It’s the last few days before your first dress rehearsal. Half of the set is not painted. One of the leads is home sick with the flu and a snowstorm is supposed to pass through the area on your ten-hour tech day. You “calmly” walk to your office and see thirty-two more emails have arrived in your inbox since you got up to pee and at least five are marked, “URGENT.”
Should you cry? Scream? Count to ten? Or, cash in your airline miles and head for Bermuda? Theatre is a complex beast with complex problems. You can plan and plan and plan, but the unforeseen can and will always happen. Take a deep breath and read some helpful hints that have helped me over the years.
CAFFEINE IS YOUR FRIEND AND YOUR ENEMY
We can’t expect to be level-headed and make the best decisions if we don’t try and keep our minds and bodies at their best. Sleep deprivation comes with the territory of tech week. Whether a strong cup of coffee or a large soda, we all have days where we need a caffeine or sugar jolt to keep going, but there can be too much of a good thing.
Your cast and crew didn’t ask to see a one-man version of Jekyll and Hyde as you crawl up and down the theater aisle toward the tech booth fighting off caffeine and sugar crashes all day long. Too much caffeine can make you dehydrated and jittery which can translate to moody, easily irritated, and HANGRY.
Drink plenty of water and have a cut-off point from caffeine so when you finally do get home at 1 a.m. in the morning…you can actually SLEEP. It’s better to be a little tired and face problems with normal patience than to scream from the back of the theatre during the first dress rehearsal, “Where are your COSTUME PANTS?!” (Yes, that actually happened one of my first years teaching)
YOU CAN’T DO IT ALONE
One way to ensure you get through tech without a new nickname one finds in R-rated movies or scribbled on bathroom stalls is to trust and delegate. Have a leadership team of people you trust to do their jobs. If everyone is working hard toward the same goal and they are good at what they do, IT WILL ALWAYS COME TOGETHER.
I’ve had Covid hit a show twice before opening and it still opened successfully and on time. I had to replace the lead the day before opening night because she decided drinking at a party and posting it online was a good idea… But the show was still a huge success and because of an amazing team and one awesome understudy, we were able to be the voices of calm and support the students needed during those stressful times.
Save the tantrums and screaming for the parents whose daughter just got suspended from school her senior year. The students will feed off of your energy. You are the captain and if the captain looks like they want to abandon ship, then the entire crew jumps overboard. Take a deep breath, delegate orders, grab the wheel, and get your ship back on track without a mutiny or anyone walking the plank.
FOUR WORDS TO LIVE BY:
The biggest reason I have been able to remain calm over the last two decades of directing is remembering these four simple words when working in educational theatre. Early in my teaching and directing I did it all from yelling, leaving the room and ending a dress rehearsal speech with, “if you can’t take this seriously you are going to embarrass yourself.”
Luckily for me this only lasted a couple of years before I got some clarity that it is about their learning more than anything else. Yes, I keep a very high professional bar for my students to reach. Yes, my programs have won awards and blah blah blah. But the thing I am most proud of is the learning achieved and the growth of the students from show to show.
It was the family atmosphere my programs developed that kept them auditioning show after show and alumni coming back to support the program year after year. We can be plagued by statements from our administration and parents like, “how will you top last year’s show?” This pressure is hard to ignore when driving toward the finish line, but if I remember that what my students learn and the memories that they make are the most important things when moving into performance week, then the pressure and stress for me remains normal and everyone has a positive experience even when the show seems to be burning down around me.
If the students are proud of what they are creating and are having fun, it will always come together. And the best part of this tactic…YOU actually have fun and make great memories too.
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