The actors are running around onstage and I just don't get it

We are about three weeks into rehearsal for Noises Off at CCT here in St. Louis. Things are going well even though I've only attended about a week's worth of rehearsals. With the vacation and then my major cold and ear infection, I just wasn't able to be involved earlier.

As an assistant stage manager, I'm at every single rehearsal and basically watching. As the director gives the actors their blocking, I'm responsible for writing it down, step by step. With around ten actors onstage at any given time, I'm finding it quite difficult to keep track of them all! And since this is a farce, there is a lot of running back and forth and interacting with the other actors, dealing with props, plus trying to put in the physical comedy bits that the script asks for.

Tonight it just hit me, sitting there watching them run around, fall down (and not always when called for in the script), and almost kill themselves - this is going to be a CRAZY show. I'll be backstage for most of the time and I'm just praying that everything goes ok.

Because - seriously - SO many things can go wrong, I can't even begin to imagine how as assistant stage manager I could fix things from backstage.

I'm really glad we have two months before we open - if at the very least, for me to realize where they need to be when!!!