Out from the shadows, Chicago’s non-Equity stage managers take a turn in the spotlight

Last year, Kyle Aschbrenner had to have a talk with his charges after one of them drew a penis on a bulletin board.

“I had to tell everyone to sit down and be like, ‘While I find this very funny, I have to tell you guys not to do stuff like this,’” Aschbrenner recalled.

Aschbrenner doesn’t run after-school detention at a high school for misfits. He’s a non-equity stage manager — perhaps the most stressful, complex, occasionally absurd, and under-appreciated job in Chicago theater.

Well, until recently. When the non-equity Jeff Awards are awarded on March 23, one stage manager will get some much-appreciated recognition. The Jeff nominees were announced Feb. 4; the stage manager nominees are out today.

The first non-equity stage manager award (along with the equity award) came in 2025 and went to Aschbrenner.

“I’m not really one for accolades — that’s not why I do it. But it was really humbling winning it and being recognized for the efforts because everything under the sun becomes your responsibility when you’re the stage manager,” said Aschbrenner, who received the award for his work with Blank Theatre Company’s 2024 season shows, “A Bright Room Called Day” and “On The Twentieth Century.”

There are somewhere between 60 and 70 non-equity theater companies in Chicago (about twice the number of equity ones) — from storefront stages that seat perhaps two dozen people to theaters such as Arlington Heights’ Metropolis, with a capacity of 329. The non-equity stage is typically where people who want to work in theater get their start; the actors aren’t part of the industry’s Actors’ Equity labor union and wages and benefits tend to be lower.

The stage manager is the glue that holds the production together, taking copious notes in their “prompt book” — detailing the places and movements of actors on stage, the sound and light cues and the set changes (among many other things). They also schedule and run rehearsals.

The stage manager inhabits the shadows — watching, tweaking, sweating the small stuff, and taking charge when the show is out of rehearsals and in front of a paying audience.

And if the stage manager is doing their job correctly, you won’t know that they are there.

They are both indispensable and dispensable.

“In college, they told us to make sure our prompt book … was up to date, so that if I get hit by a bus, somebody would be able to pick up my book and call the show in my absence,” said Shelby Burgus, a Chicago-area stage manager since 2013.

Blank Theatre’s co-artistic director Dustin Rothbart, who nominated Aschbrenner for the Jeff, said good stage managers are hard to come by because many are inexperienced (hired straight out of college) — and the really good ones quickly get lured away to equity theater.

And then there are those who see the job only as a means to an end, Rothbart said.

“When it becomes apparent in the rehearsal room that your stage manager would rather be on stage or the one giving the direction instead of doing the job they were hired for, that can often create some toxicity in the room,” Rothbart said.

He described Aschbrenner as “the best stage manager I’ve ever worked with,” calling him “extremely organized,” stern when he needs to be and willing to fill in for a sick fellow stage manager at a moment’s notice.

John Glover, the immediate past chair of the Jeff Awards’ executive committee, pushed hard for the non-equity stage manager award.

“They are a key element to the success of any production,” said Glover, who says he sees about 150 stage shows annually in the Chicago area. “Their work starts well before the first read-through and goes well beyond closing night. The job that they have is extraordinary.”

A Google search probably won’t turn it up, but the job description might also include: garbage collector, lightbulb changer, ripped pants fixer, therapist, nurse.

Becky Warner has been a Chicago-area stage manager for 13 years. During her very first gig, a lead actor told her 10 minutes before he had to go on that he was feeling ill.

“Had I been more experienced, I would have cancelled the show before we even started because he was that sick,” Warner said.

Just as the actor was about to go on, Warner saw him in the wings shaking and unable to walk. She hurried to the director to tell him to cancel the show. Then Warner and the director rushed the actor to the nearest emergency room. “He was severely dehydrated on top of having the flu,” Warner said.

And what does a stage manager get paid for a job that lasts about three months? Anywhere from $500 to about $1,200, local stage managers told the Sun-Times. A stage manager can expect to devote 20 or so hours a week to the job, one that doesn’t typically come with overtime pay or health benefits.

“I’ve been offered $300; I’ve never taken those,” Aschbrenner said.

Of the four stage managers with whom the Sun-Times spoke, all said they needed a day job to make ends meet, to make it possible to watch the magic happen when the lights go down and the curtain goes up.

“There is something so special about being in the room when these actors discover their characters and watching that process blossom and grow until I press the button to make the lights and sound happen and hear the audience’s reaction,” Burgus said.