The Graceful Art of Stage ManagementI was fascinated watching the SM (Stage Manager) check in with the various departments- costumes, lighting, set design. I love to meet people and listen to their stories...
by Barbara Ford
Melanie St-Jacques may not have known early on in her life that her strengths lay in stage management, but she is most assuredly a natural fit. She discovered a love of theatre at the dawn of her adolescence, seeing the ‘Big Three’ (Cats, Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera) with her mom. Further exposure through Villa Maria Secondary School field trips to New York and Stratford (A Streetcar Named Desire with Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange tops the list) had equal impact but upon graduation, theatre as a career option wasn’t even a remote consideration. “That was just something I loved and did for fun,” Said St-Jacques, having played roles like Alice [in Wonderland] in school productions.
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| Schwartz's: The Musical, Centaur (Photo: lucetg.com) |
St-Jacques remembers feeling quite stressed after high school, daunted by the idea of having to choose her career path even though she felt much too young to make such a serious decision. “I was good at math so I thought it was best to choose something that utilized my strengths,” so she went into Commerce at Dawson, which lasted a year before the boredom got the best of her. She then switched to nursing, taking after her mother’s chosen profession. As a young girl, she spent a lot of time on the hospital wards during her mom’s shifts and rather than being spooked by the sights and smells, she loved the orderliness, the myriad systems that maintained the huge machine.
