Day One of Technical Rehearsals...

Designer, James Coterill, making some
final adjustments to the set

With two days to go before our first performance, today is the first time the actors have worked in the theatre, on the set itself.

This morning we arrived at the theatre at 9.30am, in order to get changed into our costumes and begin 'tech-ing' the show at 10am.

The men's dressing room,
with costume supervisor, Sian

Essentially, 'Tech-ing' involves staggering through the show, establishing the correct lighting states for each moment and determining the sound and lighting cues. The actors have an opportunity to work through the technical aspects of their route through the show, including any backstage business, entrances, exits and quick changes.

It's always a painstaking process. Rarely does the company perform for longer than a minute, before the Company Stage Manager (Sarah) calls a halt to proceedings and a technical detail is addressed before resetting again from the same point.

The (temporary) Lighting and Sound Desk

A temporary lighting and sound desk is set up in the auditorium, so that the lighting designer, operators and stage manager can communicate freely with the director and stage crew. Eventually, the desk and operators will be located in a box, unseen, at the very back of the auditorium. Unfortunately, the lighting desk crashed a couple of times and the software needed rebooting, which lost us some time.

But, technical rehearsals are always very long. I write this at 8 o'clock in the evening. (My character isn't involved in the action for a while.) We are likely to finish at around 10.30 tonight. So far we have got about two thirds the way through the first half of the show.