About Me:
I am a theatre major at Georgia Southern University focusing on design, tech, and management, especially stage management and lighting design
In only two years at Georgia Southern I’m already stage managing my third show, and working on my fifth. In my first semester of college I was thrown into the deep end as an assistant stage manager for Ghostlighting, a world premiere about a haunted theatre. As the ASM I was in charge of checking all of the special effects for the show before the run began, which taught me to really understand the tools I need for a show so that when something breaks I understand how to diagnose and solve the problem. More recently, as stage manager for Detroit ‘67, this trait was pivotal when a scene change needed to be adapted to clean up some spilled water. Since I understood the scene changes so well, I knew exactly how to get the spill cleaned during the next scene change while barely slowing it down.
Detroit ‘67 really tested another skill I have: how to effectively solve problems. After our first day of tech, our campus closed for over a week because of Hurricane Helene and we even had to push back our opening show. During this time I did my best to communicate with my cast, crew, and design team despite the unreliable internet in order to make sure that everyone was okay and then to help the cast get together before we were able to officially come back in order to ensure that everyone kept their lines fresh in their heads. Additionally, through a combination of the hurricane and general life difficulties, almost half of the technical crew of the show had to drop from the production, but since I had been careful to document what each crew member was in charge of, it was easy to have a new person join our team. Despite the challenges, thanks to the effort from the entire team behind Detroit ‘67, we were able to come back strong and have a fantastic run of the show!
- Noah Checketts