Taking blocking
Blocking is where the actors move and when. The stage manager records it as it is given, in pencil, in a shorthand anyone with the key can read: the actor's initials, a token for each movement, and a stage area for anything that travels. The stage areas are read from the actor's point of view, which is the single most common thing new stage managers get backwards. The daily drill gives you one scene a day to practise on.
Calling a show
Every light, sound and scenery change in a performance happens because the stage manager called it. Each cue is marked in the prompt book with three points: where to warn the operator, where to put them on standby, and the exact word where the cue goes. The calling drill reads a scene aloud and times your calls against those marks.
The prompt book
Both skills meet in the prompt book, the master copy of the show. Its key explains your shorthand, its margins hold the cues and the blocking, and its paperwork keeps the company running.
Every guide
- Blocking notation explained: the shorthand stage managers use for crosses, entrances, sits and turns, with a starter key.
- Stage areas and the grid: the 9 and 15 area stage grids, stage right versus house right, and how to read a ground plan.
- How to call cues: warn, standby and go: when each is called, what the words are, and how timing is judged.
- Building a prompt book: what goes in a prompt book, page by page: script pages, blocking, cues, contact and run sheets.
- Blocking a public domain scene: taking blocking for a scene from Trifles, step by step, with the notes and the shorthand a stage manager would write.
- Stage management class drills: a five lesson plan for a stage management unit using projection, blocking and calling drills.
Ready to try it? The daily blocking drill is free every day, and the prompt book pages print the key, the grid and a cue sheet.
Sources
Checked on 27 September 2026. Stage management notation and calling have no single governing standard; what is written here is common practice in our own words. Where your teacher, stage manager or company does it differently, follow them.
- Spikemark's grader. The four part blocking grade and the cue timing grade described on this page are the rules the drills apply; every example on this page is computed by them.
- Susan Glaspell, Plays, Project Gutenberg ebook 10623. Trifles (first performed 1916), the kitchen description and the lines used in the drills; opened 27 September 2026.
- Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House, translated by R. Farquharson Sharp, Project Gutenberg ebook 2542. The Act I room description and opening scene; opened 27 September 2026.
- Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series, translated by Julius West, Project Gutenberg ebook 7986. The Proposal and The Bear; opened 27 September 2026.