Facilitation Practices in Stage Management

Facilitation Practices in Stage Management: Interpersonal Skills and Building Relationships in the Production Process reframes the stage manager as an artistic facilitator and offers a practical guide to understanding both oneself and one’s collaborators in service of a shared goal: the production. This book examines the many facets of the stage manager’s role – artist, technician, social anthropologist, connector, and servant leader – and highlights how each requires creativity, curiosity, adaptability, and empathy throughout the production process. Drawing on ideas and practices from education, social organizing, and community engagement, this book explores interpersonal communication, facilitation, self-reflection, information gathering, language, conflict navigation, mediation, accountability, self-care, and community-building in a practical, accessible, personal, and often humorous way. Facilitation Practices in Stage Management invites all stage managers and artistic facilitators to bring their full selves to their work and challenges them to cultivate creative spaces where others feel empowered to do the same. Written for undergraduate, graduate, and professional stage managers, as well as theater educators, this book supports practitioners at all phases of their career. Serving as a complement to foundational stage management texts, it offers valuable tools for arts and entertainment professionals seeking to expand their facilitation skills and for students studying communication and leadership.