Day 29 thru 32 - Dress Rehearsals

The front gates of the theatre as a storm rolls in from the south.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Dress Rehearsals.

In my experience (at Towson), a dress rehearsal is a full run of the show, no (or few) stops, with costumes and mostly-complete lighting. All of the components come together, and we see how the puzzle pieces fit before it goes in front of an audience. At Towson, we do this three times, each time the show refines and sculpts to the perfect piece. Then we have preview, which is similar to a fourth dress rehearsal but with an audience (who paid less than a show during the actual run), then we open the show to a full paying audience.

At the Opera, it's a little more along the lines of "trial by fire".

I use that term roughly, because by the time we hit first dress rehearsal, we're as prepared as we can be. Any more time would be wasted and redundant. However, this first dress rehearsal has a twist: In the audience will be 1800+ youths.

That's right. The first dress rehearsal is to a nearly-full house of kids. It's "Youth Night", and it's a brilliant idea. The less discriminating eye won't mind if we stop and start briefly, and we're exposing more than and thousand youths to a very rich art form. We get to see what works, and what doesn't. The performers finally get an audience to read and play off of. I come from an educational-influenced theatre, and the extra time is necessary as a teaching tool. In the professional world, we can move much faster, and our first dress rehearsal is the equivalent to Towson's "preview" night.

Backstage, it's as close to a real performance as we've gotten. We're all in our running blacks (full black long-sleeve shirt and pants), and we're going through our checklists, making sure intercoms and recordings are working and ready. Stage management is now backstage at their console, versus being in the house. The tech table is still set up, as the lighting designer is using it to adjust cues throughout the show.

All dress rehearsals went really well, without any hiccups that I can think of.

Now, opening night, that's another story...