Theatre people understand that tech week can be a stressful time for both students and directors. With so many moving parts coming together, it can easily (and quickly) descend into chaos or stall out. I’ve found in my years as an educator, putting the following things into place prior to tech week can help prepare students for tech week and the professional world.
Rehearsal Reports
If your stage manager isn’t already doing rehearsal reports, I strongly encourage you to have them start. Having daily notes on lighting (or any technical area) is so helpful for student designers to prepare and make plans. This rehearsal report template is a great example and can be copied to your google drive to use in the future.
Rehearsal reports can be done digitally and shared with the production team, or printed out and posted somewhere. I have found that doing a combination of both helps keep student actors and technicians accountable. Plus, rehearsal reports are great for the portfolio of your stage managers for their college interviews.
Production Meetings
On Mondays, gather your lead designers each week for the first 15-20 minutes of rehearsal to talk about the vision of the show as a director, what you would like to see accomplished during the week, and help them set achievable goals. This is also a fantastic time to discuss new ideas that may have occurred in the prior week, or for designers to ask clarification questions from notes on the rehearsal report. Pro tip: keep a running “to-do” list on a white board so student designers can see their goals right in front of them – and it is so satisfying to check off completed tasks!
Designer Run (Crew View)
Scheduling a chance for your designers to see the blocking and flow of the show is so helpful in solidifying their design ideas. A designer run about a week prior to tech week is ideal, but we know that sometimes it isn’t possible with auditorium scheduling. Try and get your designers to sit in and watch one at least one rehearsal of runs for Act 1 and Act 2 if possible.
Paper Tech
A paper tech gives designers the chance to go through the script and preemptively write in where cues will occur in the script/show. This usually involves the lighting and sound designers, stage manager, and possibly rigging. This eliminates the “great… what is the next cue” situation you can run into during a Cue to Cue (Q2Q) rehearsal. In the professional world, you may not have the director or technical director present during a paper tech, but I strongly recommend they attend an educational paper tech to help guide the process. If you need help on running a paper tech, we can even provide workshops on best practices and guidance.
Cue to Cue (Q2Q) Best Practices
I have found that it is best to only have a few actors present for the initial cue to cue rehearsal or “dry tech.” This is a time to program/write the cues with bodies on stage to see how the lighting is going to look on performers. As an educator, I relied heavily on my thespian officers and leaders within the show to attend this rehearsal, since most of the time they were very familiar with where everyone was on stage, or could take direction easily on where to stand for lighting cues. Keeping the cast size smaller during this crucial rehearsal helps keep chatter to a minimum, and can keep you on track. Have your designers program/run each cue. As a director, you can see each look, give notes, and move to the next cue. Once the lighting cues are roughed in at the dry tech, invite the full cast and crew to participate in a Q2Q or run of the show.
A general reminder - there is a push in the theatrical community as a whole to eliminate 10 out of 12s, or 10 hour rehearsals on one day. We should be modeling these practices at the educational level and encourage our students to understand that sacrificing your personal health and well-being for a show is a guaranteed way to burn out quickly. The best ways to avoid these exhausting days is to utilize the dry tech on a separate day from Q2Q or to separate Q2Qs in two parts – Act One and Act Two divided over two days. We always scheduled our dry tech for 4-6 hours the Friday before “Tech Saturday.” You will only need to provide a meal for your crew and a handful of performers and it takes a lot of the stress out of the tech process.
Previsualization
The word may sound fancy, but the process is not (if things are set up correctly, which we can help with!) Previsualization, or “previz” for short, is simply a 3D model of your space and your lighting equipment that can be used to pre-program your lighting cues. This allows you or student designers to program all of the lighting cues from home while binge watching your favorite show on Netflix. This can eliminate the need for a dry tech and saves hours for the Q2Q because your designers simply have to make small adjustments to the already-programmed lighting cues (more on how you can expedite that process even further in a future blog post.)
Don’t Be Afraid to Bring In Help
Van Winkle Designs has assisted multiple theatre programs with their tech weeks. We can offer support for the one-person or multi-director department, allowing you to focus on other aspects of the show. We are happy to help from Day 1 of your production, but we can also step in at the last minute to troubleshoot, run paper techs, or even assist with your Q2Q days to guide your student designers on their work and help them shine.
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