With Easter services and productions looming large before us, the time needed to finish up pre-production work seems to vanish before our eyes. With time at a premium, making the most effective use of each person’s time during rehearsals is an important part of leadership. Time gets abused in a variety of ways at rehearsals, resulting in performers sitting around with nothing to do or the tech team not getting enough time to complete their work. Learning to create an effective rehearsal schedule, which optimizes each person’s time while enabling the performers and the technical production team to achieve their best, is in everyone’s interest.
A rehearsal schedule has three primary elements in it: call times for each person or group of people involved, time slots allocated for rehearsing both the performance and technical aspects of each segment of the service, and breaks so everyone can take care of personal needs. Once the service has been defined and the performers (musicians, dramatists, dancers, etc) have been assigned, you can start collecting information on the details of the service that effects the rehearsal schedule. Let’s say your Easter service consists of five songs interspersed with dramatic readings, the message, and an interpretive dance set to live music for the closing number. The music team consists of eight vocalists, bass guitar, drums, piano, synthesizer and a cello. The dramatic reading will involve three actors.
The first part of creating a rehearsal schedule is understanding the requirements of each segment of your service. In an ideal world, this would be automatically provided for you by each group owning a part of the service. However, in this world, getting the information will be more like mining coal - you’ll have to go digging for it. Ask very specific questions about the technical and staging needs for each segment of the service - don’t expect anything to be volunteered. This isn’t because people don’t want to be helpful. Most artistic personalities simply don’t understand the technical side of a production, and need probing questions and suggestions to get them thinking about their requirements. Let’s walk through the process of creating a rehearsal schedule, examining the various factors which should be considered. To begin, you talk with the drama director. Ask him specific questions concerning the placement of the individuals performing. Will they be together as a group or on different parts of the stage? How does he want the lighting to look? Think about all the technical elements that would effect the rehearsal. Through this discussion, you learn that the three actors are actually standing at three separate parts of the stage, acting independently. The director tells you he wants each person lit tightly, and only when they are speaking. The dialog bounces between the three actors several times for each reading segment, and thus there will be many lighting transitions through the course of the readings. He estimates only 30 minutes of rehearsal time is needed, as the actors are very good and will know their lines. However, as you now know the lighting for the drama will be complicated, more time will be needed to enable the lighting director to write cues and rehearse the timing. You make a note to discuss this with the lighting director.
Next, you talk to the music director. In talking through each of the songs, you learn the cello is actually only playing on the last song. You make a note to schedule this song as the last song to be rehearsed. This respects the time of the cellist, allowing her to show up later for the rehearsal. The music director does not anticipate any problems in rehearsing the songs, and the normal rehearsal time of 20 minutes per song will be sufficient.
Next, you talk to the dance director to discuss the closing dance. You ask her about the mood of the dance and where on stage it will take place, and she explains it starts with a dark mood focusing on the crucifixion, but transitions into joy with the resurrection. She also tells you the dance will take place across the entire length of the apron. You ask her if she has any specific lighting requests, and she responds that she does not have any specific ideas and is comfortable with leaving it up to the lighting team.
Now that you’ve accumulated input from the programming side of the service, you begin talking with the members of the technical production team. You begin with the audio tech, and provide him with the list of instruments and songs being utilized in the service. He informs you he’s never had to mic a cello before, and makes a note to research how best to do so. He also requests 10 minutes for the cello sound check to experiment with mic placement to ensure he can get enough gain before feedback. Other than that, the audio tech feels the normal 20 minutes per song will be adequate for him to get the mix down. You ask the audio tech whether he’d like to start sound checks with the band or the vocalists, and he requests the band be done first.
Lastly, you talk to the lighting director to discuss the lighting elements of the service. The only unusual items for lighting are the dramatic readings and the dance, and she asks for 45 minutes to work with the drama team and 30 minutes for the dance. She also makes a note to call both the drama and dance directors to talk through the blocking so that lighting fixtures can be hung and geled correctly ahead of time.
At this point, you have all the information you need to create the schedule. Assuming your dress rehearsal begins at 5:00 PM, the individual rehearsals need to be done by 4:45 to provide everyone with a short break. As the drama team is independent of all the other performance teams, you schedule the 45 minutes requested by the lighting director for this segment from 4:00 to 4:45. You schedule a short break from 3:50 to 4:00. The music rehearsal gets scheduled next. As the dancer and cellist only participate in the last song, that song gets scheduled for the end of the music rehearsal. The lighting director requested 30 minutes for the dance, so this gets scheduled from 3:20 to 3:50. In order to respect the cellist’s time, you schedule the cello sound check from 3:10 to 3:20 instead of doing it with the rest of the band.
The other five songs you schedule from 1:30 to 3:10. You then schedule the remaining sound checks, with the vocalists after the band. Through experience, you know the audio team spends about one minute per vocalist to set the FOH levels, EQ, and monitor levels. With eight vocalists, you schedule the vocalist sound check from 1:22 to 1:30. Also from experience, you know sound checking the drum kit tends to take about 10 minutes, and other instruments about 2 minutes each. This comes out to 16 minutes, so the band sound check is set from 1:06 to 1:22.
Once this is complete, you can make a call time list so each person can easily determine when they need to be ready to start. The tech team needs to be there a little early to turn on equipment and make sure everything is still in working order, so the call time for the tech team is 12:50 PM. If the stage needs to be set on Saturday, the call time needs to be earlier to enable the tech team to set up. The band (except for the cellist) starts at 1:06, so that is their call time. The vocalists begin sound checks at 1:22, so that is their call time. Call time for the cellist is 3:10, and 3:20 for the dancer. Call time for the drama team is 4:00. At this point, your schedule is complete.
While the schedule may be finished, there are a few more items that need to be addressed to make it work. First, you need to instill in the entire team the value of being on time and ready to begin their part of the rehearsal. A call time of 1:02 does not mean your front tires hit the church driveway at 1:02 - it means you are ready to go on stage with mic in hand at 1:02. Lastly, you should be monitoring the progress of the rehearsal and sound checks, keeping people on time where possible, and making notes of activities that take longer than you expected for future reference. The more data you record on previous rehearsals, the better you can schedule your future rehearsals.
While this article uses an Easter service as an example, the same concepts can be applied to other large production rehearsals as well as to your normal weekly service. Good scheduling values everyone’s time, and once people become adjusted to being on a schedule, they will come to appreciate your planning.
