Spartan Profiles: Jovon E. Shuck

ORGANIZING SPAMALOT

            In Broadway productions, only the stage manager has a view of everything that is going on about a show.  That is why Jovon E. Shuck, ’98, stage manager for the national tour of the Broadway musical Spamalot —which played at MSU’s Wharton Center in December—likes his job so much.  “We’re generalists and we see the big picture of the whole thing,” says Shuck while setting up the show at MSU.  “I love it.” 

            A native of Dansville, Jovon is a third generation Spartan who came to MSU to study veterinary medicine.  “But after taking chemistry, I weighed the thought of taking chemistry courses for the next four years against my passion for theatre, and I changed my major,” he says. 

            While stage managing a student production of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, he met future wife Sheila Marie Everett.  “I just looked inside dressing room 274,” says Jovon.  “That was her dressing room.”  He touts former theatre professors Frank Rutledge and Greta Geist for “pushing me and challenging me to go beyond what I felt comfortable doing.” 

            After MSU, Jovon became stage manager for the iconic Radio City Music Hall and later for many Broadway shows, including Noises Off and The Graduate.  He also stage managed Chekhov’s The Seagull in a Central Park production starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Christopher Walken and John Goodman.  “It was great working with these stars, but part of my job was to chase raccoons with a hose and to use a push broom to get snapping turtles back into their pond,” he chuckles.

            Jovon has also worked with Kathleen Turner, Jason Biggs and Alicia Silverstone.  “Mostly they’re down to earth people,” he says.  “But you also have awful diva people.”  He recalls that Patti LuPone, star of Noises Off, was continuously argumentative backstage during the show. “She had a sweet side to her,” he says, “but we just didn’t see it.”  No one said seeking the Grail, in theatre or elsewhere, was easy.