First of all, the National Stage Manager Survey has hit a new high, 588 participants, with just over a week left to the survey.  If you have stage managed at least one live theatre production in the United States, we want to hear from you!  So far the 20-somethings are leading with the most responses (those whipper-snappers!), but the age brackets starting at 30 years and older are catching up with 43% of the total responses.

STANDBY CUE 101: An Introduction to Calling Live Performances is in the very final stage of post-production and will be available starting in January.  I have already received two confirmed offers from distributors and three other distributors have shown strong interest.

And this past weekend, I received the first round of color designs from Leighton Hubbell.  I can't wait to share the final design, but below is a detail plate from our weekend discussions:

Happy Tech to everyone working on A Christmas Carol and other holiday shows this week!

My Stage Management Special Topics class at the University of Iowa launched the 2011 Stage Management Survey this afternoon.  If you have stage managed at least one American theatrical production, we invite you to participate.  Feedback from the first 80 participants has been very favorable, although one responder found our question about stage management texts to be overly complicated and confusing.  The issue of books on stage management has been very problematic.  Many stage managers do not read any books about our field or they see them more as textbooks for students.  And we received feedback in 2009 that some books were useful, but others had better stories.  So we followed a participant's advice and asked this year on most useful and favorite books.  We'll see how certain books fare in both categories.

The simulator is progressing nicely during this "quiet" phase.  Leighton Hubbell has provided three rounds of sketches on the user interface and we are beginning to add color to the main screen.  Jason Bridenstine is developing the logic behind the scoring system. Good work from everyone, even if things seem a bit quiet for now.