My civilian friends have some trouble understanding tech week. "You've been rehearsing this thing for weeks now. Aren't you ready?"
In a word, no. You can't be.
When you're independent, that means you don't have real estate. You have to rent rehearsal space and you have to rent the theater. And that means you cannot access the theater until just a few days before you open. And that means all--ALL of your technical stuff must be rehearsed in a 72-hour period before you open. If you're lucky.
So your most stressful, most unreliable, most frenzied rehearsal must take place when you are most short on sleep, patience, time, energy, money...everything.
Tech means "technical," of course, but that's not just lighting and sound. It means a fully-built set for the first time. It means real props for the first time. It means re-adjusting blocking, fight choreography, volume, moving in costumes--and gawd help you if there are any electronics involved.
We actors show up late to this party. The set designer and their crew have already been there for a day, exhausting themselves by building and painting the set--that's heavy lumber being sawed, sanded, hammered, screwed. The lighting designer has been hanging and focusing instruments, yanking a ladder around the set while it's being built, then making sure that this instrument responds to that command in the software. The director and stage manager have been running around attending to everything wherever and whenever they can. And worrying. Lots and lots of worrying.
So once the actors have arrived, they start the show. In bits. In fits and starts, one agonizing moment at a time, over and over and over again, while the stage manager and director instruct the designers/crew to make adjustments in lighting and sound and everything else over and over and over again. And the actors will fidget, talk too much, horse around, tease each other, be bored and be very tired...only the crew is even more tired.
They'll also display incredible patience at having to do the same things over and over and over again until it's just the way the director needs it to be. The word an actor dreads in tech: HOLD. You hear HOLD a lot. You're standing there in costume under the warmth of those lights for the first time, sensing how it's going to be opening night, taking a deep breath to launch into your big scene--HOLD. HOLD. HOLD. Sometimes a single scene can take an hour to get through.
But the opposite of that...the thing you long to hear the director say...is the sweet release of MOVING ON. When you hear MOVING ON, you are doing just that: next scene, next cue, slowly, painfully, steadily toward the end of tech. Okay, MOVING ON.
I have a tech run and dress rehearsal for ROMEO & JULIET later today. We open tomorrow night. Don't miss it: it's gonna be good.
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
kaledo-art
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto