Dear Constant Reader,
Happy Friday! Here is your tip!
Acknowledge and echo.
When you’ve been given a piece of information, especially some place noisy and active, like backstage, acknowledge that you’ve heard it and then echo back the critical information to prove that you understand it.
For example, at a Boston BeauTease show, the stage manager will announce to the dressing room, “Fifteen minutes to places, ladies and gentlemen, one-five.”* We will then chorus “Thank you, one-five!”. We know we have 15 minutes before the show starts and the stage manager knows we know it.
This method, albeit with different conventions, is used in the theatre, commercial kitchens, shipboard, in the military, and other places where it is critically important that information be conveyed and understood accurately
Also, Scratch reminds me, whenever you are given a string of instructions, it’s worth it to repeat them back to make sure both parties have the same understanding and expectation.
*”Fifteen” and “fifty” can sound very similar, so we use “one-five” and “five-zero” to avoid confusion. I was once in a show where this convention wasn’t used and the opening act thought they still had half an hour to get ready when places was called. Not fun.
Oh, The Glamourous Life! 
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