Alumni Spotlight: Mary Dennis

Mary Dennis graduated from Penn State in 2017 with a B.F.A. in Theatre with a stage management focus. Since then, she’s toured the United States, where she ended up transitioning to the props department. She currently works on Broadway, subbing on multiple shows.

She started stage managing in high school.

“I took a chance at being the stage manager for the fall school plays, not knowing what the position entailed. I learned very quickly on my own, and loved it.”

While she initially chose Temple University to study, she quickly found that it wasn’t what she was looking for.

“A friend of mine went to Penn State and suggested the program to me during my final week working at the local summer stock. I grew up a Penn State fan as well, so it just felt right.”

While at Penn State, she worked on several productions, but a couple stood out, including Titanic at the Pavilion and Be More Chill on the Playhouse stage.

Be More Chill especially hit a note because it was a new work.

“It was my first time working on a brand-new musical, still technically doing out-of-town tryouts, and I loved the whole process.”

Penn State as a whole helped prepare Mary for all the challenges the professional world would throw at her.

“The Penn State Theatre program is saturated with shows of all types, which really allowed me to work in many different scenarios across various theatrical spaces and orientations. Within the three-and-a-half years I was there, I was able to adapt to wherever I was, work with a lot of great professors and other passionate students, and just in general learn a lot about the process – both the do's and the don’ts.”

Her summers during college were spent either at an Equity summer stock, or on various projects in State College, but once she graduated, she hit the road, first with The Sound of Music and then Waitress.

“I felt that touring put me on the fast track to learning a lot about the actual dynamic of the workplace, between the road crew, working with locals across the United States and Canada, house rules, actor rules, etc. Even being able to adjust to crazy theatre layouts, both large and small, in a short amount of time taught me how to adapt quickly, which is an important skill to have in this industry.”

Then, the pandemic hit. While live theatre was paused, she had the chance to get back in touch with her creative side with some art pieces, in addition to helping her parents around the house with some projects. If she hadn’t ended up in theatre several years before, Mary said she "probably would have continued with my art career and acquired a teaching degree in it.”

But theatre was never far away. During 2020 she worked at a Starbucks but jumped right back into theatre as the production stage manager (PSM) at the Lost Colony when their season reopened in 2021.

She returned to the road for one more tour as a PSM on Hairspray. But after that, she made a career shift into the props department and “never looked back.”

“I was honestly getting burnt out as a stage manager on the road; the dynamics had changed drastically and people were still trying to figure out how to operate while COVID was still happening across the country. I knew I wanted to make the switch, and props just felt right. I'm already a creative person, and of all the departments, props is the most adjacent to stage management in terms of tracking and working with both actors and fellow stagehands. As soon as I made the swap, I knew that this is where I was meant to be. I feel more fulfilled at work and really love what I do.”

From there, she spent a little more time on the road, hopping on another tour of Waitress, but this time on the props team.

After that tour ended, she moved to New York City. In New York, she stays busy working for the production companies Hudson Theatrical and Juniper Street, alternating between full-time contracts on shows like Days of Wine and Roses, The Outsiders, and Dead Outlaw, and subbing on shows including Beetlejuice, &Juliet, and Take Me Out. She was recently head props on Dog Day Afternoon, a play based on the 1975 movie starring Al Pacino.

Mary advises current students or those just starting out to be observant and ask questions.

“Being able to read the room is a big way to quickly learn how your counterparts think and what their visions are,” she said, adding it’s important to ask questions. “It’s okay to not know something. I’d rather have someone ask me a question on how something works, what a material is, etc. than to go work on a project with zero knowledge and never get the job done. You don’t look stupid for asking; you’re showing me you want to learn.”