SM Desk

The SM desk (Stage Manager's Desk) is positioned in the Stage Left wing and is essential to efficiently managing any performance in the ADC Theatre. It is normally managed by the Deputy Stage Manager during productions who is reponsible for monitoring the fire panel to the left of the desk, calling cues using the inbuilt cans system and/or cue lights and communicating with the rest of the theatre using the paging system, bar bells, god mic & phone.

For more information please see Page 11 of the ADC Stage Management Guide.

Cuelights

The theatre's cuelight (cue LX) master station is built into the SM desk. All outgoing ways of cue LX go via the patch panel on the DSL signal facilities panel below the safety curtain release handle. The standard patch is normaled (i.e. each way on the top row feeds directly into the way on the bottom row without the need for a patch lead), but some tielines such as the LX plot desk or sound mix position will need manual patching.

The ADC has a number of cuelight extensions which are basically just portable outstations. They attach via 6.5mm audio jacks which can be converted into 3-pin XLR and back again.

Clock

The SM desk has a clock. It can be adjusted by pressing 2 buttons at once - "Start/Stop" (far left) and "Reset" (middle) adds 1 minute, "Start/Stop" and "Blank" (far right) goes back one minute. Please note you need to hold "Reset" or "Blank" and then press "Start/Stop" individually for each minute. Pressing "Start/Stop" and either of the other buttons won't change anything.

God mic & speaker

The SM desk has 'god mic' functionality built into it. If you put the headset on and press the god mic button then audio from the headset will appear on the sound bantam patch panel. It is up to the sound designer to route this audio through to the PA system.

There is a speaker built into the Cans Masterstation in the desk which appears as a patchable destination on the bantam field in the Sound Box. The speaker is available on an 'opt in' basis for the sound designer (i.e. it has to be manually patched in order for it to do anything).

Identifying and fixing issues

The best strategy to fix the SM desk if it is not doing what you expect is to turn it off and on again, but you only need to try this once. You can also contact the ADC Technical Manager at technical@cuadc.org or CUADC Stage Managers' Rep at sm@cuadc.org to see if they can help.

If the god mic is not working it is probably because it has not been patched in the sound box. It needs to be patched in the bantam patch on the far side of the sound box from the God Mic to a channel of the desk and then that channel needs to be turned on. On the ADC Base File the God Mic is already on channel 28 so once it's been bantam patched it should work!