Please for the Love of God, Do Not Sit on the Damn Couch

​In shows, there are often moving set pieces. These pieces come in and out of scenes as there are needed. These could include tables, chairs, side tables, and in our production, it was a couch.
            Movable set pieces can be difficult. They must smoothly move on and offstage during scene changes. Sometimes this means getting in the way of actors, or actors getting in the way of you. It is important as an assistant stage manager or running crew to talk to your actors. You have to make sure that when you do scene changes, you communicate what you want to happen smoothly.
            In the sketch comedy show, my running crew consisted of myself and one other person. Each of us were on separate sides of the stage. We didn’t always come out at the same time. With this fact, we had to heavily rely on actor’s help.
            One scene change that would have been difficult involved a couch moving offstage at the same movement that a large moving, counter sized cubby cart was moving on in the same direction onstage as well as 7 small stools being set in a semi circle on the other side of the stage. This scene change would have been extremely long had I not had actors.
            The first step was to move the couch as far upstage possible, an actor did that to keep my mind at ease. Next I moved the cubby onstage, and had someone hold the leg to keep out of the way. As the cubby moved on downstage, the couch moved off upstage of the cubby. There was a smooth roll we perfected to keep congestion clear.
            The other side of the stage was also busy, all of the actors who sat in the stools set their own stools. There was probably about 10 people involved in the scene change. This job that took 10 seconds would have taken a full 1 minute 30 seconds if it had just been my run crew.
            Another challenge with moving props are storing them. Backstage you have to block off some of the space to place these things. It involves playing tetris a little bit. Thankfully, we did not have many moving set pieces, but what we did have was taped off in an area that actors were told “Do not touch” the problem is the urge to touch.
            Our most used set piece was a red couch. During rehearsals when we rehearsed scenes multiple times and the long time of a tech rehearsal, actors would lounge on the couch or the chairs to relax instead of standing backstage for their call. This is fine for rehearsals with long down time, but once we got into runs, it became a problem.
            Sometimes scenes were very short. Only about a minute. That meant that no actor could touch the couch (Unless they were lovely enough to help in a scene change). During runs, I had to politely tell people to get off the couch. The first couple of times it was very much “Hey, Name, I love you but please don’t sit on the couch.” I would be looked at with puppy dog eyes, but I had to explain that if I let one sit, I had to let all sit. Eventually, it came down to a look of menace where people would just see me and immediately get up.
            It was comical really, because I reiterated every day to not sit on the couch every day. But every run of the show I would look to at least one actor with a look of:
                        Please for the love of god, do not sit on the damn couch.

We Think It's Funny at Plymouth State University Photo by Kaleb Hart