This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Martín Acuña: Hi, everyone. I am Martín Acuña, and you are listening to Backstage Talk.

[0:19] Martín Acuña: Hello, and welcome back to another episode. Today's guest is one of those friendships I've created through LinkedIn, and it's been an honor and a pleasure having this supportive system and group and network and community behind me for the last, I think it's going to be nine months, eight months, since I joined the Actors Fund LinkedIn Challenge, and I joined then as an ambassador. Here with me is Marci Skolnick. She is a stage manager and a show caller, and she is going to give us all the details about what she does. Marci, welcome to the show. I'm really excited you're here.

[1:11] Marci Skolnick: I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. It's true, LinkedIn really, I think, and the Actors Fund have been the answer to all of my needs and wants and problems. They've solved everything for me, I think, in the last year, all the things that needed solving and finding you and finding this community. I mean, we're here. How cool is that?

[1:30] Martín Acuña: Yeah, you're in Vegas right now. I'm in Columbia still, so it's just amazing to know how the arts have introduced ourselves to each other, and I really like that. The community I found this last year is so close to my heart because you all understand the fears, the passion, what we do, the love for what we do, and I'm really excited to dive into your experience. So I will let you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about who you are.

[2:12] Marci Skolnick: Sure. Well, as you said, my name is Marci Skolnick. I was born in Reno, Nevada, and I grew up in the Bay Area in California, which nobody believes because I spent 20 years after that in New York turning into the New Yorker I was always meant to be. When I was a young person, I studied acting and performance, and that came about because as a wee thing, I took ballet, and I was so short that I couldn't see over the bar, and so at six years old, that more or less ended my ballet career. We saw how that was going, but I really liked to sing and dance and act, and so we went that way, and that's what I did through school and through high school, and I went to college at Hofstra University in New York on Long Island, and I can't ever say enough good things about how wonderful their program is, but I got a BFA in performance, which is great, but I was an actor that nobody wanted to cast, and I think part of it was I was in a classical theater program.

When I was in my early 20s, I wasn't an ingenue. I was sort of everybody's quirky best friend Janine Garofalo type, and nobody knew what to do with me, except everybody figured out I was organized, so it was like, go organize this. Stage manage this thing, and I really didn't know what a stage manager was. When I was in high school and I stage managed a show, that meant I was on book when people asked for a line, and I would give them their line, and that's more or less what I did, and then when I was in college, I figured out that it was about being organized, and that served me well enough to get my equity union card when I was 20. I was still in school, and I was the last stage manager for the original run of Tony and Tina's Wedding in New York.

I actually closed the show the day I graduated from college in my cap and gown, and then I was unemployed for a little while. I sort of figured I wanted to be in theater. I wanted to be in entertainment, and if this is what got me there, then great. The great thing about stage managing is I can organize anything, and in the last few years, I have really learned that that is exceptionally true, but as a performer, I might not necessarily be right for this show or that show or that part. There were things that I was never going to get to be able to do, but because I can organize anything, I can work for anybody now, and that's really what I've learned is those skills that I have and this thing that I do are really super crazy universal, which is way beyond the tangent of who I am, but it is a big part of who I am, and now somewhere in the last four years, I came to Vegas for six months and forgot to leave, and so I'm here with my mother and my 18-pound cat named Pico de Gato, and we're getting through this pandemic, and we're doing okay, and Vegas is opening up, and I am working again, and that's a wonderful thing, and we're moving along.

[5:09] Martín Acuña: I'm really happy to know that the turns in life have been so happy and it's so successful for you. You started really young in not only ballet but in theater, then moved to New York, studied, and I just love those stories when they're like, I was doing that show while receiving my diploma or being in a cap and gown. I just love them, and like specifically, what was your first experience as a stage manager?

[5:50] Marci Skolnick: Okay, well, my first semi-experience as a stage manager was in high school at California High School in San Ramon, California. I stage managed a production of The Odd Couple, and it was a staff production. The teachers were in the show, and they brought me in to stage manage, and so I mostly took attendance. I wrote down some blocking. I gave lines when people needed it, and that's mostly what I did. I think I also maybe ran a light board, and then in college, sure, I kind of knew what I was doing, but ironically, my first job was stage managing a production of Endgame by Samuel Beckett. Something you may or may not know about me is I have a massive obsession with Samuel Beckett that sort of came about a year after that production.

It just happened to be what I was doing, and it really was like I didn't know what I was doing. We were in a tiny black box. It was somebody's, I think, graduate thesis in the program, and so I learned how to make schedules and an email was still kind of a recent thing because I'm old, and so we were figuring out how to do that. I figured out how to make an email group to send an email to multiple people by putting in one word. That was really exciting, and just learning. You learn the lingo. You learn the things, and that's when I learned how to call a show. I didn't know what that meant or how to do it, and so I learned about cue calling and about running tech, taking performers and all these technical elements and making them a thing.

I think now it's much more common, at least in the States, to learn those things in high school. There are these big, beautiful performing arts centers in high schools. When I was in school, the California school system was broke, so I didn't learn that. College was really when I figured that out, and everybody was really generous with me and wonderful. Hofstra was a great place to really learn. They didn't expect me to know what I was doing, and when they figured out that I loved it and that I could be successful at it, Hofstra didn't really, at the time, per se, have a stage management program, and so we sort of created it as we went. I did get my degree in performance because I wasn't going to stick around for another couple of years figuring out that degree.

I wanted to get out and work, and so I had a lot of really wonderful professors sort of help me create curriculum and teach me things on the job, which was such a gift, and now they have a really wonderful program that people seek out. I show up once a year and tell some funny stories to the kids and that kind of thing and mentor as much as I can. I've ruined a couple of stage managers' lives from Hofstra by hiring them straight out of college. You come work for me, and there's the end, but I give back to them as much as I can because they really allowed me to go work full-time in New York while I was finishing my degree. That's a gift. I couldn't have had a better experience.

[9:02] Martín Acuña: Amazing. This leads me to the big question of tonight. What is a stage manager, and what is a show caller?

[9:15] Marci Skolnick: Okay, so a show caller, in very brief, is what they call me when I do shows that aren't theater. So the way this came about, that I became a show caller, was I came to Vegas to a stage manager show called Baz, which was running. I'd been running for about a year when I took it over, and it was three Baz Luhrmann films, Romeo and Juliet, Gatsby, and the Moulin Rouge, thrown in a blender and turned into a musical. It was really, really fun. I took it over. I mean, it was a blast. We had such a good time, and then it closed because it wasn't making enough money, and we moved on. But as we were moving on, as that show was closing, I'll never forget, I got a call from a friend who said, send me your resume, and I said something really professional, like, it's one o'clock in the morning.

I'm at the bar. What do you want? Shut up and send me your resume. Okay, so I forwarded an email from my barstool with my martini with my theater resume on it, and the next morning, I got a call from Gwen Stefani's production manager, and they were looking for a show caller, and they said, can you do that? And I'm thinking to myself, I have no idea what you're talking about. What is even happening? Sure. So of course I said yes, and that's about how that went, and it turned out what they meant was really a person who can call a show. So meaning, what I do during the big residencies, the big musical things, is call cues. Some lights, sound, spots if I'm really unlucky, big automation pieces. The Gwen Stefani show, if you look it up on YouTube, you'll see there's like flying bananas and big automation pieces, and when I say go, those things move.

So the job is about technical precision. It's about making sure that the show is the same every night, so that the audience is having the best artistic experience. They're seeing the best show that they can, but chiefly also so that everyone is safe, because if it's technically precise, and all the things are happening when they are supposed to consistently, no one's going to get hurt. Also, there are variables, because it's live, and there are live people, and if Gwen decides to walk over here instead of walk over there, and I need to delay a banana moving by two seconds, that's why I'm a live person. It's why it's not an automated thing. I can watch and say, her costume snagged, that needs to be delayed. I can think on my feet and sort of figure out what's different, versus stage managing, which includes all of that.

[12:04] Marci Skolnick: It's funny, I was sitting, I was waiting for an appointment, thinking about us having this wonderful little talk. And I just decided to Google stage management. And what came up from like the Oxford English Dictionary says something like, the person in charge of lighting and other technical elements of theater. But they specify lighting, not anything else. And it's funny, there's a movement actually in the union, in Actors' Equity specifically, to define what a stage manager is. This is probably a movement that's been going as long as there have been stage managers in that union. But really, we've been talking about it because it's useful to know, generally speaking, what it is that we all do, and then what the differences are between what people do.

I always joke and say a stage manager in a theater is the person totally responsible for totally everything. And really what that means is, I'm the executive instrument of a production that's going to get it from pre-production to closing. I facilitate, I organize, it's a middle management position, really. I'm not like the big idea creative person, I can sit down with you and let you bounce artistic ideas off of me all day. And then I'm going to schedule them so that you have all your meetings, you have your rehearsals, you take a break once in a while, you get the props that you need. And then when we go into tech and we go from having a bunch of actors in a room with nothing to on stage with everything, I sort of help everybody integrate all of those things so that it looks good, nobody's getting hurt, it makes sense, and everybody is happy.

I'm facilitating a lot of things and pushing them forward. Sometimes I say it's like the eye of the storm, sometimes I say I just make a lot of paperwork and send a lot of emails. The interesting thing about show calling is I do less paperwork. It's a lot of what it is. It's just kind of like all the same things get done, but it's a different balance of power. In theater, I have a production manager who's handling the crew, getting us the people we need, getting us the things that we need, and I'm scheduling actors. I'm doing more people scheduling and they're doing stuff scheduling, and we're sort of tag teaming. In the concert world, I mean there are also show callers in corporate, which we could get into, but in music my production manager is handling much more paperwork and scheduling than I am.

And I think it's possibly because I'm just dealing with so many really big things that there's more people doing more things. I'm never going to be on deck when I'm calling unless I'm sitting on deck and calling the show from deck, but generally speaking, I'm actually out at front of house with the audio engineer mixing the show, facing the stage, seeing the same thing the audience does, which is super useful because I can tell firsthand if they're getting the correct experience, if it looks right. Now sure, I could do that from backstage, but what I'm not doing is I'm not running a deck track, which I could do as a stage manager in theater or opera or dance or any of many other different circus, many other different disciplines.

I could be actually moving props or supervising the moving of props in a hands-on running around kind of way. Show calling, I'm sitting in one place, I'm looking at my book and a bunch of monitors. It's a different focus and I feel like luckily I wind up having more support. I wind up doing, I wind up writing tracks and paperwork for people so that lots of people know what they're doing, but during the show I am doing less. I've prepped them and I'm focusing on one thing, which is usually large things moving and hopefully not killing anybody. It's the first time I ever heard the term show caller actually was in corporate where it's like a corporate meeting or I think maybe the first corporate show I ever did I think was for a large printer company and we were like demoing one of those giant large format printers.

So I would say go and something would print, but it's a different scale of thing. I didn't realize that show callers could be found really in the entertainment world until I wound up in music. It's different vocabulary for kind of the same thing, kind of, but like a stage manager, there are stage managers in music, in pop and rock and roll, but a stage manager is really the person who helps supervise the loading and unloading of trucks if you're touring. So like making sure the set gets on stage correctly and then gets back in the truck correctly and then chiefly make sure that the band gets safely on and off stage. That's what they do in pop and rock and roll, which is super crazy important, but different from what a show caller does. Hope I'm making some kind of sense.

[17:03] Martín Acuña: Yeah, you are. You are. Absolutely. So what do you think are the basics for each one? Like the must-have skills or lessons a show caller needs and a stage manager needs?

[17:10] Marci Skolnick: Sure. Well, both of them need different kinds of organization. You have to be an organization person. You have to be a people person, I think, to succeed in both of them. I mean, there are plenty of like super cranky stage managers or show callers, but they might not necessarily get hired more than once. I would think, I don't know. I have found for me, let me say that. I have found for me that enjoying people gets me really far in my career because one of the things I enjoy most about being a freelancer and working in entertainment is meeting people and hearing their stories and then helping people tell stories. That's what I really feel like I do is I help you tell your best story. And part of that is having a curiosity in the world, having a curiosity for you and your story and enjoying telling my own story.

And that's the thing I think that makes us human. So I think to succeed in both jobs personally and the world can disagree with me, those are things that really will help you succeed. In terms of stage management versus show calling, a show caller really needs to have a sense of timing. I think actually musical timing, whether or not you're doing music, there's something about having good musicianship and musical timing that will get you through calling a show. You can still succeed as a stage manager if you don't have that timing, but you're not going to be the one calling the show. You might be the one running the deck. And you can succeed in that. Some of my favorite people to work with are people who love running a deck and love being assistants.

They don't want to be the person in charge dealing with the talent or the director or the whomever they really want to support. And I love those people because I need those people in order to do my job well. I think stage managers really must excel at multitasking or at least being able to change focus very quickly and manage multiple things happening. I think stage managers really need to understand how to speak to an artist, to speak artist and to speak to an artist. There's a certain amount of translating the art into bullet points of A and B and C and how are we going to get there that stage managers need because no matter what, you're dealing with some kind of artist making some kind of thing.

And figuring out how to have that conversation and move it along is very helpful. I think stage managers also need to be able to figure out how to get something from point A to point B if it's just sort of moving around in circles. And some of that is slightly less important or less of a focus in show calling. In show calling, it's really about understanding what needs to be moving and where it's going, understanding how to think three steps ahead so I know that while this thing is moving, this other thing is going to be moving and this thing is getting ready in the back because if I send the cupcakes on too early, they might get hit by the bananas. So it's that sort of a multitasking focus.

But I deal with less people in general. It's less of a collaborative job generally speaking. I'm more leading the band than I am first chair violin or something like that. It feels a little bit less collaborative and more dictatorial maybe because as a show caller, you're really leading the ship. When anything goes wrong, then we're collaborating because we're figuring out how to solve the problem. But I have to be really sure of myself in a different way because I am leading that ship and it's going to sink or it's going to get to where it's going on my watch really. Whereas I feel like a stage manager is more of a middle management job and so it's about synthesizing a lot of different things.

And so you really have to figure out how to deal with different personality types. Also, I find stage managers have to deal with more. We deal with a thousand different unions and what are all those rules? No matter what entertainment you're working in, are you dealing with the city's rules? Are you dealing with actors' equity or AGMA or AGVA? And learning how to synthesize all of those things to something that works comes up more in stage managing than show calling. Are any of these like the top 10 essentials? Probably. Anybody you ask who's ever done either of these jobs will give you probably a different perspective on the things that you really need to learn. In both, again, I'll say organized, pleasant, and able to roll with the punches, I guess, are three big things that have gotten me far at least.

[22:28] Martín Acuña: I love what you said earlier that you were like a bridge as a show caller or a stage manager. You were like a bridge between performers, musicians, art, props, makeup, like everything. Because I do really think that stage managers are a performer's best friend and right hand.

[22:46] Marci Skolnick: Absolutely. And I love that. And maybe that's because I have a performer background too. And that has always been very helpful for me, actually, because I can say to a performer or a playwright or an artist or a designer or anybody, I understand who you are and what you're going through. I've been in your shoes and I'm not doing it because you were the one who should be doing it and I'm the one who should be supporting you. And that's the way that this relationship works. And it's reciprocal. We lean on each other. But it is a great joy for me to support those who need to be supported in order to do their best work. That's really what a great part of my job is, is to support and to carry you through and to help you find your way through from A to B. And that's a great privilege to have.

And I take it very seriously. And many people don't know that actors and stage managers are in the same union when we're talking about theater. And that, I think, speaks to a symbiotic relationship, that we really are there to help each other. And it's important.

[24:07] Marci Skolnick: I want to be that person. I want to be an advocate for an artist. I feel that it is a privilege and a duty to advocate for artists and their unique needs all the time, because when it's your name above the title and you're the one out in front of the lights in front of the people, it's not always easy to advocate for yourself. When you're putting that much out there, you need that support, I think, and being able to do that gets me out of bed in the morning. I love it. I got really excited.

[24:45] Martín Acuña: Whether you're in one position or the other, do you have a specific routine for a show?

[24:52] Marci Skolnick: Oh gosh, what do I do? Probably I do. I think it changes some. I make sure that I eat well in the afternoon and I take my vitamins. And before a show, I make sure that I have tissues and cough drops and tea, especially when I'm showcalling because I talk a lot. It's just a constant stream of talking. And because, at least when I'm showcalling the big pop stuff, I'm in front of an audience, or I'm in the audience and it's loud. And we're mixing the shows really loud. And so I have to project, but I can't scream, but I have to be heard over all of this wonderful nonsense going on around me. And there's always a danger I'm going to lose my voice. So I always have my tea with a little bit of caffeine, but not too much caffeine.

And before, well, but when I'm showcalling pop, we fist pound and we say have a good show to anybody who's in the front of house. So even if like somebody's girlfriend or a manager or somebody, everybody has to fist pound. And when I start the show, I check in with all of my departments and then I give all of my standbys. And the way I give standbys at the top of the show, I warn every single department for every single thing that's going to happen in like the first two minutes. I talk and I talk and I talk and I talk and I talk so that everybody knows where we're going. And I wrap it up by saying, okay, let's do the thing with the stuff. And I started doing that quite honestly, because one day I was calling, I was going to call a show and I forgot what the name of the show was momentarily.

And so I was about to say like, Hey, let's do cats, but I couldn't remember what I was doing. So I just said, let's do the thing with the stuff. And it became funny and I've kept to it. But now I feel like it's a trigger that people know like, okay, she's finally done talking and we're going to start. And it really, it sort of gets me in the mindset of like, and now we're going to do the thing. And then, um, almost always at the, towards the end of a show, there's always some sort of choreography that we're doing in the booth, because it's like a celebratory moment of like, we survived. Like I want, I want people that are, have to listen to me talk on headset to have something to look forward to.

So there's always like a hand thing or a woo or a whatever. So it's going to happen just because it amuses people. And then there's always some sort of post-show chocolate, a celebratory drink, a high five. There always has to be a something so that we can signify we've survived. Nobody died. Often actually we'll finish the show and I will say, yeah, nobody died. Because I feel that, uh, you know, life is hard and we should celebrate as many things as possible. So there's always a lot of celebrating and good cheer.

[27:44] Martín Acuña: You just be, I just remembered that you have a specific like phrase or a sentence you say before every show or before starting every show. What I did when I was a performer or when I am on a show is I go to every single castmate I have and I whisper to the ear, I watch your back. It's like my type of, of like ritual. And I loved it. I, I heard the first time I heard it was a teacher. Um, he hugged me from behind and he, he told me, I watch your back. And we were like on an opening night and it was like, Oh my God, this is really nice. And like my nerves went down and the performance went smoothly and I loved it. And I love that you have like that specific phrase still.

[28:39] Marci Skolnick: Yeah. Yeah. It's, and it is important, right? I, you know, it's important to know no matter what it is collaborative and we are counting on each other and we will carry each other through whatever it is that we're doing. You know, if it's a rehearsal day or a day of tech or we're going in front of an audience, that's what's so joyous about what we do is, is we're there to help each other succeed in the best way possible. I love that. I love it.

[29:09] Martín Acuña: Let's talk about your experience at Vegas because I was, I was like, I always do a little research about every guest I have. I was like, wait a minute, I didn't know that Marci worked with Christina Aguilera. And then after that it was like, I didn't know she worked with Gwen Stefani. And then like scrolling down your LinkedIn profile was like, Ooh, she works with the Eagles and she's done musicals. And she's, she worked with the freaking Cirque du Soleil.

[29:47] Marci Skolnick: I've done a lot of cool stuff.

[29:50] Martín Acuña: You do.

[29:51] Marci Skolnick: Like I wake up some days, I wake up every morning and I'm like, wow, this is my life. I, I've always struggled with the phrase gratitude. This is personal. I, I feel when I say, Oh, you know, I'm, I'm so grateful somehow to me that makes me feel like I didn't work for the things that I have. And so instead I prefer the phrase fortunate, which many people have pointed out, maybe it should be the other way around, but I prefer to think that I am a fortunate human being because I've worked really hard to do the things that I do. Uh, and I, but I've gotten amazing opportunities and I have an amazing life. I I've done some of the cool, I like, you know, I I've kind of become the person that I wanted to be when I was a kid, when I grew up.

And how did that happen? I don't know. Um, you know, I, I think the truth of the matter is I, I came to Vegas to do Baz, as I said, but part of that was, um, almost four years ago. Now my father passed away rather unexpectedly. And my mother was here in Vegas. And I thought to myself into the world, I can work anywhere. There's going to be theater and entertainment anywhere I go, but I only have one mother and now I only have one parent. And, uh, if I could still do the things that I love and spend as much time with her as possible, that would be a great gift. And then I got a phone call to do Baz. And, uh, and when Baz closed, I got a phone call to do Gwen Stefani and that led to Christina Aguilera and that led to the Eagles and also all of these other cool things.

And, and I can only think, uh, I'm not a religious person in any way, but, uh, my father must've had something to do with it in some way. And, and actually that's, if there's any ritual, every single show I have done since I got to Vegas, there's a moment, there's a fraction of a second in my head where I think, Hey dad, look at me every day, because I know, I mean, when the Eagles happened, I said to my mother, dad would have liked this one. And, and it just makes me the luckiest human being in the world. And that's, I really learned about other kinds of entertainment in a visceral way in Vegas. Um, because in New York, I was mostly doing Shakespeare, which I love, I love. And I was doing Yiddish theater actually.

And I'm, I'm not Jewish and I don't speak Yiddish, but I did a decade's worth of Yiddish theater in New York and I loved it. Uh, and then I came out here and learned that there were, there's all this entertainment here that, that aren't plays and musicals. And I had seen a Cirque production, a couple, I think. Um, I saw Ki-Dom in, in the early nineties when it came through the Bay area. And I thought that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. And, uh, and when my parents moved to Vegas in 2001, I think we saw Mystere and then we saw Love. And I thought, this is just amazing. I wonder if I could do that, but I didn't really ever think that I would. Um, and so I, I was a, I was a ASM deck sub on Zoomanity for a while.

The show is now closed. It won't return, unfortunately. But, um, to just watch these incredible performers backstage, warming up, like it's nothing, like doing the most incredible things with their bodies and like juggling things and balancing things. And I mean, just doing amazing stuff. And I think like they've been training their entire lives to do this and just even being near them is such a hoot and I love, and I love it. And, and my introduction to Cirque was actually through LaRev, which was a Franco Dragone show at the Wynn. Uh, and my dear friend Janae was a stage manager at LaRev and she, uh, took a maternity leave to have Annabelle, who just turned two. And, and so I went on for nine months to, um, for about nine months to, to train and to cover for her.

And it was just a wonderful experience. And LaRev, uh, is a, was a water show. It also sadly has closed and will not return, pandemic. Um, but the tracks that I ran for the most part were 80 feet in the air. I was 80 feet in the air and every day I would, there was like a big open opening in the center of being up 80 feet in the air. And they would, you know, rig these performers to, to go over and go down that opening and fly and sometimes dive into the pool. And, and I would like hold onto the rail and leap over the edge because they asked me, are you afraid of heights? When I had my interview, no, not at all. I was terrified. I was terrified. And so I, I spent this time like every day, I would just peek to see if I could conquer it.

And now I'm okay. I don't know. I always would joke and say like, I'd love to go over and rig just to have the experience, but I might have a heart attack. Uh, man, I mean that show it's amazing. It's these incredible acrobats that do these incredibly athletic things. And then scuba and all of these technicians that are doing like techniciany things, lights and automation and whatever in scuba suits. It's crazy. Uh, what I mean, and, and what was cool about that was I wasn't just subbing occasionally. I was able to really immerse myself in being there for some months and really learn what it was to work on a, on a circus show like that. And then that experience helped lead me to, uh, to Zumanity and other things.

And I worked, um, I subbed at Absinthe for a while, which is a Spiegel world show, um, which is, it's a small one ring circus and it's, and it's acts. Um, and I think is maybe the most interesting thing in Vegas. I mean, not everything is open right now, but like pre pandemic, when everything was running, if anybody came to town, that's what I would tell them to go see. If they didn't mind some raunchy humor, it's super crazy raunchy, but they have some of the best circus acts I've ever seen. And the crazy pants thing about that show is it changes every night. Like every night, the show's in a different order. There are certain things that will always happen in a certain order, but in between those, those key touch points acts could happen in any kind of different order, depending on who was in and who was out. And it's because it ran seven days a week, two shows a night, sometimes three shows a night.

[36:11] Marci Skolnick: Nobody, of course, could do that many shows a week, so people would have to have a day off, and that rotation is nuts. Understanding how to handle all the transition between those shows, those acts on the fly, and then sometimes somebody goes out in the middle of the show, those things are crazy. Like, those are things you don't learn at college, let me tell you. I don't even think, I never went to grad school, but I'm going to wager to say nobody learns that in grad school either. Like, really learning how to completely revamp a show on the fly and make sure everybody has what they need are things that you're going to learn on the job, gleefully, and you're going to fail at it a little bit, and it will be okay so long as nobody gets hurt.

I mean, all of these things, again, it's like it's such a cool honor to do these things and to see the cool thing about Vegas, and maybe other places too, I don't know. I know New York, and I know Vegas. I feel like Vegas really figured out how to let people have careers in entertainment and also have lives. That may be true on Broadway. I never had the privilege of working on Broadway, but in Vegas, many, many people have wives and husbands and partners and families and have figured out how to do that and work in their chosen profession in a way that I think is hard to find other places, and it's amazing to me because Cirque performers who have been with Cirque for 20 years are able to afford to send their kids to college, and that's an amazing gift, but it should be.

That's what it should be everywhere. It's a profession like any other profession anywhere else, and we should be able to afford our lives and do this and tell stories to the public and also go out to dinner once in a while without worrying whether or not we can pay our mortgages, and I really think that somehow Vegas has figured that out, and I hope that that continues post-pandemic as we're figuring out a way out of this, but it feels like there's hope because things are starting to come back here, which is exciting.

[38:20] Marci Skolnick: Yeah, and I know that that hope specifically will like remain there and be like this firing pit that lights our sparks. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. I posted a poll on my LinkedIn today because I got into a conversation with a friend yesterday about how we're all sort of getting up earlier and going to bed earlier because we don't have to work until one o'clock in the morning, and so I was just curious to see like what are people doing because I definitely go to bed by midnight and I'm up around eight, and that seems to be the schedule that my body likes, but I was curious to see like are people still staying up really late like just because that was their habit? Do people like to go to bed? Have people figured out that, God, I never had a work-life balance for a long time, and now that I kind of have one, I want to hang on to that.

Does the rest of the world? Polls will open for another six days, but it seems like, yes, people are enjoying their work-life balance. I actually saw it and it was like, I've had gigs in which, yes, I have to stay up late and it's fine, but I've also, I'm really strict with that sleeping schedule. If I'm not in bed by 10:30, I'm going to be a mess the next morning, like a mess.

[39:35] Marci Skolnick: It's funny because when I was, for a while here, this is something that I think is particular to Vegas. One is as a stage manager and a show caller, one can make a living on the strip just being a sub, so like I go in two days a week to this show. I go in one night to the show or maybe two weeks to the show, and I didn't have a full-time job after Baz for a long time, but I was making a ton of money and working a lot and paying for my own health insurance, but whatever. Doing that, I would go into work at five and probably get out between 11 and midnight and then maybe I haven't had dinner, so I'm going to go grab dinner somewhere because everything in Vegas is just open all the time. I'm going to go to bed at one o'clock in the morning and then probably get up at 10 the next day because my body needs some sleep.

It's funny. You just adjust to whatever you need to do. When the Eagles were out on the road, that show is three hours long and it starts at eight o'clock if we're lucky, and then often, we're loading out until two o'clock in the morning, and then we're going to be in another city the next day. You adapt to whatever schedule that you have, but I feel like in the last year, I've at least caught up on my accumulated sleep debt, so now I can go into anything.

[41:05] Marci Skolnick: What was your best experience calling Christina Aguilera's show? That show came together very quickly. We had a decent rehearsal period. I went to LA for a couple of days. I don't know. I was in LA for a period of time that I think really was only about four days, having some rehearsals, and then we brought it back to Vegas and we put it together in about a week of very, very long days, but one of the curtains that we needed to do the show that came in and went out several times as a projection surface didn't show up during tech, and so we were using another curtain that was in as a standby, but we didn't have this other curtain, and therefore, we didn't really know if it was going to work because until you project the thing on the screen, does that look the way we want?

What do we do about it? It didn't come in, and it didn't come in, and it didn't come in, and we were told the night of our first show was the day it was supposed to come in. It was supposed to get there at five o'clock that day before an eight o'clock show, and we were just kind of crossing our fingers, hoping it would show up, and we sort of had the plan A of how the show was going to go if it showed and the plan B, completely different cues if it didn't, and it did show up a little bit late, and I think am I remembering the times correctly? Let's go with it. If the house was supposed to open at 7:30, we were still installing and testing the damn thing at that time, and so we were just holding the house as much as we could, and I was sitting with one of the technicians talking through cues in a very literal sense.

I'm going to say this. You're going to do this. Then this will happen. Then this person does this. Then I say this, and it was really moment to moment. These are all the things because in part, I think everybody was just so scared that it wasn't going to work that it was back to remedial, say all of the things out loud, and we were just, I don't know. I can only speak for me. I was terrified. I've never been this scared in my life. Is this going to happen? Will I have a job tomorrow? We got through it all. We opened the house. I grabbed my tea while I was running. I got back to my front of house, and there we are. We're going to do a show, and then it was great. It wasn't technically flawless.

We had a couple of moments, but I don't know that anybody would have known it, and so the whole show became this great celebration of, oh my God, we did it, and that amazing kinetic energy, you could see it, and you could feel it with everybody. It was just so joyous. She's so great, and she's such an incredibly strong woman who doesn't take any guff from anybody, and she shouldn't. She's just an incredible talent. That woman can roll out of bed in her sweats and put her hair in a bun and open her mouth and blow off the back wall with the sheer amount of sound that comes out of her, not trying at all. She's just incredible because if she tries at all, which of course she always does, and then some, you get the most amazing experience.

She's just awesome to watch, and to watch her talk about empowering women, and every once in a while bringing her children on stage to say hello, and it's like, oh, you're that kind of a badass, and you're a really good mom too. It's just astounding, but that first performance, like damn, we got away with it. We did it. It was just so incredible, and following that, I think we did a New Year's show that year, which turned out to be our last show before the pandemic hit, I think, or the pandemic was starting to hit when we did our next chunk of shows, I think. It was joyous. It was joyous to be doing that, not knowing what was coming our way.

[48:01] Martín Acuña: Before we go, where can people get a hold of you, follow you, chat with you?

[48:04] Marci Skolnick: I'm on LinkedIn, guys. LinkedIn is my main social media of choice. There are two Marcy Skolnick's on social media in general, and I am the one who is not married to Marie Rabinowitz. It's true. Somebody sent me their wedding announcement when Marcy Skolnick, who spells her name exactly the same way I do, married Marie Rabinowitz, and they're both law students from Harvard, I think. Every once in a while, somebody will try to contact me looking for her. I'm not her. I'm the Marcy Skolnick without a married name after that. I'm also on Facebook, and I check it probably once a month. I'm also on Instagram. My Instagram is at Dreadfully Un, which is an obscure Samuel Beckett joke, actually. Really, if you want to find me on LinkedIn, what you're going to find is once in a while, photos of me working and mostly photos of Pico Degato.

If you enjoy cats, please come find me. Otherwise, I'm on LinkedIn all the time, and I love it. I'm happy to make friends and talk and share experiences and all of those things because I'm so fortunate. I do such amazing, cool things, and you can too. I really believe that. I believe that more people can do more cool things if we all help each other. I'm there. Come find me. Let's chat. If you're in Vegas, look me up because I'm here calling some show or another all the time.

[48:35] Martín Acuña: Well, Marcy, thank you so much for coming over. It's been a pleasure. I am really excited for everything that's coming your way and more knowing that things in Vegas are opening up faster than on the East Coast or other countries. I'm really, really excited. I have one last question for you, a no-brainer. I usually do this with musical theater, but with you, I'm going to do it with a Vegas show. Top five favorite Vegas shows.