Facilitation Practices in Stage Management

Facilitation Practices in Stage Management: Interpersonal Skills and Building Relationships in the Production Process reframes the stage manager as an artistic facilitator and offers a practical guide to understanding both oneself and one’s collaborators in service of a shared goal: the production.

This book examines the many facets of the stage manager’s role—Artist, Technician, Social Anthropologist, Connector, and Servant Leader—and highlights how each requires creativity, curiosity, adaptability, and empathy throughout the production process. Drawing on ideas and practices from education, social organizing, and community engagement, this book explores interpersonal communication, facilitation, self-reflection, information gathering, language, conflict navigation, mediation, accountability, self-care, and community-building in a practical, accessible, personal, and often humorous way. Facilitation Practices in Stage Management invites all stage managers and artistic facilitators to bring their full selves to their work and challenges them to cultivate creative spaces where others feel empowered to do the same.

Written for undergraduate, graduate, and professional stage managers, as well as theater educators, this book supports practitioners at all phases of their career. Serving as a complement to foundational stage management texts, it offers valuable tools for arts and entertainment professionals seeking to expand their facilitation skills and for students studying communication and leadership.

Nikki Hyde (she/her) is a stage manager and educator who is passionate about theatrical storytelling and working with community. She is the Director of the Stage Management program at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she received an Excellence in Teaching Award in 2025. Nikki previously taught at California Institute of the Arts and University of California, San Diego. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California. Nikki was a long-time ensemble member of Cornerstone Theater Company and has stage managed all over the United States in theater, opera, special events, and community-based projects. Nikki’s credits include the world premiere of American Apollo (Des Moines Metro Opera), the world premiere of Eurydice (Los Angeles Opera), The Box (on Zoom for the Pulitzer Center), Café Vida (Cornerstone Theater Company), Little Black Shadows (South Coast Repertory), A Trip to the Moon (Los Angeles Philharmonic), Stew (Pasadena Playhouse), Party People (The Public Theater), and Twelfth Night (Public Works). Nikki is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and the American Guild of Musical Artists.