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OPERA PEOPLE:
THE STAGE MANAGER
uring an opera performance, we are all aware of the singers and the orchestra. We see the wigs, make-up and costumes and are aware that people must be changing the sets between scenes. However, unless something disastrous happens, we are unaware of the person making sure that everything happens as planned. This is the stage manager who can be thought of as the nervous system of a production, making sure all the other parts of the body are working correctly. But there is much more to the job than running a particular performance.
 San Diego Opera’s Production Stage Manager is Mary Yankee Peters, who has been with the company since 1989, working here six months a year. She arrives at least one month before rehearsals start for the season. Armed with her laptop, she works on the master schedule of staging rehearsals, costume fittings, coaching sessions, etc....She also makes lists, lots of them, of all the people involved in a production. She then makes the assignments for her staff and others. This is a very long document of about seven pages, single-spaced. During all of this, she is helped by at least two assistant stage managers. Always present during every rehearsal, they keep track of all the instructions given by the director and even sometimes fill in for missing singers during the staging. They must cue every entrance, making sure the performer has the necessary props and all details of the costume are correct.
During a performance, the stage manager is stationed at a desk to the right of the stage. She has her own score with all the cues marked and three television monitors, one on which she can watch the action on stage, another focused on the conductor and the third on the light cues. She is connected through headsets with her assistants and other important backstage personnel. Nothing happens unless she gives the signal, from the entrance of the conductor and the raising of the curtain until the end of the curtain calls. She cues all sound effects, set changes, lighting changes, and other special effects such as fog or, during Faust, the lighting effects when Méphistophélès first appears. Her assistants are stationed at various entrances, making sure everyone is where he or she is supposed to be and all enter at the precise moment called for.Ms. Peters is uniquely qualified for this position. The oldest of twelve children, she early learned to keep the others in line. Herself a musician, she studied voice at the University of Michigan and sang with small opera companies before changing to backstage work. With this music background, she knows how to read a complex orchestra score, a great help in performing her duties during and before a performance. She is married to John David Peters, the Production Carpenter for San Diego Opera (see below) and the Set Designer for Il trovatore. In their few spare holidays together, they enjoy outdoor activities such as camping. While he works all year for San Diego Opera, she spends another six months working for opera companies throughout the United States.
CREATING THE PICTURE
Part of the enjoyment of a live performance of opera compared to listening to a recording lies in the spectacle created by the sets and the costumes. In fact, one of the things most praised about the initial performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte was the production designed by Schikaneder. Now San Diego Opera is presenting a new production of this opera, and very talented people were responsible for expressing their visions in set and costume designs. These people will get credit in the performance programs, but those to whom are given the task of turning the visions into reality are seldom mentioned. San Diego Opera is fortunate to have two of the best doing this, Costume Supervisor, Missy West, and Production Carpenter, John David Peters.
MISSY WEST
As Costume Supervisor for San Diego Opera for eight years, Missy West has been in charge of everything to do with costumes. She has two assistants, a Costume Shop Manager, Greg Burke, and a Wardrobe Master, Michael Regna.
Although most costumes are still rented, with the acquisition of its own costume shop two years ago, San Diego Opera can now construct the costumes for some productions. This year it is the new production of Die Zauberflöte with costume designs by Zandra Rhodes. It is Ms. West’s task to meet with the designer and talk in depth about the conversion of the designs to actual costumes. What construction techniques are envisioned? What quality and texture of fabrics are to be used? (Usually the designer provides swatches — small samples of the fabric.) What possible changes, such as dyeing will be necessary? Sometimes what the designer wants doesn’t even exist, and it must be invented. All this has to be done with tact, giving the designer what is wanted and still maintaining quality and suitability for later rental. (The finished costumes will help pay their cost by being rented to other companies.) For Die Zauberflöte, Miss West is serving at the Assistant Designer and doing much of the shopping for fabrics herself, consulting with Ms. Rhodes on the final choices
 Once the designs are finalized, and the measurements of the artists have been obtained, it is time for the four cutters and drapers to get to work. Ideally, a costume is first built of muslin and fitted to the singer. It can then be used as a pattern for the final costume. However, San Diego Opera can not afford to bring singers from all over the world for advance fittings. Instead, dress forms are configured to a singer’s measurements, drapers look at a picture and try to reproduce the effect by manipulating the fabric on the form, draping, pleating and folding it until it hangs properly. It is then marked, flattened out, and a paper pattern made. This will be used to cut the final fabric. Then the crew of sewers and others can get to work with actually making the costumes. (Opera costumes are made with very wide seams so that they can be altered to fit others who might later sing the same or similar roles.) There is also a milliner who creates hats and headdresses. Die Zauberflöte requires many of these because of the large chorus. The men represent priests, slaves, and populo (general humanity) and some have costume changes. The women are all populo. Most wear turbans so the milliner is a turbaner with experience in India. All told, Ms. West’s crew consists of about twenty.
Her responsibilities also include the wardrobe department which takes care of the costumes during the run of the opera. Dressers assist the singers don the costumes and make sure everything is complete.
What prepares one for such a position? Ms. West says that a wide background helps, and she certainly has that. She learned to sew when she was about ten. Her undergraduate degree was in Bioanthropology, after which she obtained a Master’s in Secondary Science Education. After teaching high school biology and coaching softball, she returned to graduate school for a second Master’s, this time in Museum Science. She worked in a petroleum museum and was Assistant Curator for the Dallas Historical Society.
Other jobs followed. While working as a ghostwriter at Amherst College in Massachusetts, she started working on costumes for a local community theatre. Once more graduate study beckoned. While studying anthropology and archaeology, she became interested in historic costumes and curated a small collection. When the faculty left, she ended up teaching the classes herself! A summer job in New York City involved working in shops building costumes for Cats and Twilight Express. Jobs with Santa Fe Opera and Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre followed before she went back to New York where she built catwalk outfits for a fashion designer and worked in Broadway theatres as a dresser. Eight years ago, a friend who worked for San Diego Opera called. She was leaving; was Miss West interested in the job?
For six months of each year, she is in San Diego. The rest of the time she does freelance work, including designing. She frequently works for the movies in charge of continuity. (Scenes are not usually shot in sequence. When shooting of an earlier scene is continued, someone has to be sure that the actors are dressed exactly as they were before.
While someone aspiring for working with theatrical costumes will probably not have that wide a background, broad experience on which one can draw is necessary. College study should include history and art. The latter teaches one how to see what one is looking at. When she taught, one of her assignments was to choose a work of art and describe one of the costumes in four pages, double-spaced. Students would think they could not do it, but found they could by really looking. A degree in Theatre is interesting but not really necessary.
A position like Ms. West’s is difficult to find. Skilled technicians, such as cutters and drapers, are much in demand and can find steady employment. Although commercial sewing is very different, learn to sew at home. Take samples of your work to shops and museums. They are always looking for people who are willing to work and learn and who are pleasant to be with. If they like you, they will help you develop. San Diego has a good pool of people and jobs are often obtained by recommendations from people who know of your work.
Whatever your goals, her advice is to move around a lot, meet as many people as possible, observe others at work, ask questions, and keep your eyes open but mouth shut. Go to museums and practice really seeing what you look at. Ms. West claims she spent many years pretending to know what she was doing when she did not, nodding her head as though understanding when people were talking about things meaningless to her. They are not meaningless now.
JOHN DAVID PETERS
In converting a designer’s visions from initial plans to the production which is seen on opening night, the multi-talented John David Peters, who has worked for San Diego Opera for over forty years, wears several hats.
 Before starting to build the sets, he studies the designer’s presentation which consists of drawings and paint elevations or set models. He then talks with the designer to learn his or her overall concept. He asks questions. What creative process was used in arriving at the final ideas and dreams. Is the set based on a particular historical era? What challenges does the story present (e.g. frequent scene changes)? What physical limitations are presented by the stages on which the opera is to be presented?
Once he is sure he understands the designer’s intentions, he takes the plans and breaks them done into a workable plan for each of the craftspeople: welders, carpenters, sewers, scenic artists and others. Since the designs include not only the structure of the standing sets but also furniture and props, these must be included in his plans. To do this he has to consider size and weight limitations, storage specifications, handling considerations and, of course, cost. Since all of these affect the final appearance of the set, he must then communicate his recommendations to the designer. Since designers have a very proprietary feeling about their ideas and may hate to see them modified, this may involve quite a bit of tact. Communication must continue throughout the entire process of construction and setting up of the finished sets.
As the Production Carpenter for San Diego Opera, Peters is responsible to all aspects of how the Opera’s sets and equipment are handled. This involves the care and maintenance of the Scenic Studio in South San Diego. This is where the construction actually takes place and sets are stored. Since San Diego Opera is only in the Civic Theatre for five months, January starts with the transportation of everything from the scenic studio to the theatre. First he must plan and supervise the loading and unloading of seven 45 foot trailer trucks full of basic equipment: lights, tools, office materials, basic materials for wardrobe and make-up operations, etc.. Finally it is time to move the newly built sets for Die Zauberflöte and he puts on his hat as Stage Carpenter. On the professional stage this is the title for the person who is the ultimate authority when it comes to erecting the set and making changes during the show. All other departments co-ordinate their efforts through him. The work must be planned and organized so that it can be done as efficiently as possible — the stage hands actually rehearse the changes which are to be made during a performance. The sets are hung and assembled under his supervision, and during rehearsals, as problems arise or ideas are changed, he consults with the designer and others and makes final adjustments. During a show he is the one ultimately responsible for making sure that the proper sets are onstage at the appropriate time, that the stage is safe and orderly, and that the set changes happen in a timely manner. After the last show, he must co-ordinate the load-out making sure all departments can work together efficiently and safely.
San Diego’s Scenic Studio builds sets, not only for the local company, but for all of North America (examples are as varied as Chicago Lyric Opera’s Ring, sets for a 300 performance tour of George Lucas Superlative Adventures which toured Japan, and a stage for Stanford University’s graduation). That it has earned a national reputation as one of the pre-eminent producers of quality scenery in North America can be ascribed in large part to the efforts and abilities of John David Peters.
Peters also has another hat, that of Set Designer; in the 2000 season he designed the sets for Il trovatore. Of course, he also wore all of his other hats for this production.
What prepared him for this varied and responsible career? A graduate of United States International University’s School of Performing Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Scenic Design and Technical Theatre, he first worked for San Diego Opera as a “grip”or stage crew member for 1969’s Don Quixote. Since being hired as Production Carpenter in 1977, he has supervised all of San Diego Opera’s productions.
His advice for people who wish a similar career in the theatre: “First and foremost is a well rounded education, with emphasis on Art and Mechanics. The second essential element is to get involved. Be a volunteer, accept an internship or entry level position, even if that opportunity is not exactly what you think your emphasis is. The fact is that most people in the theatre have extensive experience in a wide variety of areas”.
In private life, he is married to Mary Yankee Peters, the Production Stage Manager for San Diego Opera (see above).
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