One of the trickier things to explain among the list of what a stage manager does is blocking notation. First of all, blocking is how we refer to the movements of the actors as choreographed by the director. Whenever the director says, “You, go over there”, or “Pick up that book and examine it when you say that”, that’s blocking. This process begins in the first few rehearsals. Either the stage manager or assistant stage manager should take blocking, writing down the actions that are staged. There are several methods to this, none of which are by definition correct.
First of all, we need to be the ones to write down blocking because you can be certain that most of the cast will not. Then, several rehearsals later when they find themselves hopelessly backed into a corner stage left and needing to exit stage right two lines from now, the director will turn to the stage manager and ask what we’d decided last week. If it isn’t written down, what follows is twenty wasted minutes trying to remember what happened last week (and inevitably getting it wrong), only to realize that didn’t work either and now we have to reblock the entire scene.
The first lesson of blocking is to always, always, always work in pencil, because as sure as fish swim under water, the director will change his mind. I always keep close at hand my mechanical pencil, a spare handful of wooden pencils (for loaning out to actors so that they can forget to write down their blocking), a pencil sharpener, and a large white eraser.
Since it’s nearly impossible to write as fast as the director talks and the actors move without many years of training and lightning reflexes, stage managers tend to develop their own shorthand. I’ve included an example of my own, complete with explanations. Most of it is derived from what I found in Daniel Ionazzi’s Stage Management Handbook, a lovely yellow textbook in my personal library. Obviously there have been modifications—that’s to be expected, as the notation style I use is what makes the most sense to me. It is ever-evolving as I run into more symbols I need.