Cue (theatrical) - Other

Other

Many types of cues are not apparent to the stage manager, or are subtle. In this case the technician who executed the cue usually responds with a taken note; e.g. "Rail cue 11 taken." Sometimes, the technician replies with a response like "light cue 6 done" to indicate the conclusion of a light or sound cue with a prolonged execution time.

Often followspot operators do not take their cues from stage managers. This is generally because the timing of actors entrances and exits and other movements may vary from night to night, and because calling every followspot cue could become too complicated and interfere with the calling and execution of other cues. However, if there is a problem with the actor appearing on stage, the stage manager will notify the followspots of this over headset. More commonly, a stage manager may only call very specific followspot cues, like a blackout—frequently on a blackout cue there is a light cue, a sound cue, a followspot cue and sometimes even a set cue, so it is very important that everything happens all at the same time. Aside from this, followspot operators take their own cues and follow their own cue sheet, or take direction from the lighting board operator on a communications subsystem dedicated to lighting cues.

(If a stage manager were to call every cue for a follow spot operator it might sound something like this: "Spot 1, pick up , spot 2 iris down, spot 1 switch to color frame #4, spot 3 douse out, spot 4 pick up , spot 2 switch to color frame #2.")

Cue lights are sometimes used for back stage cues when a headset for communications is impractical, such as when an actor needs to make an entrance, or if there is a cue needed on stage when the crew needs to be silent. The cue light is controlled by the stage manager using a switch the same way that (s)he would call audio cues over the headset. A solid red light indicates a 'warning' cue. An optional yellow light or a flashing red light indicates "standby". A green light signals "go." Some cue lights have a talkback feature which allows actors or crew to acknowledge back to the stage manager that the cue has been received.