Speaking in Draft is an interview series in which Intermission staff writer Nathaniel Hanula-James speaks with some of the artistic voices shaping Canadian theatre today. In a mixture of lighthearted banter and deep dives into artistic practice, this column invites artists to share nascent manifestoes, ask difficult questions, and throw down the gauntlet at the feet of a glorious, frustrating art form.
Something you learn early on as an actor is that the stage manager is God. Surely, they deserve our prayers and thanks. They’re the ones who record the movements of actors, props, and set pieces during rehearsal. They’re the ones who make sure the creative team takes scheduled, mandated breaks. During performances, they’re like an orchestra conductor, cueing this lighting shift and that sound effect to come in at the proper moment. With their carefully tabbed binders, they’re the caretakers of a show’s integrity as it repeats and evolves night after night. For better or worse, they often end up holding space for their fellow artists’ emotions over the course of a production process. In fact, what doesn’t a stage manager do?
Ada Aguilar knows all about this ever-shifting job description. For over 10 years, she’s stage managed, assistant stage managed, and apprentice stage managed on a wide range of productions, from intimate solo shows to raucous farces to dense period dramas. It was a delight chatting with her about her favourite parts of the job, why she considers stage management to have activist undertones, and her thoughts on how to address the current shortage of stage managers in Canadian theatre.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was your path to theatre, and to stage management?
I’m a strange example of this journey, because I didn’t do the traditional ‘go to production school’ route. My inner-city high school didn’t have resources to introduce me to theatre. My education is in english and drama studies at York University, and I have my Bachelor’s of Education because I thought I wanted to be a drama teacher. But I went out into the real world and realized that wasn’t for me, and I also graduated at a time when teaching work was really hard to come by.
Through a friend of my grade 12 drama teacher, I got into community theatre, and from community theatre I found myself learning about equity and unions. Then I got into SMArts, the Stage Managing the Arts Conference, and met someone who helped me get my first apprenticeship. From there, it was a snowball effect.
I tend to think of stage managers as being ‘at the centre of the wheel’ in a process, if that makes sense. They’re the one who knows what’s going on in every corner. How would you describe your role to someone who doesn’t know the first thing about stage management?
I agree with this image — the centre of a wheel. I’ve definitely used it as well. The stage manager is the axle, perhaps, the hub. The funny thing is, stage management isn’t about knowing everything, because you truly can’t. I think the role is about keeping it together, and injecting this ethos of ‘we are a team, we are a company.’ I’m taking all the different parts and making sure that, day by day, we are moving safely and intentionally with the ethos that [we set in] rehearsal on day one. I’m the guardian of that, almost.
The guardian! That’s fantastic.
And it’s that wheel, right? We’re all connected, but also we’re moving. [I’m making sure that] we’re all rolling along together.
You’ve stage managed so many Toronto theatre productions that have made a big impression on me. You stage managed As I Must Live It at Theatre Passe Muraille in 2024. You assistant stage managed Is God Is at Canadian Stage in 2022, and School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play at Buddies in 2019. Your work must shift so much from show to show. What are some particularly delightful moments you’ve experienced?
I’ve been so blessed and honoured to have been part of some beautiful processes. [I appreciate] the leadership of a director, and that very personal touch they’ll put on a process. We might start the day with a dance party or a smudging circle, or we might have a check-in and check-out every day. Maybe we’ve dealt with some heavy themes. Let’s dance it out. And if you don’t want to dance it out, that’s OK, but we’re still going to share space together.
It strikes me that stage managers do a lot of emotional labour as well as logistical labour. In past experiences performing, I’ve noticed that the stage manager sometimes becomes a parental figure in a process. Are there unspoken roles or tasks that you find yourself taking on?
It’s funny that you mentioned the parental thing, because in a previous show I worked on, a colleague kept calling me ‘mama.’ I was like, that’s funny, but no I’m not.
I find that every production and every team and every company has different needs. My approach is to listen and be open and be flexible to what those needs are, and to accomplish that. Typically I’ll meet with the director prior to even starting my prep work, just to get a lay of the land.
I’d also say that, overall, the role I take on as a stage manager is to be of service. [At the same time,] something a mentor said to me is that you can’t help others unless you help yourself. I’m a big people pleaser, and I’ve had to learn in my journey that I can’t guarantee someone’s safety. I will go above and beyond, but not killing oneself over a production is something that I’ve had to learn to find balance around.
I think that’s a larger conversation happening in the sector right now. How do we find balance?
I’m really passionate about the role of stage management as social activism, and as a way to provide safety and support for a production and its people. In the scope of this world, we are just putting on a play. We live in a global climate right now where people are fleeing for their lives from war-torn situations. We put everything of ourselves into these productions, but we also have to be good to ourselves, which is a hard thing to balance all the time.
I’ve never heard anyone talk about stage management as social activism. What are some of the small things you’ll do to make sure a creative team feels taken care of?
People are coming from different histories and different backgrounds. Meeting people where they’re at is so crucial in a process. I’m currently one of the stage managers working on the Mirvish production of Life After, which has themes of death and grieving. There are people in the room who have lost loved ones, and so they’re going to be impacted. But they still have to come in every day, and do the number, and do the show, and do the blocking, and retain all that information. It’s important not to forget the human behind the work.
I keep hearing that there’s a shortage of stage managers right now. Do you have a sense of what the sector might do to encourage more folks to train as SMs?
This is an ongoing discussion that I have with stage manager friends and colleagues. My personal opinion is that it starts with education to reach more people, specifically in inner-city schools like the ones I attended, to reach more people of colour. It starts with allowing young people to see that theatre is a thing, and that it’s not just something you do for fun. This isn’t my hobby, this is my profession. How do we reach the future artists of our industry? I don’t have a definitive answer, but I think that’s the big first step.
I have to ask — are there any organizational tools that bring you particular joy?
I have many favourite organizational tools! Stage managers typically have a kit that they bring to each job, and I have so many things that I’ve brought along with me from different productions. Hard tabs [to mark different sections within a binder] are a big thing for me, but that’s really nerdy.
One of my favourite tools is a lead pencil that was gifted to me by a fellow assistant stage manager, Ken James Stewart, when we worked on 1939 [at the Stratford Festival]. He gave myself and our stage manager, Bonna Duncan, the same pencil, so all three of us had one. There was something unifying about that. It reminded me of Sailor Moon, and the transformation pens [that the Sailors use to access their powers]. Now I use it for every production, and every time, I think about the spirit of that team.
In your bio for Soulpepper Theatre’s February 2025 production of Table For Two, which you stage managed, you include a quote by the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall:
“Cultural identity is a matter of becoming, it is unfixed and a subject of the continuous play of history, power and culture. Cultural identity is not a past waiting to be found or recovered, it is how we position ourselves in the memory, fantasy and narrative and myth of our past histories.”
I’m a big fan of Hall’s writing about representation and identity. When we talk about representation in theatre, we often focus on the people on stage. How do you think about representation behind the scenes?
That quote comes from the table work process in Table for Two, [a part of many rehearsal processes in which a creative team reads through and discusses a script in detail, before they begin to stage the production]. That quote speaks to me so much, because I’ve always seen myself as a person on the border of different things — as a human being as well as a stage manager. Again, I’ve been so blessed to work with so many different people, and everyone brings their own multiplicity into the room. Instead of parsing and separating — your role is only to be the stage manager, your role is only to be an actor, et cetera — in a collaborative process, we can all bring the many facets of ourselves into a piece. It elevates it; it makes the work better, I believe.
WRITTEN BY
Nathaniel Hanula-James
Nathaniel Hanula-James is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has worked across Canada as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and administrator.
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