The pains of touring rewarded; a team stage managing a project out of the ordinary; and a first: Stage Management Student of the Year, sponsored by GDS.
Once again a full-capacity audience applauded the winners at the National Awards for Stage Management ceremony held during the ABTT Theatre Show at the Royal Horticultural Halls on Wednesday 15 June.
Director Lindsay Posner who has just opened Butley at the Duchess Theatre, starring Dominic West and Paul McGann, spoke of his appreciation for the numerous stage management teams he had worked with over the years, in particular giving tribute to deputy stage managing – calling the show – which he said ‘is almost an artform in itself which requires great artistic sensitivity on the part of the stage manager’.
The selection panel which includes Stage Managing Director Catherine Comerford, sponsors of the awards, expressed their delight at the ever-increasing quality and breadth of the nominations, adding that this meant this year’s meeting to decide the winners had been their longest yet, with closely fought arguments on all the award categories.
Winner of the Individual Stage Manager Award was STEPH CURTIS, Company Stage Manager for Kneehigh’s production of The Red Shoes at the Asylum as well as a UK-wide and international tour.
The runner-up was Sophie Acreman for her role in Once Bitten, a French farce which ran at the Orange Tree in Richmond over Christmas 2010/11. Her work on the show was profiled in The Stage Backstage Focus pages recently.
The panel commended a couple of newcomers who are already making a strong impression – Robyn Clogg who was nominated for the West End production and UK tour of Morecambe; and Jessica Thanki who received three independent nominations from three different companies, despite being barely a few years into the profession.
The winning Stage Management Team were Claire Essex, Sarah Tryfan and Rebecca Carnell on Charged by Clean Break Theatre Company at the Soho Theatre, an extraordinary project which saw 6 plays in 3 different spaces at the theatre over two evenings, with audience members promenading between them. Helen Pringle, Administrative Producer for Clean Break and herself a former stage manager, in paying tribute to the team said they were ‘the best team I have ever worked with in my 22 year career’.
Runners-up were Andrew Jolly, Irmgard Hager and Jo Oliver on the UK Tour of Carries War for Novel Theatre.
Like many other nominators, James Brining, Artistic Director of Dundee Rep, wrote in his nomination for the SM team on Sweeney Todd how the excellence of the stage management team had contributed to the overall success of this show which garnered the TMA Award for Best Musical in 2010.
There was a first included with this year’s awards – the Stage Management Student of the Year Award, sponsored by Global Design Solutions4. The judges were very impressed with the standard of the students nominated and the winner was Charlotte Archer from Mountview Academy for Theatre Arts.
The runner-up was Catherine Lewis who is just graduating from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
New sponsors GDS’ Richard Cuthbert, presenting the award, spoke of their delight in being involved with the awards and playing a role in supporting new talent.
Finally, the legendary Richard Pilbrow, former stage manager, lighting designer, consultant and founder of Theatre Projects, paid fulsome tribute to his life-long mentor Bob (Robert) Stanton for whom he accepted a posthumous ‘honour’, the Stage Management Association’s Golden Headset. Bob Stanton, apart from stage managing many large productions between the 1930s and 1960s, then created and ran the seminal stage management course at LAMDA. He thus had a profound impact not just on Pilbrow’s career, but on that of many hundreds of stage managers and technicians over the years.