Homework: Rehearsal

            A lot of students who are unfamiliar with the theatre department (math and science majors, in particular) wonder if theatre majors actually do anything. They believe that our workload is light and easy, or even that we are slackers. Sure, we may not be experts in the “hard stuff” – we may not be able to spend hours after class solving lengthy proofs or splitting chromosomes – we’ll be the first to admit it – but theatre majors are far from having it easy.

            Theatre majors still have similar homework loads to other students when it comes to Gen Eds, because, of course, everyone has to take them (I have plenty of hours’ worth of work to do outside of my major requirements). What raises suspicion is that no one seems to find us with our heads stuck in a library cubby hole at all hours of the night buried under paperwork and textbooks like so many other students. But that doesn’t mean that we’re tucked in our beds sleeping away the easy life. No, when we disappear you can find us in the theatre.

             Rehearsal.

             We may seem wild, crazy, and carefree, but that one word changes it all. A mantra that rings out among theatre majors will always be, “I can’t, I have rehearsal.” The theatre is where we do our problem solving and chromosome splitting. Doing a play is doing our homework.

  At Hope, we put on two major plays a semester: a larger production on our main stage, and then a smaller production in our studio theater. Each play is in production for 8-12 weeks (the last week being show week), rehearsing for at least 6 days of the week, for at least 3 hours a night. I have to tack on an extra hour – or even two – as a stage manager to set up and clean up the rehearsal space before and after the actors practice. Then there is still a lot of work to do outside of rehearsal regarding the play itself. Actors have to work on memorization outside of rehearsal and revisit notes they are given by directors. Production team members have to work around rehearsal times to use the performance space; they come in at different hours to make sure their sets, costumes, lighting, and any other technical elements are being constructed by their crew members. And the stage manager has so much communication and paperwork to do in addition to the work in rehearsal; when I’m not in rehearsal, at class, or doing homework, you can bet I’m hiding away somewhere hacking at my laptop writing up rehearsal reports, updating props and furniture lists, organizing scene breakdowns, sending actors their daily and weekly schedules, and emailing the production team to set up our next production meeting – each of which adds an additional 1-2 hours onto the production members’ time. And the work load and time commitment completely changes and multiplies for everyone when we reach Tech Week.  

   I haven’t met anyone in the theatre world that doesn’t refer to Tech Week as Hell Week. Other lovely adjectives that can describe Tech Week are torturous, endless, and exhausting. This is first time that actors and technicians join forces to combine their separate work into one finished project. It sounds easy enough, but making a play run as seamlessly as the audience sees it takes a lot of time and effort. Hell Week is probably the most tedious week of a theatre major’s semester. Rehearsal hours are basically doubled: 5-6 hours a night during the week and then we generally work from 9am – 5pm (or somewhere in that vicinity) on the weekends – yes, even Sundays. Scene work is more intense, focused (hopefully), and repetitive so that all the technicians can solidify the execution of light cues, sound cues, and special effects. That means one scene (or even a little cluster of lines within a scene) could be repeated or revisited multiple times within an hour to test and perfect a cue execution.

   When we say our life is the theatre we mean our life is the theatre; that especially rings true during Hell Week. We become hermits that live in the theater space, scarfing food on five-minute breaks, consuming copious amounts of caffeine to stay awake in the late hours of the night, and rarely socializing with anyone outside of class or rehearsal. All my friends in the theatre department understand hermit life, and often we will be working on separate shows – one going up a week before the other – so there can be a 3-4 week period where we are less like friends and more like co-workers/maids for each other. It is understood that the most we might say to each other (that doesn’t involve either show) is “just do my laundry and I’ll see you again after closing night. Thanks, love you, bye!” We become theatre zombies. We’re tired, we’re hungry, we have our show tunes and lines stuck in our brains, we even start to communicate in grunts and groans, and our tensions can run high.

     Luckily, we all know there’s a pay-off at the end of it all. We don’t go around singing, “Another opening, another show!” for nothing. If we didn’t find anything exhilarating about opening night and performing for an audience to keep propelling us forward, theatre would surely be a dead art form by now. 

     As college students, we are lucky enough to be studying both the history and the how-to’s of theatre. And that’s just it! We’re learning, we’re studying – just like the calculator punchers and test tube drippers – we’re just on a different playing field. Different. Not better or worse, not more or less, just different.