Welcome to Wandering Around In The Dark: An Exhibit of Stage Manager Artifacts

Wandering Around in the Dark is an exhibition that looks at artifacts from the life of a stage manager in the 19th through 21st centuries. It takes a dive into the backstage world of the professional theater world that isn’t often seen or recognized.

In terms of collecting and what is considered to be “cool”, the artifacts that are collected from stage managers are often some of the least exciting documents to look at it. They’re not flashy like costumes and they’re not as exciting as something that might come from a more prominently seen collaborator like the director or the choreographer or one of the designers. However, upon closer examination, the records that are saved from stage managers are some of the more interesting and more detailed pieces from any theatrical production.

Stage managers are the documentarians of the professional theater world. They keep track of everything in a production, including but not limited to: actors, scenery, props, costumes, choreography, blocking, and technical cues just to name a few. So even though professional stage managers spend a lot of their time wandering around in the dark, working to make a production the best it can be, I wanted to put the spotlight on them for a change and focus on the great documenting and subsequent archival work that they do without even trying.