Cueing Script for Follies, New York, January 2, 1971, MMC Coll#0044, Box #004, Folder: Follies Cuing Script, Undated.
This source is part of the paperwork George Martin put together when he served as the Stage Manager for the 1971 production of Follies. In George Martin’s paperwork the early stages of keeping track of information such as props, blocking and scene breakdowns is evident and contact sheets are laid out. Throughout my research it has become clear just how much the invention of Microsoft has changed how stage managers format paperwork and enabled them to include more than just the bare essentials. One piece that enforced this was his cueing script and how it was formatted and laid out. He included a simple list of all the cues and the line or action that prompted each cue. Martin’s paperwork gave me not only a fresh outlook on what stage managers used to do but they also made it clear just how critical tracking paperwork is for a stage manager and how much paperwork has changed since then, which is what I wanted to focus on in my report.-Julian Olive
Program for Ghosts, London and Stratford-Upon-Avon, May 31, 1993-July 24, 1994, MMC Collection #1, Box 58, Folder 1933.
Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen is regarded as one of the most important pieces of dramatic literature to date. This particular production was conceived by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the mid 1990s, and I loved the way the program was designed. Unlike Playbills as we are used to them on Broadway, there are no advertisements or fluff to fill pages. It’s a simple folded flap giving the history of the playwright, the production history, and the history of the play itself along with the usual cast list and bios. Having a playbill from a production is special because there is a sense of being there when the event occurred; that this was not simply a production that was deemed significant by other people’s reviews of it. But this play is significant because Mr. Harris or someone close to him saw this production and knew it was important. The amount of reviews of this production that accompany this program testify to its significance, even if 20 plus years later it’s a widely forgotten production, especially given that it was produced by a company as renowned as the Royal Shakespeare Company. –Emma Bilderback
