What Does Linda-Jo Do All Day?

The next installment of our "What Do People Do All Day?" series comes from one of the longest-tenured folks here at SCT, the lovely, talented and incredibly organized Linda-Jo Greenberg.

People are always surprised that a lot of my job sounds like any other business - email, phone calls, meetings. I do lots of budgets and scheduling; I type up contracts and do the payroll for artistic staff who are working on shows. But then there are the more unique parts of my job. Right now I am in the midst of the many layers of hiring actors. For each show I find out who the director wants to consider, set up the appointments, make lots of phone calls and answer questions about the shows, provide music and scripts to read, and then mop up afterwards - offer jobs to the lucky ones who get cast and make the sadder "no thank you" calls to the ones who don't. For any given show, it can be between 40 and 140 phone calls. Since we are casting a show a week for the next 6 weeks, mostly what I do all day right now is talk on the phone.

Another part of my job is to understudy the stage manager and production assistant for each show. We just opened Busytown, so this week I am sitting in the control booth next to Amy, with a copy of her script in front of me. That script has every light cue, sound cue and set move written down - what it is and when it happens. I have to make sure that her notes make sense to me so that I can step in if she gets sick. So far this year I have had to cover High School Musical and The Hundred Dresses. It is a challenge and exciting and scary to step in - because I don't get rehearsal! I just have to dive in for a performance and hope I don't make any mistakes big enough for the audience to notice. I also have to train backstage on the prop and set moves the assistant does. I had to do that for The Hundred Dresses also. In that role, I want to make sure to do everything right for the cast - if I miss something, they may have their performance affected.

I'm also company manager which means making plane and hotel reservations, picking people up at the airport and giving them their per diem cash. And I assist [Artistic Director] Linda Hartzell with her schedule and correspondence.

Linda-Jo Greenberg
Production Stage Manager/Company Manager