By Kate Lockyer
Chryss Cahill knows there is nothing that can match the thrill of seeing theatre play out live onstage.
How does she know this? Because as stage manager, it is her vision that brings a show to life.
Her love of theatre comes from her family – her father and stepmother Bruce and Denise Cahill founded Queensland Theatre in 1984.
Since starting out on the original stage management team for the opening of QPAC in 1985, she has had some memorable experiences, especially during the years she spent working in London’s West End in the 80s and 90s.
There was the time Ms Cahill stopped multi-award-winning Dustin Hoffman – apparently very friendly and personable – in his tracks.
“This is how I used to get in trouble, because I was always truthful to important people – speaking truth to power,” she laughed.
“I sat up the back to watch the rehearsal, and Dustin Hoffman, who was playing the Merchant of Venice, came and sat beside me.”
When he asked her what she thought of the scene, she answered, stage manager hat on, that she wasn’t paying attention because the gauze wasn’t pulled tight enough.
“He turned around and said, ‘are you telling me that I was just up there doing a scene, and you were looking at a bit of curtain?’”
Realising with horror that she might be about to get sacked, she apologised.
To her surprise, he cracked up laughing, and went to see the director Sir Peter Hall to say: “Peter, that gauze thingy up there’s not straight, it will be distracting the audience when I’m onstage!”
Then there was the time she received a phone call from royalty, having been selected to work for Prince Edward on the show Same Old Moon in 1991.
“It was ridiculous, the person on the other end of the phone said who they were, and I said, ‘yeah right, stop mucking around’,” she said.
Reflecting on her time overseas, she said: “You sit there and think, I’m just a squidgy little kid from North Queensland, and I’m sitting in a theatre in the West End, watching people who are award-winning Shakespearean actors doing their job. You have to pinch yourself.”
Ms Cahill’s theory of what makes a successful stage manager is invisibility.
“To keep the magic of theatre happening, you need to not be seen and not be heard and not be noticed,” she said.
To Ms Cahill, the glamour of the applause and flowers is not why she does it. For her, it is about the self-satisfaction of a job well done, and the camaraderie between the crew.
“The scene changes are like ballet, they are choreographed. The movement has to happen in a certain way for it to look seamless,” she said.
Ms Cahill will be stage managing for Queensland Theatre’s upcoming production of Mary Poppins at Twelfth Night Theatre from November 15 – 24.
Tickets available at queenslandmusicaltheatre.com/tickets.
