Student Spotlight – Emily Cady
Emily Cady just graduated from BU, having been a Kilachand Honors College and College of Fine Arts student. Emily’s Keystone project “I Can’t, I Have Rehearsal: An Investigation into Wellness and Production Practices of Boston Area Undergraduate Stage Management and Performance Programs,” draws from personal experiences and research done on Boston University’s undergraduate theatre program.
Question: What was your journey with stage productions and stage management?
Answer: I’ve been doing theater since I was in sixth grade. I started as a performer, but then I went to high school, and I turned to stage management.
It reached a point where I didn’t feel as if I could do anything else with my life and it was meant for me. Stage management is a field that involves creativity, but it’s also incredibly logistic and pragmatic.
I ended up here at BU and I kind of never looked back. Doing theater is such a gift, and getting to be a part of telling stories and have a hand in everything, but also be kind of invisible is really interesting.
Q: Could you explain how your Keystone project came to be? Obviously you’re studying stage management, but why specifically did you choose to look into the wellness aspect through the methods that you did?
A: It started from my experience in middle and high school, where we’d have these really long rehearsals every day. But then here in undergrad, the hours are insane on top of other classes. As someone who also came to be wanting to do traditional academic work, I had a hard time balancing that, and really like giving my all to both things.
It’s one of those things in the industry, we don’t really talk about why we do things the way we do them. I also think the theater community is an extremely under-studied population, generally across the board.
But my specific approach came about in HC 401 when we had a guest lecturer who works for the four day work week initiative, so my main question was, “How do we apply these traditional workplace innovations around wellness, to the theatre space?”
My whole goal was to get some numbers behind things, and see what’s actually happening.
Q: What were some of the main findings from your research?
A: When I dove into literature review, there was next to nothing as it relates to theater and wellness. So the goal of the project was just to get data.
The School of Theater is actually undergoing a huge curriculum reform. So currently, juniors and seniors are on the old curriculum, and freshmen and sophomores are on the new curriculum. My faculty mentor, who’s also the advisor for the project, wrote the new curriculum. She said that the amount of hours that folks were working directly lined up with the new restructuring of the curriculum, which is something that I didn’t expect to happen at all.
Q: Based on the experience doing your Keystone and collecting that data, how do you hope the theater industry or the performing arts industry evolves?
A: At least here at BU, they are actually going to look into doing some sort of continuous data collection, so that’s exciting here.
Currently in the theater industry, there’s a culture of, “take care of yourself, but not if it impacts the work.” I think that by implementing projects such as this and whatever initiatives come from having data like this, it’s going to change the culture.
During COVID, burnout was a huge issue, and a lot of active stage managers and performers left the industry. The pandemic was the thing that forced the reckoning, but it was a long time coming. So I think that we’re in this massive restructuring.
It’s also interesting to note, when I studied abroad in London last spring, I had an internship at a theater company. They have these really robust wellness programs, and there are government-subsidized agencies that are meant to help facilitate wellness in the performing arts. I think It could be good for the U.S. to see something like that.
Q: How has your time working in productions and doing your Keystone research, and even that experience being abroad shaped the type of work you want to look for, or how you want to continue in stage management?
A: I previously did not want to go to grad school. I didn’t know where I wanted to be, but I was just gonna freelance stage management.
After doing this work, I am applying to grad school to hopefully continue the project. I’d like to develop a methodology that can be applied to everyone working in the theater industry. And then my dream career is to be a sort of wellness consultant with theater companies and put into practice wellness initiatives that inform the way the whole company operates.