This is Fiona Sctott-Lockyer. Last week she was working at Wembley Stadium on the Coldplay gig – next week she’ll be working with us at the Royal Albert Hall as our production manager and backstage coordinator. That’s her job, and she is very experienced at it. We came across her when we first played the Royal Albert Hall in 2004, when she was our event manager.
Fiona has worked with them all: the Rolling Stones, Monty Python, Robbie Williams, the London Symphony Orchestra, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, and Take That, so we are in safe hands.
And being a safe pair of hands is what the job is. As Fiona puts it, if she has done her job properly, she shouldn’t have anything to do on the night because it’s all been prepared in advance. However, if something should happen, she is the first person to find a solution; being unflappable is high on the list of skills.
So what does she do? Put simply, she is the focal point of all the strands of the production. That includes the technical departments like flying, lighting, sound, staging, but also all the logistics. She is the person who helps us swap 1200 young people from the choir to the arena and back again in the interval, she allocates the dressing rooms, choir places and takes responsibility for health and safety, risk assessments – the list is endless.
Take, for instance, a seemingly simple thing like getting the entire cast and chaperones into the building. On the face of it, an easy thing to do, but it has to be managed, and once in the building, people need to know where to go. This is especially true in a round building where you can easily get lost and find yourself in the same place again.
There has to be logic, experience and understanding behind it all. As she says, a lot of people don’t think logically, so a lot of her job is talking logically to people who often see things more emotionally. She has to be able to deal with super-egos or jobsworths and get on with them all. As she explains, she has learnt to have an iron fist but it’s wrapped in a velvet glove. You need someone to be very strict about important things like safety, but do it in a very polite way and keep people on board.
The joy for her is seeing all the strands come together. How all the groups across the country come to one place at one time and make the show work? She likes to see the performers’ faces, especially if this is their first time, and their reaction to what they see around them. It may seem a cliché, but it’s true – the show must go on, and that’s what she’s there for. She makes it happen, and she loves the thrill of creative thinking, being ready for the unexpected and solving problems along the way.
What I say is that theatre wouldn’t exist without the likes of people like Fiona. What they do is usually unseen, but you couldn’t do without it.
