8 Things to Keep in Mind While Building Your Rehearsal Schedule

Now that you’ve completed your audition process and worked through all your casting quandaries, it’s finally time to build your rehearsal schedule! How exciting! 

However, you may find that creating a rehearsal schedule is a total breeze – or a logistical nightmare depending on your specific skill set. If you lean towards the latter, On The Stage can help. We offer several components to consider before sending out your finalized rehearsal schedule.

8 Things to Keep in Mind As You Create Your Schedule

The Importance of Planning Ahead

The best thing you can do for yourself and your team when scheduling is planning far, far in advance for rehearsals. This means getting key dates on your calendar as early as you can. 

The first dates to finalize within your schedule include tech week rehearsals, dress rehearsals, specific rehearsals with certain actors/crew, and the performance dates themselves. By presenting your team with dates early and planning, you avoid potential catastrophic conflicts and set yourself up for success. 

Your Team’s Conflicts

Speaking of conflicts, you should collect them from your entire cast and crew before scheduling begins. Why? Because a schedule is like a set of dominos… if one thing has to be changed, you’ll likely feel that ricochet in other weeks down the line. This leads to you doing double the work – and we’ll assume you don’t have time for that. 

While you may be the captain of this metaphorical ship, you can’t create a great show without a stellar cast and crew. That said, make sure you’re working around immovable conflicts and arming your team with all the information they need to show up accordingly. 

Which Rehearsals Require the Most People

When creating your rehearsal schedule, start with the dates that require the most people and work backward. Getting those dates on the calendar first allows the largest group of people for your rehearsals. 

Specialized or limited rehearsals can be ironed out at a later date. It’s much easier to rearrange a rehearsal with four people than it is for forty. This is why knowing about those conflicts before you start is a great idea! 

Which Scenes Are Toughest

Most shows – whether one-act plays or full-length musicals – typically have some scenes and numbers that are harder than others. Think complicated choreography, lengthy dialogue, or difficult technical elements. When building your rehearsal schedule, ensure the toughest scenes get the most rehearsal time. 

In all aspects of rehearsal scheduling, you want to give everyone the tools they need to succeed. Allowing enough time to perfect the hardest, most complicated scenes is a great start. 

That Your Actors and Crew Have Lives Outside the Theatre

This one might be a tough pill to swallow – but just like you, your team of employees, actors, and techies indeed have lives, obligations, and interests outside your show. You can showcase your understanding of this fact by honoring and respecting your team’s time before, during, and after rehearsals. A few ideas for showcasing this respect include:

• Stagger arrival times at rehearsal to ensure cast members aren’t hanging around doing nothing
• Practice solos and smaller scenes without the entire ensemble required at rehearsal
• Stick to your allotted break times
• Start and end rehearsals on time
• Create realistic rehearsal schedules and performance goals that don’t overextend your team
• Keep notes/constructive criticism brief and review specific notes with leads and tech crew separately

The Importance of Setting Ground Rules Early

As we mentioned before, you are the captain of this rehearsal ship. That means that you set the tone and make the rules. That said, make sure your team knows exactly what is expected of them at rehearsals before the first one occurs. Ideas for expectations to lay out include:

• Absentee policy for rehearsals (i.e. you cannot miss more than ‘insert number here of rehearsals’ without forfeiting your role, etc.) 
• Expectations about timeliness 
• Expectations about being off-book
• Cell phone use during rehearsals 
• General behavioral expectations 

While common decency is a no-brainer, conveying your expectations to your team early is always a good idea. 

The Very Real Threat of Burnout

You’ve heard about it dozens of times: the one show experience that made someone walk away from performing forever. Don’t let your show be that experience for an actor or techie in your crew! Instead, make sure you’re helping your cast and crew avoid burnout at any chance you get. This can look like a lot of things, including:

• Emphasizing the importance of mental health  
• Advocating for self-care days after a long rehearsal
• Pushing water, sleep, and healthy foods 
• Presenting an open-door policy to ensure your team feels they can share comments/concerns with you 
• Creating a realistic rehearsal schedule that doesn’t push your team to their mental and physical limits
• Remembering that performing should be a fun, invigorating way to express yourself – not a chore
• Creating fun ice-breakers and other activities to keep morale up

Your Own Needs

Woah – a theatre leader thinking about themselves during rehearsal season?! Sounds crazy! But yes, when creating your schedule, make sure you’re taking into account your needs, conflicts, and preferences. 

You: I can’t think about myself – I need to think about my cast and crew!

Us: Luckily, both of these things can be true!

You can look out for your team, but you also need to look out for yourself. After all, a calm, happy, in control, and well-rested director is far more likely to succeed and allow their team to succeed than one who is exhausted, unhappy, and disorganized. So, when helping your crew avoid burnout, ensure you’re taking that advice yourself, too. 

How On The Stage Can Help 

If you’re just beginning your rehearsal journey, you may be looking for a bit of help. On The Stage can ensure your hard work doesn’t go to waste with our all-in-one platform that streamlines every facet of your theatre. We can help with:

• Fundraising – You can take control of your theatre’s financial destiny with a comprehensive fundraising suite, where you can launch campaigns, track one-time and ongoing donations, manage and grow donors, and access reports.
• Ticketing – Increase ticket sales by 20-25% with an all-in-one ticketing platform that is free to your organization.
• Marketing – Generate awareness, increase conversions, and sell more tickets with a comprehensive marketing suite.
• Box Office – Elevating your patron experience and streamlining the arrival process with an all-in-one Box Office tool.
• Add-Ons – Enhance your overall patron experience and maximize your profits without increasing ticket prices with various add-on features. 

If you’re ready to elevate your theatre experience, book a personalized demo with On The Stage today.