Behind the magic

Every Saturday, in almost every city, town and village in the country, school halls are reverberating to the sound of children singing, playing Splat! and learning how to step-ball-change. The demand among young people to perform is so great that thousands upon thousands of Stagecoaches, Pauline Quirke Academies, Performs and the like open their doors every week to help train starry-eyed children. What is offered though, to those young people who are equally passionate about what happens off the stage?

Kerrie Driscoll, company stage manager at the Watermill Theatre, grew up wanting to be a dancer and was mildly offended when her dance teacher pointed out she’d make an excellent stage manager. Sitting down to watch Swan Lake, Driscoll's teacher pointed out the stage filling with smoke, the sound of the overture filling the Royal Albert Hall, the lights dimming on the auditorium and rising on the palace park. The magic had already begun before a single dancer stepped on the stage. Everything that was making the hairs on the back of her neck rise was being meticulously orchestrated by a stage manager and she realised ‘there's a whole world going on backstage.’