For technicians, one of the most daunting phrases in our vocabulary is tech week, also affectionately known as ‘Hell Week’. This week starts four or five days before the show opens, and boy is it a doozy. However, I’ll start at the beginning of the entire rehearsal process.
Once you’ve been cast in a show, you have begun the rehearsal process. Typically the first thing you do is ‘table work’. Table work is reading the script, getting to know the characters, talking about the background of the show, and having productive discussions on themes of the show. This is the ‘getting to know you’ phase. The actor’s primary job is to start establishing their character and memorizing their lines.
Soon, rehearsals get moving. The actors begin to get on the stage, and start blocking. Blocking is the term we use for the movement of the characters throughout a scene. By this point, the actors don’t have to know their lines, so they’re still holding their scripts. For musicals, this phase is all for the big choreographed dance numbers that depending on their scale, take a long time to perfect.
Next, actors need to be ‘off book’. Off book is having all of your lines memorized. You’re still allowed to call “Line!” where the line is given to you by a stage manager or an assistant stage manager.
Finally, the rehearsal process is almost over. You’ve been rehearsing anywhere from weeks to months to perfect this show. Costumes start coming in, rehearsal props start being used, and actors are off book.
Now comes the fun part, Hell Week. This is when all of the technical aspects come into play. You have load in, where the set is now in the space, you have a light hang and focus, so the lights are where they need to be, and you have a cue to cue. Cue to cue is the most arduous process of the whole process. (Cues are when something happens, for instance anytime the lights change, a sound happens, or a set piece moves, you have a cue) You go through the show literally from cue to cue. Some shows that I’ve been apart of have over 600 cues. Bigger Broadway shows could potentially have thousands.
You have cue to cue, then dress rehearsals with costumes, makeup, pros, mic pacs, the whole shebang. Before you know it, it’s opening night!
life in the technical theatre world 
This was so interesting! From an outsider’s standpoint, when I think of musical or production rehearsals, I think mostly of the actors memorizing lines, etc. But you have shown a different side, that from the looks of it, seems very tedious and a lot of hard work! Next time I go to a show, I will be looking at the behind the scenes stuff like lighting to appreciate all the time that goes into it!
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It’s amazing how much I have learned about theater simply from being your roommate this year! From what I have gathered, Hell Week is oodles and oodles of fun (HA). But as a member of the audience at several HPU theater performances, I can confidently say that all that hard work does not go unnoticed. It all pays off in a wonderful production! Bravo!
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I enjoyed reading your post, and I can just hear my sister telling me all of this as I was reading it. My sister has been in theater all through high school and hopes to continue through college, so all I know about theater comes from her. She is the costume director so we are very familiar with the term “tech week”. It’s basically the week from hell like you said, where I recognize that my sister is doing sooo much work in such a small period of time, as is the entire theater department.. but it still bothers me that I would have to pick her up so late from school and only see her for like an hour and our drive to and from school
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