What to Pack in a Stage Manager’s Emergency Kit: A Backstage Checklist

The zipper on a lead actor's quick-change dress gives out four minutes before places. Someone's contact lens disappears somewhere near the prop table. A chorus member splits a shoe on the stairs. None of these are catastrophes, provided the kit is where it should be and the thing that fixes the problem is in the compartment you expect.

A good emergency kit is not a first-aid kit and it is not a junk drawer. It is a curated, checked, portable answer to the question every stage manager learns to expect: "Do you have…?" What follows is a working checklist, plus notes on how to organize it so you can find a safety pin in the dark and how to keep it from quietly emptying out by the third week of the run.

Start With the Right Container

Two containers beat one. First, a clear compartmented case, the kind sold for fishing tackle or craft supplies, for the small consumables: pins, batteries, plasters, adapters, nail files. Second, a soft tote or small wheeled case for the bulky items: tape rolls, spare blacks, a water bottle, a towel, a power strip.

Clear beats opaque every time. When you are crouched behind a rail with a headlamp on, you want to see the contents rather than dig through them. Label the compartments once, early, with tape and a Sharpie. Keep the kit in the same place every night, whether that is under the production desk or on a shelf in the wings, and put a strip of glow tape on the handle so a sub can find it without asking.

For touring, festivals, or any venue where you are the visiting team, add a small pouch that lives on your body: one pencil, one Sharpie, a mini flashlight, a couple of safety pins, a cough drop. The big kit stays at the desk; the pouch goes wherever you go.

One boundary worth setting early: your kit complements the venue's first-aid provision, it does not replace it. On your first walkthrough, find the house first-aid box and the AED, and know which usher or duty manager is trained to use them.

Tape, Tools, and the Fix-It Layer

Tape is the backbone of the whole enterprise, and there is no such thing as too many kinds. Gaffer in black and in a bright color. Spike tape in at least three colors. Glow tape for stair edges and dark corners. Electrical tape. Double-sided and masking tape. Keep rolls flat rather than fat, and keep one roll of black gaffer in your pouch at all times.

The rest of the hardware layer should cover the small failures that stop a scene:

• A multitool with a screwdriver bit or two, plus a small precision screwdriver for glasses hinges
• Zip ties, rubber bands, binder clips in several sizes, a couple of carabiners
• Fabric scissors and paper scissors, kept separate, and a craft knife with spare blades
• Tweezers, a nail file, a small hammer, picture hooks, adhesive hooks
• Spare AA, AAA, and 9V batteries, marked with the date they went in
• A headlamp and a small handheld flashlight
• A short extension cord, a power strip, and gaffer for taping cable runs flat

A word on gaffer: it is wonderful on cable and terrible on painted surfaces and costume fabric. If you are taping something you did not build, ask the person who did.

The Wardrobe Drawer

Costume emergencies arrive without warning and usually involve a fastener. Build a small sewing kit with black and white thread, needles in two or three sizes, a seam ripper, a thimble, and small scissors. Add safety pins in three sizes, hook-and-eye closures, snaps, and spare buttons in black, white, and clear.

Then the quick fixes: hem tape, fashion tape, adhesive velcro dots, a stain remover pen, a lint roller, and a small bottle of static spray. Keep a pair of black socks, a pair of black tights, and a set of spare shoelaces in the tote, because "I forgot my shoes" happens more often than anyone outside the business would believe. A tube of shoe glue earns its place; super glue does too, but keep it sealed in a bag and hand it to an adult rather than a nervous teenager.

Two clean hand towels and a packet of baby wipes cover a surprising range of messes, from spilled coffee to stage blood. Check with wardrobe before anything touches a costume, though. Their department has opinions, and they are usually right.

Health, Comfort, and Consent

Here is the firmest rule in this article: do not hand out medication from a show kit. Not an aspirin, not an antacid, not an allergy tablet, however harmless it seems. Keep your own prescriptions in their labeled containers and for everyone else, direct people to the venue's trained first-aid staff or to their own supply. Your kit handles comfort and minor scrapes; anything beyond that belongs to someone qualified.

What to keep instead:

• Plasters in several sizes and a few blister plasters for dancers
• Antiseptic wipes and two pairs of disposable gloves
• An instant cold pack, the kind you squeeze
• Tissues, wet wipes, hand sanitizer
• Sanitary products, stored discreetly and restocked without comment
• Hair ties, bobby pins, a small comb
• Cough drops, hard candy, honey sticks, a few tea bags
• Earplugs, lip balm, hand cream, a spare pair of reading glasses

Keep a small stock of snacks and water for the person who skipped dinner: crackers, nuts, dried fruit, an electrolyte sachet. Label anything that could contain a common allergen, and ask before you offer rather than after. Theatres are dry places with long hours, and half the job of a kit is simply keeping people functional until the curtain call.

Power, Paper, and the Boring Things

The unglamorous items get used most often. Bring a charged power bank and a nest of cables, because the world is now split between USB-C, Lightning, and micro-USB, and someone will arrive with the wrong one. Keep paper copies of the things you would hate to lose: the script or score, the cue sheet, the contact list, the day's schedule, blank incident report forms, and a sign-in sheet. A clipboard, sharpened pencils, a pencil sharpener, highlighters, and a pad of sticky notes finish the desk.

Add a box of zip-top bags in two sizes, a roll of trash bags, and a small amount of cash in low denominations for a cab or a vending machine. A notebook for show reports and a spare pen live in the kit permanently, not in your pocket where they will vanish.

Restock, Review, Reset

A kit only works if it is full. Tape an inventory list inside the lid and spend ten minutes with it once a week, ideally on the same day each week so it becomes routine. Check battery dates, expiry dates on wipes and cold packs, and the state of the tape rolls.

Adopt a one-for-one rule: whatever you use, you replace the same night or the next morning, before it slips your mind. Before tech, do a full audit, because tech is when the kit gets raided. Before opening, do it again. If you hand the show to a substitute, leave a short note describing what is in the kit and where it lives, and after closing, sort it out, throw away what is expired, and start the next production clean.

A Kit Is a Habit

The point of all this is not paranoia. It is the small, unremarkable calm that comes from knowing where the plasters are. Most nights the kit stays closed, and that is the best possible outcome. But when someone appears at your desk with a torn hem and eleven minutes to places, you want to open a compartment, hand over exactly the right thing, and get back to calling the show. Build it once, check it weekly, and it will quietly do its job for the whole run.

Photo: StockSnap / Pixabay