Features

‘The best job in the world’: Bamboo Manager Project

Provision can be patchy when it comes to professional stage management training. Paul Bateson speaks to stage management specialist and Bamboo Manager Project founder, Antonia Collins, about her mission to change this.
 
The Wedding Singer at the Royal Academy of Music, stage managed by Antonia Collins in August 2021
The Wedding Singer at the Royal Academy of Music, stage managed by Antonia Collins in August 2021 - Craig Fuller

'I think being a stage manager can be the best job in the world,’ says Antonia Collins: stage management specialist, educator, and founder of the Bamboo Manager Project – an organisation offering online courses in various aspects of the creative industries. She should know, with 25 years’ experience as a professional stage manager, lecturing roles at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Florida State University, and Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts; and a host of professional practise behind her in theatre, opera, and events.

She is telling me about her mission ‘to make sure that every single person who wants to study stage management has access to it’, and how this passionate idea and her impressive professional journey brought her to establish the Bamboo Manager Project (BMP). Although I have seen the non-performing option grow in popularity over the years, in my experience as a secondary Drama teacher, educators can sometimes lack the time, expertise, and resources to do the production roles justice.

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