A Day in the Life of a Stage Manager at Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club

“You’re here on a special day,” says assistant stage manager Shelley Miles. But isn’t every day, I wonder, a special day when you’re at Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club? After all, this is a world where bald heads are brushed with gold, nipples are covered with brassy metal, and lederhosen is rhinestoned.

Miles is referring to cast changes amongst the revival musical’s Prologue performers, a company of 12 dancers and musicians who perform for patrons in the lobby and stairways of the August Wilson Theatre in the hour before the musical’s curtain. “I like the idea of what we’re doing here,” Miles says, looking at her watch. “Showcasing something that doesn't happen on Broadway very much.”

The stage management team of Cabaret is the largest on Broadway, with six per show and 11 total members, including subs (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the second-largest team, only has five). Two stage managers are solely devoted to the Prologue on a given night. Traditionally, a stage manager is the primary facilitator of communication across all creative and technical departments of a theatrical production. On a typical show, they generate and manage schedules, oversee props and performers’ welfare, and call all technical elements of a show while in performances—effectively stewarding the show from page to stage night after night.

In Cabaret, stage managers also have the additional duties of trailing Prologue performers up and down the lobby stairs, acting as bodyguards for actors perched on rails—as well as keeping their eyes peeled for shards of broken glass (Cabaret serves its beverages in glassware instead of plastic cups). Though Cabaret technically has two companies and two performances, between its Prologue and its Scripted show, there is no hierarchy. “We are one unit,” production stage manager Thomas Recktenwald says sharply. “One show, between Prologue and Scripted teams.”

“The entire building is a performance space,” Recktenwald stresses, “And therefore I have to think about how everybody's decisions in the building impact the performers in the space and the sustainability of the show.”

The Prologue in particular is immersive theatre at its most miraculous, Miles explains: rigid in structure, but flexible in form. The Prologue to Cabaret happens to time. Both stage managers and performers synchronize their watches just before audience members begin to mingle in the lobby of the Wilson, where the show has been in performances since April. Miles moves with precision, shadowing company members as they slink through the space. Stage managers ensure performers hit their marks on time. Performers ensure audience members are relishing every moment.

If performers fall out of sync, there’s room to improvise. Performers can single out individual audience members to play off of or dance alongside. Miles says that while the responsibility of the Prologue stage manager is to know the technical side in case of course correction, the majority of the time they are working in tandem with security on crowd control.

As we move through the space, which on good days Miles says is great, but on bad days feels like, “the worst college house party I’ve ever been to,” audience members watch a dancer serpentine down staircases, a clarinet player bewitch by drawing a figure-eight with their instrument, and an accordion player make a handrail center stage. “The whole thing about the Prologue choreography is that it’s stupid, it’s sexy, it’s dumb,” Miles says. “And it’s my favorite thing to watch.” So, for a rare moment of stillness, we do.

Get a quick glimpse of the Prologue in the promo video below.

“I’m confused,” I overhear an audience member say to her companion. “Confused in a way that I like.” Perhaps Miles has overheard this too, as she turns to me and says she believes some aspects of the Prologue are intentionally confusing and feels not unlike a fever dream. “When people are game for that, it’s great,” she says. “People who are not game for that, it’s a logistical nightmare. We have to meet frustrated people with the best intentions.”

As a former stage manager, I know most don’t enter the field because they’re keen on audience interaction. Miles confirms working the Prologue in particular is an endurance test, both physically and mentally. “In a two-show day, we climb the equivalent of 70 flights of stairs,” she says, pushing through the crowd. “I start out the week strong, but by the end of it, I’m like, ‘Please don’t touch me.’” More than once, Miles tells me I am free to step away if I need a break from patron traffic, but I hang in there.

The front of house, security, food and beverage employees, and ushers are “basically part of the creative team,” Miles says as they keep the designated pathway for performers intact. “The hardest-working person here is the usher,” Miles says emphatically. “They have an unprecedented level of involvement with patrons. I’ve witnessed things in terms of care and stewardship [from ushers] that I’ve never seen anywhere else on Broadway.”

For Miles, the most important part of being a stage manager for the Prologue is to be flexible, as the role is customer-service forward. “People,” Miles says, meaning patrons, “Are part of the Prologue, so if you’re asked a question, be positive and friendly. It’s easy to just give an answer.” On nights when that feels difficult (those college party nights), Miles says she reminds herself how she initially felt inspired to make new connections to the material through the Prologue. “This is a fun opportunity,” she smiles. As the revelry moves from the lobby spaces into the house, the show drawing ever nearer, Recktenwald settles in at his calling position.

“Oh!” Recktenwald says excitedly, looking at his monitor feed of the house, “There’s two homos in the front.” Recktenwald’s calling position is tucked into a small corner house right, under the balcony where Sally Bowles makes her first appearance. There’s a hole in the floor that looks into the champagne bar. Recktenwald can often hear bartenders gossiping as they prepare for the interval. To the left is a brick wall against which patrons sit. They are also audible to Recktenwald, who revels in being in the middle of all the action.

Though from his calling position, Recktenwald is the action, the conductor of every technical element featured in the show. He jokes that he often has hunched shoulders and a clenched jaw from sitting in one position for two hour and 45 minutes. At precise times in every show, ASM Danielle Teague-Daniels refills Recktenwald’s coffee, relieves him for a bathroom break, and shimmies into the tight corner to act as a second pair of eyes when Recktenwald’s are occupied elsewhere. Recktenwald turns to me and says with a smile, “A lot of this space is forcing a circle into a square.” And he’s not just talking about the in-the-round stage that the musical is performed in.

He’s referring to the need to “force” audience-free space for the performers, who occupy “every inch” of the building. “Our audience is as close as you and I are right now,” Recktenwald says with a small gesture. “That's a whole other level of intimacy that you don't get in a traditional theatre with an orchestra pit between you and the front row.”

Though sometimes it can be difficult to not have that fourth wall, or breathing space, Recktenwald ultimately sees it as a win for the stage managers and for himself. “It’s been a really fun, engaging challenge and has created a more thoughtful person in me as a stage manager,” Recktenwald says. “For myself, it feels really good to be constantly reminded to think of others in our role. We get caught up in thinking about only the people that are in our small [Actors’ Equity] union-based enclave.” For Recktenwald, the “others” he considers most of all are the house managers, who he says go “above and beyond” for the Company at every show. “There is no taking a break for them,” he says. “They are constantly on alert for us.”

The most recent, and slightly contentious, element–glass. As Cabaret features food service and a full bar using real glassware, slips and shards are on the forefront of performers’ and stage managers’ minds. Having ongoing conversations concerning glassware is tricky for Recktenwald who is in the precarious position of having to balance many shareholder’s interests while keeping actors, many of whom are barefoot, safe.

“It is our job to thread that needle between the cast and those other partners and try to survive together,” Recktenwald says diplomatically. Knowing glassware was going to be used, Recktenwald explains the protocols for reporting breaks have been refined multiple times, streamlining from first sight to cleanup (though it still includes more than one pass with a vacuum). Injuries in the aisles are the primary cause for concern, but glass (and hummus and cheesecake) can also be tracked onstage. “Instead of just trying to say, ‘Well, it's glass, it's not our problem,’” Recktenwald says. “It is our problem. How do we achieve both goals, have venue concerns met and actor concerns met?”

Interior of The Kit Kat Club at The August Wilson Theatre Emily Andrews

Achieving both goals is one of the many “yes, and” challenges of working at the Kit Kat Club. For the performers, navigating this “fun challenge” is made easier when they remember what kind of club they’re running. “We are empowered in this space because we work here,” Recktenwald says. “We own this. And I think that level of power allows [the performers] to feel comfortable in the space, because they can walk where they need to walk, go where they need to go. They don't need to tiptoe around the audience. The audience is our guest, and we have the power in the space.”

This sense of agency has been reinforced from the beginning of the process; Recktenwald says the company has received unprecedented support from the producers. “This show did a really great job of bringing in every resource to make the building, and the cast in particular, feel safe and supported,” Recktenwald says, citing a fight director, an intimacy coordinator, and a queer rabbi as the personnel brought in to aid the cast before performances began. “And I have never been on a show that if I said, ‘I think we need. . .’ They go, ‘Okay, we should do it.’”

And he could not do it with less. “If it wasn't all of us working in tandem every day, it would not work,” Recktenwald says emphatically. “I couldn't do it without those people…It takes a special stage manager to come work at the Kit Kat Club. You have to want to be here and want to invest in this show.”