(~9 minutes to read)
The concept of a bad dress rehearsal for a play being the harbinger of a good opening night (and vice versa) has always puzzled me. This week, I had the opportunity to collect some data on the topic, so I thought I’d write and share a journal, then examine the saying.
As I write this, the theatre group I belong to is running the final dress rehearsal for Cinderella, a British pantomime. The word “final” is actually misleading—we only do one full dress rehearsal.
The week leading up to opening night is referred to as “hell week”, and for a very good reason.
Sunday
Load-in day. We move our set from our “headquarters” building to the performance building.
Our HQ is a former CP Rail workshop that was converted into a community hall and then handed over to us when the Community Association folded. It’s about 10km out of town, and very useful—we’re extremely lucky to have the space. We have our stage space marked out on the hall floor, and build our set and rehearse within those artificial confines. Costumes are downstairs; props, set pieces etc. are in three retired shipping containers a short way away.
Our performance building is the only public theatre space in our town (population 28,000)—a 150 seat former church built in 1906. The seating is actually rows of wooden pews only recently padded, so “seat” is bit misleading, and “150” is a tad approximate.
Cast and crew are expected to help with load in, so twenty-five bodies showed up to dismantle the set and haul everything in to trailers, drive into town, unload everything, lug it all up a flight of narrow wooden fire escape stairs, then rebuild the set and find homes for everything else.
It being a (British) panto, there was a lot of set painting do be done, and I swear someone was painting flats as they were removed from their reach and put in the trailer!
The “theatre’s” tech people were on hand to do an initial lighting set. With motorized LEDs, and digital boards into which scenes can be stored, lighting plots are a lot easier to set these days than in days of old—which is just as well, given that it’s a nightmare setting a ladder up over the pews to get to the lighting instruments.
Monday
Yep—they’re still painting the set during the day!
In the evening—cue-to-cue rehearsal for the benefit of the techs. Fine tuning of the lighting cues – colour, direction, intensity, timing. It’s the first opportunity to experiment with “special” lighting for the Fairy Godmother—do we chase colours on the house lights, use strobes, or “club-style” laser lights, or fog machines? All of the above? There’s also an Italian run for the cast, who do their utmost not to show their opinions of those who cause a “back to the top of the page” situation.
Tuesday
Will the painting ever get finished? Apparently, the fireplace in Stoneybroke Mansion is of the wrong era. What the heck is the right era for a steampunk-themed version of Cinderella set in a town that was just grass on the prairie less than 150 years ago and that now magically sports a baron’s mansion and a palace? Clearly, communication could do with some work (don’t get me started!).
The cast show up for another rehearsal—some are in costume, and there’s still concern about lines.
Wednesday
Dress Rehearsal.
Someone confiscate the paint brushes! At this rate the stage crew are going to get wet paint on their hands on opening night!
5:30 and pizza for the multitude has shown up. It’s been generously donated by Boston Pizza (in exchange for free advertising of course), and everyone has to eat before they get into costume or incur the wrath of wardrobe. The “show” starts at 7pm, so there’s some pretty intense chowing down happening among the cast.
And as I sit here writing this, they should be wrapping up the rehearsal. The Director will no doubt be belching fire at them for fluffed lines, missed entrances or exits, costumes that need adjusting, and above all, the pace!
I await the verdict on the bad dress = good first night issue. I’ll write part II on Saturday.
Part II
Dress rehearsal wasn’t a total disaster. Yes there were fluffed lines. Yes there was still a little adjustment to do on someone’s ball gown. And yes, the fireplace still needed some detailed painting to be finished. But overall, it was good enough for the cast to worry about the possibility of a lousy opening night.
Preview Night
We kind of count this as our opening night, although to be honest, it’s really a dress rehearsal that must be done under performance conditions, whereas from time to time our dress rehearsals deteriorate into stop-start rehearsals.
Because it’s only kind of our opening night, we also kind of have two opening nights. We can therefore choose which “opening night” to compare with dress rehearsal, thus making the “Bad Dress = Great Opening Night” either truer or falser depending on if the cast is a bunch of optimists or a gaggle of pessimists.
Preview night plays to invited guests only. (Poor souls!) There were no walk-outs though, so the show must have been pretty good, and any fears about lack of political correctness (hyperlink to previous article) were cast aside.
Opening Night
Well, opening night (option 2) was a riot! Nothing went wrong (that the audience noticed anyway) and the audience got right into the “oh no they’re not” mood straight away; so much so that when the Director was announcing housekeeping items, and pointed out that the fire exits were at the back and sides of the auditorium the audience responded, “Oh no they’re not!”
Cinders and the Prince were mobbed by children wanting their picture taken with them (Full disclosure: it was three little girls in Cinderella costumes—a very small mob. Oh—and it was a “feature” event; children were encouraged to attend in costume if they wanted their picture taken with Cinders and the Prince.) One parent voiced their concern that the stepsisters were really quite mean to Cinders. Yep—that’s panto for you!
Conclusion
Using this sample, we cannot conclude that a bad dress rehearsal heralds a great first night and vice versa, because (a) we didn’t have a bad dress rehearsal, and (b) we didn’t have a bad first night either.
So what is it with this “bad dress means great first night” thing?
Myth? Superstition? Statistical Certainty?
When I sit down to write these pieces I invariably surf the wonderweb to see what thoughts other people have on the topic in hand, to see if my thoughts and opinions are reinforced or contested. Occasionally, I find that I’ve had an original thought, and that actually worries me, given the volume of content on the wonderweb!
The lousy dress thing seems to be thought of as a myth, a superstition and a statistical certainty. It just goes to show that as in all things, one’s mileage may vary.
It’s a Myth!
If you’ve been in theatre for any length of time no matter at what level, you’ll be able to cite an exception that proves the rule under discussion.
I was in a one act several years ago and the dress rehearsal was, if I remember, nothing to celebrate; but of course we celebrated anyway because the lousy dress rehearsal would assure us of a great opening night.
Wrong. One third of the cast (it was a three person cast) didn’t show—she got sick, lost her voice—actually, I don’t remember what was wrong with her, but there was no point in her showing up. A young lady who had a part in one of the other one act plays sat down, learned as much of the part as she could, and we put the play on with a prompter and a lot of improv. Needless to say, the play didn’t win any awards, but the gal who pulled off that trick will always have my admiration for her pluck as well as her ability to absorb lines in such a short time.
Was that experience and exception that proved the rule? Or does it prove that the “rule” is a myth?
It’s Just Superstition!
What’s the difference between a theatre myth and a theatre superstition? My take is that a superstition changes the behaviour of the superstitious whereas a myth doesn’t.
Even non-theatre people know the two most popular theatre superstitions; you don’t wish each other good luck, and you don’t mention the title of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. The justification for these superstitions is the subject of much material on the wonderweb, and one day I may add to it, but not tonight, Josephine.
I’m not sure that I see “lousy dress rehearsal means a great first night” as a superstition. If it were, then surely people would deliberately deliver a lousy dress rehearsal in the superstitious hope that their dereliction of duty would cause the theatre gods to bestow upon them a magical opening night.
So I’m going to give “superstition” the thumbs down.
It’s a Statistical Certainty!
I found this thought-provoking option on a Scottish Acting Coach’s blog. I haven’t given any serious thought to it, nor have I researched it further—to do so would have risked disproving it and not being able to use it in this article!
Apparently, the mathematical principle involved is called “Regression to the Mean” apparently. I won’t try to explain it in my own words; if you’re interested, take a look here.
Given our Cinderella experience, I’m tempted to dismiss this theory too. Dress was passably good, and opening night (whether kind of or actual) was good. All three performances were definitely well north of “mediocre” in the disaster-triumph scale, and I can state with confidence that the ratings for the remaining nine performances won’t be confined to the area on that scale between the ratings for dress and opening night.
So much for statistical certainty.
Conclusion
Given that superstitious people don’t use the “bad dress means great first night” phenomenon in a manipulative way, and given that we bucked the statistical certainty, I’m forced to conclude that what we have here is nothing more than a good old-fashioned myth.
This is a great relief for me, because now I realize that it’s a little luck and lot of hard work that get the results, I’ll never again have to worry when we have a good rehearsal.
I wonder if I could get this article published in a scientific journal?
Your Turn
What’s your experience of the comparative quality of dress rehearsal and opening night? Any disasters you care to share? Leave a comment.