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Johanna Adams
Senior Stage Manager, Royal Opera House
interviewed by David Bain
Swedenborg Hall,
London
13 September 2007.
DAVID BAIN WELCOMED Johanna Adams, Senior
Ballet Stage Manager at the Royal Opera
House. To illustrate her talk, Johanna
brought with her a complete set of documentation
for Sylvia, from marked-up score, every
kind of cue sheet and technical plot to
call sheets which she most trustingly
allowed the meeting to look at and pass
round.
Johanna comes from a theatre background;
both parents were originally actors. From
a young age she wanted to act. Up to the
age of 15, she said, she wanted to be
Liz Taylor who was a kind of idol, but
she had a serious riding accident and
broke her arm which destroyed her confidence
for going on stage. Her father had given
up acting for stage management and she
thought that would be a good sort of job.
At 15, a very impressionable age, she
was taken by her godfather to Covent Garden,
as he had done many times previously since
she was very young, but this time it was
to see Fonteyn and Nureyev in Romeo and
Juliet. He always took her out for supper
after the performance but this time she
just didn’t want to go, she didn’t
want to talk. For two days she couldn’t
think of anything else. When it came to
‘A’ level time she also went
and slept out at beginning of the 1969
season to see Fonteyn and Nureyev in Sleeping
Beauty. From then on she spent every night
on the pavement queuing for tickets for
Fonteyn/Nureyev performances. At that
time, if you were 15/16 and a Young Friend,
every three months you got 10 shilling
vouchers, the price of a standing ticket
at the back of the stalls circle, “so
you got into some performances for nothing.”
At the end of first year of A
levels, having spent a lot of time bunking
off in order to be in the queue when the
box office opened at 10 a.m. (with
the support of her parents, who were great,
as they saw it as a better education for
what she wanted to do), she got an unconditional
place at drama school to do stage management.
Johanna’s first job out of drama
school was with The Actors’ Company.
At that time the leading actor there was
Ian McKellen. It was an incredible start
into straight theatre where she worked
for a number of years. Then she went to
the BBC as floor assistant which she absolutely
loathed. Her mother was working on television,
at that time the BBC. The floor manager
had been a deputy stage manager at the
Opera House. He knew from conversations
with her mother that Johanna loved ballet
and so he offered to teach her how to
follow a score. Although Johanna played
piano, she didn’t know how to follow
a score in order to run a ballet. He taught
her how to do it. Then a job came up at
The Festival Ballet as assistant stage
manager “which I was very lucky
to get.” This was in 1979, at the
beginning of the year, half way through
the season, and near the end of Beryl
Grey’s time as director. Johanna
said she was incredibly lucky as the BBC
had said to her “Don’t think
they will take you on their forthcoming
China tour” – but they did.
It was incredible. John Field became director
in 1979 and in 1980 he insisted on making
her stage manager, quite a leap from ASM.
Throughout that time she was lucky enough
to do the seasons at the Coliseum with
Nureyev, an incredible experience working
with him. Looking back, she felt that
during the 80s Festival Ballet was an
amazing company. The John Field period
was good and he was a fabulous person
to work with. At the end of ’78/’79,
Peter Schaufuss’s La Sylphide “was
an absolutely fabulous production.”
Johanna was made stage director by Peter
Schaufuss and when he left in ’89/’90
he took her with him to the Berlin Deutsche
Opera Ballet where she was from 1990 to
1994. He also took a number of dancers
with him including Leannne Benjamin; the
technical director and a pianist. Berlin
was incredible. She had been asked because
they were doing a wonderful production,
Maurice Bejart’s Ring um den Ring ballet, a five hour epic narated by an
actor played by an ex-étoile of the Paris
Opera who was a wonderful speaker, a pianist
and with recordings of The Ring. Johanna
arrived and was told “There is a
rehearsal tomorrow, we are on stage.”
She was given four sides of A4 with the
cues but only where the cue happened,
no stand-by points, and the ballet was
five hours long! So she would go in at 5 a.m., sit with a video and look
at what was going to be rehearsed that
day and try and work out where the cues
were. It was the most fantastic production
and it was brought to Edinburgh in 1991.
It was a highlight of her time there –
as was having a near-fatal accident.
Johanna explained what had happened. After
a late lunch with the technical director,
they were going back to a rehearsal. Her
son Tom was in a playground round the
corner so she went to collect her him
and was waiting to cross the six-lane
highway when she was stung by a wasp as
she walked to the middle reservation.
The sun was shining on the cars, a car
changed lane, she didn’t see it
– and that was nearly it for her. She
had Tom on the side on which she was hit,
sub-consciously she threw him back so
he was unharmed. The whole company who
were returning for the rehearsal saw it
happen. At first they didn’t think
she would survive, then they didn’t
think she would walk again. She was in
rehab for a long time.
Johanna was back at work in 1994. Peter
Schaufuss tried to persuade her to go
to Copenhagen where for a short time he
was director of The Royal Danish Ballet
but her husband who is a photographer
was having to spend a lot of time working
back in London. Tom found it lonely, he
would have to spend a lot of time at the
theatre with Johanna, and he begged them
to go home. He was missing family life.
He had been in German education and had
to transfer to the English system at the
age of 11 which was really hard, so Johanna
took a year off. Then The Royal Ballet
was looking for a stage manager. That
was November 1995.
At the Royal Opera House, Johanna is responsible
for everything that happens on stage,
rehearsals and performances, what happens
in rehearsal studios in terms of props
and any sound. They are a team of three:
herself, a deputy stage manager and an
assistant. Johanna creates the schedule
for each of them.
At the beginning of the rehearsal process,
for each production old or new, there
is a ground plan which the stage management
team mark out in the studio in coloured
tape for each scene so dancers know where
everything is – so they don’t
dance through scenery. Johanna is responsible
for the set, rehearsal props, looks after
all hired actors (unlike in the opera
company), hires them during the rehearsal
period, does their rehearsal schedule
with the ballet office, gives them contracts
and makes sure they are there for every
rehearsal and performance, leaving a signing-in
sheet at the stage door and so on.
During the rehearsal process, a score
is compiled into which all the cues are
put against the music manuscript – fly
cues, lighting cues, follow-spot, curtain
in and out. In ballet, the cue is always
given against the musical notes, so you
have to be able to read music to do the
job.
She works out a schedule at the beginning
of the season for who is going to be cuing
which ballet – called being ‘on
the book’ – and that person sits
in the prompt corner. The prompt corner
in the refurbished House (and the Coliseum)
is on stage right or OP side, otherwise
called a ‘bastard prompt.’
Very often in theatres, the prompt corner
is on stage left. In the prompt corner
there is a little desk with two monitors,
one with view of the stage and one with
a view of the conductor. There is a panel
of cue lights (which turn red for standby,
green for go), for cues for stage scenery,
smoke and so on. The stage management
wear headsets attached to the panel so
they can talk to the fly light operators,
electrics, the dome for follow spot and
to front-of-house, (announcing the start
of performances and calls to the auditorium).
Johanna described the process of remounting Sylvia to illustrate how the process works.
It was almost done from scratch as the
original designs were missing. Peter Farmer
re-worked the set from drawings and photographs.
Johanna worked on a virgin score with
Monica Mason and Christopher Newton who
had done an enormous amount of research
to get the ballet back on stage. Lighting
designer Mark Jonathan, Peter Farmer and
Christopher were together in rehearsal
and then Johanna had a couple of supper
evenings with Jonathan and Christopher
sitting with the score and old film and
trying to work out cues, scenery moves
and lighting. It is a big process. With
almost all productions there is a technical
Sunday when the crew put the set in place
and the electricians focus the lights.
By the evening the lighting designer is
able to plot the cues and Johanna puts
them into the score, hopefully where he
has been suggesting them in their conversations
or moving them if, when the dancers come
on stage, it is found they are not in
quite the right place.
The bit in a production that needs Johanna’s
input takes about six weeks. Her team
goes to production meetings with the production
department where they are shown a set
model which is then taken away to a workshop
and scenery is then built. Depending on
how complicated the production is, Johanna’s
team like to be involved in this whole
process.
At the Opera House there is a head of
technical and his managers; under them
there are also project teams. They have
a leader and a deputy. The leader is always
a stage person or an electrician and has
five people under them – stage, props,
electrics. Then there are two teams, red
shift and blue shift, who are dailies
and work day on and day off. At the weekend
they work Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Everyone
is on a red or blue shift. That shift
is responsible for getting the set to
the stage. The production manager is responsible
for getting the set built; there’s
a costume supervisor who is responsible
for getting the costumes made, and two
or three costume fittings during the rehearsals.
Johanna is not involved with costumes.
Philip Moseley has the incredibly difficult
job scheduling rehearsals and costume
fittings. The production manager with
the team leader and managers is responsible
for ensuring it all works. It is his job
to rectify it if something doesn’t.
The new Opera House is much better and
more convenient than the old one. In the
new House, the dancers’ backstage
conditions are incredible. Before, rehearsals
were at Barons Court and travelling was
time-consuming. Rehearsals had to stop
at 4.00 or 4.30, now they stop at 5.30
on a performance day and 6.30 on a non-performance
day. It is much better for Johanna and
team who also had at the end of the day
to go between Barons Court and the House,
like the dancers. The offices are better
than they were. The stage is incredibly
improved, with a better wagon system for
scenery. Sets can be built on wagons and
moved into position for rehearsal or performance
and they can slide sideways or lift up
and the dance floor can be laid, with
the set already built on it. There is
also stage area to the left and it goes
all the way back and right across the
back, so scenery and wagons can move in
many directions. There is an enormous
build area where the scenery comes into
the building and is put together before
it comes to the stage.
Johanna described the build up to a typical
performance. The tradition in the theatre
is that there is a half hour call, a quarter
hour call, a five minute call and a beginners’
call. The half hour is 35 minutes before
curtain up, the quarter is 20 minutes
before, the five is 10 minutes before
and beginners is five minutes before curtain
up.
Checks are done on the lights at the front
of the stage and spaces are marked so
that dancers can keep in line; props are
checked; the cue lights are checked to
make sure they are working and communications
with the fly floor and follow spots are
checked to see if they are okay. Before
the half hour call in Sleeping Beauty the thunder is tested so see if it can
be heard at the right level. Before the
half hour call, clearance is given to
open the auditorium. They check with the
house manager in case they need the start
to be held, but this is rarely granted
if the show is close to three hours. House
lights are taken to half prior to the
start of the performance, any announcements
are made about cast changes and the maestro
goes into the pit. The Principals are
checked. Also, if, for instance, there
are supposed to be eight corps de ballet
in the opening position, they check, “as
one or two dancers are pretty bad at getting
down to the stage in time!” Once
the stage is set and the technicians have
finished, there is a ballet barre in place
45 minutes before curtain up so dancers
can warm up.
No-one is allowed on stage when the red
lights outside all the entrances to it
are flashing. Some principal dancers ignore
the red light and go between the scenery
which is incredibly dangerous but they
are so nervous that Johanna and team try
to accommodate them. Right up to the last
minute dancers are warming up and fiddling
around with their shoes and ribbons on
stage. Then Johanna makes eye contact
with the conductor. The tab dressing (the
house curtains are called tabs) is taken
out; the light on the curtain is turned
off, and the performance starts.
Some ballets have multiple cues, some
very few. Often in old ballets, the follow
spot operators learn their own
pick-ups and don’t need to be cued
except in a new production where they
don’t know the dancers. Johanna’s
team now cue the dancers’ crucial
movements in the score. There is an odd
occasion when things haven’t been
cued and a vital piece of scenery hasn’t
moved – as happened in Nutcracker
early on in the new House when the bridge
didn’t grow which meant that the
tree didn’t grow and Johanna had
no choice but to bring the curtain down.
The same process happens when dancers
get injured – like Alina Cojocaru
in Manon – and then it is a nightmare
to find a replacement. On that occasion
Jaimie Tapper was busy painting her bathroom
and got in, within half an hour.
Three stage managers are on every evening,
one on the book, one on each side of the
stage looking after entrances and exits
– electrics, scenery moves. The
assistant stage manager makes their own
plot for their own side of the stage.
At this point in the meeting Johanna handed
out the floor plan, score, cue sheets
etc for Sylvia, for all to look at and
explained what the codes meant.
Johanna was asked about tours. She explained
that they are organised by Anthony Russell-Roberts. He goes with Kevin O’Hare
to recce a venue, together with the head
of technical and someone from lighting.
They look at the venue to see how the
ballet might fit. The number of truck-loads
of scenery and costumes needed is worked
out. Johanna gets heavily involved in
putting the schedule together with the
head of technical. If the company is going
to three venues, dancers have to have
two sets of make-up boxes so that they
can leapfrog. Stage management look after
the make-up boxes which are stored in
Wales and their retrieval is all done
through the technical manager. Dancers
are told how many boxes they can have,
normally they have two; sometimes they
can take both throughout the tour, sometimes
only one as the other has to be sent on
to the next venue. Most of the production
is sent by sea in advance. Everyone except
the dancers leaves immediately the season
ends; they follow a day later. So dancers
are allowed to keep one make-up box behind
which they pack at the end of the last
show, and it is then air freighted to
the first venue. Dancers are responsible
for putting their own make-up into the
boxes and their own shoes into shoe bags
(which are supposed only to have shoes
in them but often have lots of other things
in them too). Johanna’s team are
responsible for seeing they go into the
skips on get-out.
Scores and the production files and the
plots for the technicians are put into
skips. A plot is made for all the prop
settings during the rehearsal process
which is handed to the prop staff on the
first stage rehearsal so they know where
to set them. Some dancers like props in
different places which are noted. Sometimes
positions are changed during rehearsal.
Johanna and team have had to learn to
use computers to do the drawings which
used to be handwritten “in the good
old days.”
Technical running plots are made before
the first stage rehearsals and updated
as rehearsals progress. The first page
has all the bar numbers on it for all
the scenery that is flown. There are up
to 120 bars. In some ballets they use
a lot and in others not many. In the plot,
the first block is all the scenery that
is in and is followed by all the scenery
that is out. Then there are cues and the
page numbers in the score, how many minutes
into the ballet that occurs and what happens
on each cue. All the stage crew get a
copy “and hopefully the stage crew
read it…”
Curtain calls are put up on doors and
entrances to the stage so dancers don’t
forget where they are supposed to be and
the order of the curtain calls. They also
go up on the notice boards outside the
dressing rooms. Johanna’s team are
responsible for running the curtain calls,
knowing where dancers stand, rehearsing
curtain calls and for organising flowers
so they get to the right person. Johanna
remarked it was a great shame that we
had lost the flunkies and everyone loudly
agreed they are greatly missed.
Theatres on tour are very different and
local staff technical abilities can be
very tricky too. The Company takes all
its stage management team, a wardrobe
team of maybe eight, maybe six from wigs,
stage technicians, lighting, one person
from follow spots whose job is to teach
a local team (if they are cueing in a
foreign language sometimes they have an
interpreter to help), a props master and
a fly-man. It depends on the rules of
the country as to how many people they
have to employ locally.
Sets and scenery go with the Company on
tour. It doesn’t always fit and
the technical manager does a lot of work
beforehand, following the recce, to make
necessary adjustments. They also take
all their own costumes, their own washing
machines, tumble driers, sewing machines.
Even if these things are already there,
they have them in case.
The boat journey in Sleeping Beauty although
a favourite passage, can be a total nightmare.
Johanna described some of the thrills
and spills of operating it, with dry ice
causing it to slip and slide, or in Anthony
Dowell’s production, where it was
remote-controlled “which was terrifyingly
unpredictable and on one occasion it took
off on its own, heading for the pit.”
In Mexico City the local guys didn’t
understand how important it was that a
cue happened at the right time and at
the right speed. On the first night there
had been problems with the transformation
scene in Sleeping Beauty. They were very
apologetic and got better as the tour
went on. It is very important to create
good relationships with the local staff.
By the end of the three weeks of the tour
it had gone brilliantly. A really good
rapport was built up with the local stage
people who came with them. The impresario
had given the most amazing farewell party
after the last performance and Monica
Mason said in her speech that they had
never been so well looked after. It was
a wonderful tour.
Johanna is not responsible for local actors.
In advance, the managers have been advised
by Kevin O’Hare of numbers required,
ages and sizes as they have to fit into
the costumes. They come into the studio
in advance of the dancers and are selected
by Monica Mason and Christopher Carr who
then teaches them, from little children
to adults. It is tricky but amazing what
Christopher gets out of them all in a
very short space of time.
After what is now almost 30 years, Johanna
says that she thinks she’s had the
most incredible career and she doesn’t
regret one minute of it. It has all been
so amazing, no two days are the same unlike
with a West End show.
Johanna recalled working with Nureyev,
and the amazing nights with him. She was
one of the few stage managers that seemed
to get on with him really well. In those
last seasons of Nureyev and Friends with
the Festival Ballet he was getting really
tricky about turning up to the theatre
on time. At 7.20 she’d be waiting
for him at the stage door, then, at 7.30
or 7.35 he’d arrive, not warmed
up, not made up, not in costume. She’d
wait outside his dressing room for him
to come out and say “Johanna we
go,” and then she’d run to
the prompt corner and start the performance.
The last time Johanna saw Nureyev was
in 1991 in Berlin. He had turned to conducting
when he couldn’t dance any longer.
Peter Schaufuss had invited him to conduct
a pas de deux, Song of a Wayfarer, which
Peter was going to dance with Patrick
Dupont from Paris Opera. A friend had
gone to collect Rudolf from the airport
and she came into the theatre and asked
Johanna to go down and see him as she
thought he was so sick he wouldn’t
be able to do it. Nureyev was thrilled
to see in Berlin a face he knew. The next
day he saw Johanna’s son whom he
had met before, and looked at him and
said “Are you the son of Richard
(Farley) and Johanna?” He then got
into a lift with a friend of Johanna’s
and remarked “He has legs just like
his father.” Nureyev used to fancy
Johanna’s husband when they were
dancing together! At the rehearsals it
was a nightmare, he could hardly stand
and the orchestra was not good with him.
The Intendant in Berlin who was watching
didn’t think the performance could
happen. But when it came to it, Rudolf
came into the pit and it was just amazing.
She did know where he got the strength
from. As he walked onto the stage for
the curtain call it was like watching
a different person. He was extraordinary,
like an animal. Johanna felt she was
very fortunate in having had the great
experience of working with Nureyev as
both conductor and dancer.
In answer to questions Johanna said how
she has absolutely loved working with
the Royal. She loved working with Anthony
Dowell. She considers Monica Mason a tremendous
director. She has had wonderful, wonderful
productions. She loved working with Ashley
Page whose productions were a real challenge
with the mad, wacky music he chose which
was hard to follow. Sarah Wildor who was
rehearsing exclaimed to Johanna’s
assistant that she couldn’t possibly
be following this score. “Johanna
is reading it,” she replied. Johanna
“Loved doing Sylvia, loved doing
Marguerite and Armand, loved working with
Sylvie who has been fabulous to work with
– but so are our own dancers.”
It is very rare not to have a view of
the stage from the prompt corner. In Chroma,
working with Wayne McGregor was another
amazing time, but with that set she couldn’t
see the stage at all so had to rely on
the monitor. That was very tricky as it
was a very tricky score and there were
important visual cues when you had to
see what the dancer was doing. Johanna
can never enjoy the transformation scene
in Sleeping Beauty “as you can never
take your head out of the score and your
eyes off the stage.” But if you
are not on the book, in the final pdd
in Manon, like everyone in the company,
you try to get to the best position to
see the stage.
Managing any animals is another of Johanna’s
responsibilities. If there are animals
involved in a production she has to get
a vet to check the conditions. They have
a dustpan and brush to clear up after
the pony in Fille which is the responsibility
of the two boy dancers leading the pony.
It makes one of the dancers feel physically
sick to do!
Health and Safety is a nightmare nowadays.
Decibel levels are a serious matter. There
are regular tests. Gun shots are a serious
worry. Notices are put up at the entrances
to the pit in Manon saying when there
is going to be a gun shot and how many
minutes into the ballet so it doesn’t
come as a shock. Johanna has to write
a risk assessment for every production
and it can take hours. She has to foresee
every possible accident that could happen.
Then, after each performance, Johanna
has to write a show report of everything
that has happened – the time curtain went
up, down, number of curtain calls, principal
casting, who the conductor was and then
“remarks” which are anything
that went wrong. Sometimes that can be
two pages, sometimes nothing at all. It
means it can be very late by the time
she leaves the theatre – and, in
her job, she is on every ballet night
– “But I just love it.”
How are curtain calls controlled for flower
throws? “Ummm – intuition?”
said Johanna. When she was at school she
did the flower throws and she never got
permission from front-of-house. They were
just spontaneous. Sergeant Martin always
got them into the theatre a bit early
and used to store the flowers after they
had bought them in the morning at the
market. Now Johanna gets a message from
house management saying there will be
a flower throw tonight and whoever has
organised it has got permission –
Johanna said she thought it incredible
as she liked it when the flower throw
happens and she doesn’t know. It
may be because an instrument in the orchestra
was damaged, someone thought. Johanna
said that Nicky will sometimes organise
her ushers to do a flower throw as she,
too, loves them. A member remarked that
if it is a small flower throw they will
still do it without permission, but not
a big one. Apart from anything else, it
is a problem now getting the flowers into
the house. Johanna conceded that it was
true that with the big flower-throws,
the stage can get quite slippery and that
can be dangerous.
Report written by Belinda Taylor, checked and corrected by Johanna
Adams and David Bain ©The Ballet Association 2007.