that were built directly for stage managers.  The challenge is that there are only a few thousand stage managers in the United States, so it is difficult to justify the cost of developing new technology for such a relatively small group.  But as a Research I University, we view part of our job to be developing and testing new technologies for stage managers in the field.  This is also why we conduct the Stage Manager Survey (www.smsurvey.info).

What should a stage management student be looking for in a training program?

I recommend examining three components of each training program:

1. How will the program help you achieve your 5- and 10-Year-Plans?

How will this program assist you more than what an internship at a major theatre can offer?  In what position will you be to work upon graduation?  Will you have so much debt that you will need to take non-theatre work (or higher-paying, less-rewarding work) after studying the theatre that you love?

2. What can the faculty offer you over 2-3 years of mentorship?

Unlike undergraduate programs, you will be working with the same faculty member(s) all of the time.  Melissa Turner and I have very different backgrounds and stage management styles that, though complementary, offer different perspectives on leadership and life within theatre.

3. Who will be your peers?

You will practically be living with these classmates during the course of your graduate studies.  Our grads maintain a blog, www.iowastagemanager.com, so that prospective students can see the type of community that they will be joining.  As faculty, we spend a great deal of time recruiting students from different backgrounds to keep our team diverse, but we also connect prospective students with current students.  Your peers will be your network for the rest of your career, not only in terms of jobs but also as sympathetic confidants, especially in such a solitary profession as stage management.

What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of teaching?

It was difficult to leave professional theatre to start teaching, but I realized that what I loved most about my work was guiding the next generation of stage managers.  I love how my students challenge me to be a better stage manager myself.

What type of professional placement and/or bridge to the profession does Iowa offer to its MFA stage managers?

While it is helpful to read the faculty bios for any grad program, it is even more important to read the bios of recent alumni.  We post information on our alumni on our main website, here.  The University of Iowa also keeps a network guide of 120+ American theatres in which we have active connections—essentially a Theatre LinkedIn network before LinkedIn existed.  Every student who has graduated from our program in the past five years is actively working as a stage manager and everyone who has graduated in the ten years that I have been teaching at Iowa is still working in theatre.

What advice would you give to someone who has just graduated and is about to embark on their theatre career?

A good graduate program should give you the confidence in yourself to know that you belong in professional theatre.  But it should also help you develop the humility needed to work as a good collaborator.  The major complaint I hear from professional theatre artists is that recently-minted MFAs (stage managers, actors, directors, designers, etc.) have a sense of entitlement.   You have finished your formal education but you have only started to learn your art.

Thank you, David!

David J. McGraw is the head of the Stage Management and Arts Entrepreneurship programs at the University of Iowa.  From 2003 to 2011, he served as the Production Stage Manager for both the Theatre Arts Department and the Iowa Summer Rep.  A proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, David has also stage managed for the Arizona Repertory Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre, Geva Theatre Center, Oldcastle Theatre, Perishable Theatre, StageWorks on the Hudson, Vilar Center for the Arts, White River Theatre Festival, and the Yale Repertory Theatre.  He is a member of USITT, the Association of Arts Administration Educators, and has served as the Second Vice Chair of the Stage Managers Association. In November 2012, David conducted a 35-hour workshop on stage management at the Taipei National University of the Arts.  David owns SM-Sim, LLC, (www.sm-sim.com) which has produced the training film, Standby Cue 101, and sponsors the Stage Manager Survey.