Stage management drill questions and answers

A practice tool for stage management students and teachers. A director's blocking note is read aloud, you put the actor on a ground plan and write the shorthand, and the drill marks the actor, the area, the move and the notation. A second drill reads a scene while you call warn, standby and go.

Yes. Everything on the site is free, with no account.

14 scenes from 4 public domain plays on Project Gutenberg: Trifles by Susan Glaspell (ebook 10623), A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen in R. Farquharson Sharp's translation (ebook 2542), and The Proposal and The Bear by Anton Chekhov in Julius West's translation (ebook 7986). The staging, ground plans and cues are invented for practice: 137 blocking notes and 56 cues.

Yours. There is no single standard, so you set your own tokens in the notation key before a drill, and the grader reads your shorthand against it. A starter key with common choices is set to begin with.

No microphone. The notes and scenes are spoken by your browser's own voice. With no voice available, each note is shown as text and the calling drill runs on a caption clock instead.

Each line is spoken as one piece, and the drill records when it starts and ends. Every go point sits at the start or end of a line, and your warn, standby and go are timed against those points.

No. Any name you type, for a certificate, a class or a cue sheet, stays in this browser. Nothing is uploaded. Progress, cue sheets and your key live in this browser; export them as files to keep a copy.

Yes. Projection mode puts a large ground plan on the classroom screen, reads each note to the room, and reveals the answer on the teacher's cue. It prints an answer key.

Spikemark is a practice tool, not a substitute for a stage management course or for the conventions of your own production.

An independent site. Spikemark is not affiliated with any performers' or stage managers' union or association, any play publisher or licensing house, or any school or theatre.