Stage Dad: The Guardians

A look at the behind-the-scenes professionals who ensure your child is safe and doing what it takes to succeed on stage

Broadway guardian Vanessa Brown with several of her charges at Feinstein’s 54 Below in New York City.

As a parent, leaving your child in the care of an adult you don’t know can be quite intimidating and emotional, at least at first.

We’ve all had pits in our stomachs when we drop a child off at daycare for the first time or found ourselves welling up when our sons and daughters walk into school for the first day of kindergarten.

Take your 9-year-old to his first “job,” drop him off in the care of someone you barely know or have just met, and those emotions are ramped up ten-fold. But fortunately, when the job involves regional theater or Broadway, your kid is in good hands.

For this installment in the “Stage Dad” series, we look at the role of the guardian, the person responsible for the care and well-being of underage performers. Guardians are the behind-the-scenes professionals you will interact with most while your child is doing a show. They are not babysitters or tutors — we’ll look at the latter role in a separate installment — but the ones who ensure your child is acting professionally during rehearsals and performances.

Supporting your child

Over the years, as Ben worked in the D.C. area, on tour, and in New York, we watched a host of guardians help a smorgasbord of young performers. Most of the shows required only one person in the role because only a handful of minors were in the cast; in some cases, such as on Disney productions, tutors and “wranglers” — a word commonly used to describe the work of guardians — double up for the work.

“Billy Elliot,” however, had almost two dozen kids and multiple guardians, several of whom we still count as dear friends because of the support they provided to us and, most important, to our son.

At the time, Bobby Wilson was the head guardian for “Billy Elliot” and a leader to have the position made official in the Broadway hierarchy. Thanks to the efforts of Bobby and others, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) negotiated health coverage for the full-time guardians on the show in 2010. Two years later, the Broadway League and IATSE’s Local 764 reached a collective bargaining agreement that includes annual wage increases and employer contributions to the guardians’ health and retirement funds.

After a 28-year career, Bobby retired on Jan. 1, 2017, with the closing of “Matilda,” another long-running Broadway show with a large cast of children. He remains the gold standard for which others in the role aspire to become.

A guardian’s POV

Vanessa Brown, one of Wilson’s proteges, has worked as a guardian on more than 20 Broadway shows since she started assisting him on 1994’s revival of “Show Boat.” Since then, Vanessa has worked on “Ragtime” (original cast), “The Sound of Music” revival, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” “Newsies,” and “Fun Home,” among others. She also has been a guardian on several TV shows and films.

Vanessa and I met when she was working on “South Pacific” and Ben had just started on “Billy Elliot.” We’ve been friends — mostly through social media — since and it’s easy to see the love she has for her “kids.” At the same time, she is the first to tell you that being a guardian is not for the faint of heart.

“Working with kids is hard. Working with theater kids is even harder,” she said during an email Q&A recently. “The highs and the lows that they have to navigate at such a tender age takes a toll and gives a gift. It shapes them in ways that might not be revealed for decades.”

Vanessa with cast members of “Fun Home” at the 2018 Tony Awards (left) and with the “Newsies” child actors at a closing night party for the Broadway production in August 2014.

Here are other highlights from our email conversation:

When and why did you become a child guardian?

“Back in the last century, I was a substitute teacher in NYC, kinda trying to be a performer, writer, and not wanting to spend time getting my master’s. I discovered On Location Education and started tutoring on film and TV sets and eventually on Broadway. That’s where I met Bobby Wilson, the finest and greatest wrangler of them all. He introduced me to this weird job where you got to be in the rehearsal rooms and backstage and, unlike teaching, there was no math involved. I was hooked.”

What are the most kids you’ve had on a show? Fewest? What are the challenges of dealing with groups large and small?

“There’s no set rule for how many guardians/how many kids. The age of the children, the location of their dressing rooms, and where they enter and exit all play a part.

“For two odd years, I supervised the Metropolitan Opera Childrens Chorus. Some of those shows might have 40 or 50 kids. And they’d be four hours long, with kids in the first scene and the last. Three hours in a giant room with bored and cranky kids — that was not a lot of fun. On “Wonderland” (a short-lived 2011 Broadway show), there was one child and her understudy was an adult, so if she was out, I didn’t have to come to work.

“It’s hard to tell what’s going to make a show fun to work on or not. It’s a combo of the kids and the company and how much you’re all on the same page.”

How do you describe what you do to someone you’ve just met?

“When a company hires an adult actor, they expect that actor brings with them the basic skill set of working and interacting in the adult world. They don’t always get that… but they expect it. Kids just don’t have the life experience or the coping skills to be a fully functioning member of the company.

I always felt my job was to be a sort of spackle, I fill in the gaps between what the kids bring into the rehearsal room and what the $10 million musical demands of them.

What is the difference between a guardian and a tutor?

“Guardians and tutors are two very different jobs. The tutor’s responsibility is to make sure that the children are fulfilling their school requirements. They might have to teach first grade social studies and 10th grade advanced Chemistry in the same room at the same time. If kids don’t keep up in school, they can lose their work papers.

“A guardian is the person who meets the child at the stage door as they say goodbye to their parents, is with the child in rehearsals and responsible for their well-being while they’re in the theater. The guardian takes them to their cues and stays with them until they walk on stage, then meets them when they come off stage again. At the end of the night, you stay with the child until their parents take them home.”

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve gotten from other guardians or mentors?

“Every child and every situation are different. You have to listen to what the kid needs. Be a support system and a friend. It’s a very high stress time for kids, for anyone. They need to know that no matter what else is happening in their lives, they can count on you to care about them and their well-being above all else.”

What do parents need to know about your work? What advice to you have for parents that will help them and you do your jobs better?

“Parents, don’t be afraid to advocate for your child. You should feel comfortable telling your guardian/wrangler about anything that is happening that might affect their kids. A guardian must take the responsibility very seriously. We are asking parents to hand their children over to complete strangers for hours at a time; the parents deserve time and information. The guardian is the parents’ first line of contact.”

I know goodbyes are tough (and on rare occasions not). Do you stay in touch with your kids after they leave?

“I’m thrilled that so many of the kids I have worked with in the past have grown into amazing, smart, sweet adult humans who I can genuinely call ‘friend.’ Maybe we keep in touch on Facebook and meet up for lunch, or I go to see them in a show or go to their wedding. It’s a very gratifying thing to watch, especially when you see that maybe a couple of seeds you planted 15 years ago are flowering in unexpected ways.

Not every kid is like that, of course. There are those you love and then they go their own way and you lose touch. And there are ones that maybe you didn’t love quite so much and you’re not so terribly sad to see them go, but that’s rare.  Then there are a special few that become family.

“The greatest gift I have taken from my years as a guardian is a weird and wonderful extended family of lunatics and circus folk. They warm my heart and soothe my soul. I wouldn’t trade my 20 crazy years in ‘The Biz’ for all the office jobs in the wide world.”

Do you have suggestions for this Stage Dad series? Questions? Feedback? Let me know in the comments or send me an email.

Note: I’ve also created a central location for the Stage Dad entries. You can access that here. I hope you’ll share it with other parents who would benefit from these essays!

The Daily Photos

Here are the Daily Photos posted for the week of April 18-24 to my Facebook business page. The photos represent the random things I capture during travels to various places. To see a larger version of this image on your desktop, just click on the photo.

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In case you missed it…

Here’s yesterday’s essay.

Grinding Along

See you next week!