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\u2019d write and share a journal, then examine the saying.<\/p>\n
As I write this, the theatre group I belong to is running the final dress rehearsal for Cinderella<\/em>, a British pantomime. The word \u201cfinal\u201d is actually misleading\u2014we only do one full dress rehearsal.<\/p>\n The week leading up to opening night is referred to as \u201chell week\u201d, and for a very good reason.<\/p>\n Load-in day. We move our set from our \u201cheadquarters\u201d building to the performance building.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s about 10km out of town, and very useful\u2014we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n Our performance building is the only public theatre space in our town (population 28,000)\u2014a 150 seat former church built in 1906. The seating is actually rows of wooden pews only recently padded, so \u201cseat\u201d is bit misleading, and \u201c150\u201d is a tad approximate.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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!<\/p>\n The \u201ctheatre\u2019s\u201d 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\u2014which is just as well, given that it\u2019s a nightmare setting a ladder up over the pews to get to the lighting instruments.<\/p>\n Yep\u2014they\u2019re still painting the set during the day!<\/p>\n In the evening\u2014cue-to-cue rehearsal for the benefit of the techs. Fine tuning of the lighting cues \u2013 colour, direction, intensity, timing. It\u2019s the first opportunity to experiment with \u201cspecial\u201d lighting for the Fairy Godmother\u2014do we chase colours on the house lights, use strobes, or \u201cclub-style\u201d laser lights, or fog machines? All of the above? There\u2019s also an Italian run<\/a> for the cast, who do their utmost not to show their opinions of those who cause a \u201cback to the top of the page\u201d situation.<\/p>\n Will the painting ever<\/em> 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\u2019s mansion and a palace? Clearly, communication could do with some work (don\u2019t get me started!).<\/p>\n The cast show up for another rehearsal\u2014some are in costume, and there\u2019s still concern about lines.<\/p>\n Dress Rehearsal.<\/p>\n Someone confiscate the paint brushes! At this rate the stage crew are going to get wet paint on their hands on opening night!<\/p>\n 5:30 and pizza for the multitude has shown up. It\u2019s 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 \u201cshow\u201d starts at 7pm, so there\u2019s some pretty intense chowing down happening among the cast.<\/p>\n 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!<\/p>\n I await the verdict on the bad dress = good first night issue. I\u2019ll write part II on Saturday.<\/p>\n Dress rehearsal wasn\u2019t a total disaster. Yes there were fluffed lines. Yes there was still a little adjustment to do on someone\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n We kind of<\/em> count this as our opening night, although to be honest, it\u2019s really a dress rehearsal that must be done under performance conditions, whereas from time to time our dress rehearsals deteriorate into stop-start rehearsals.<\/p>\n Because it\u2019s only kind of<\/em> our opening night, we also kind of<\/em> have two opening nights. We can therefore choose which \u201copening night\u201d to compare with dress rehearsal, thus making the \u201cBad Dress = Great Opening Night\u201d either truer or falser depending on if the cast is a bunch of optimists or a gaggle of pessimists.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Well, opening night (option 2) was a riot! Nothing went wrong (that the audience noticed anyway) and the audience got right into the \u201coh no they\u2019re not\u201d 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, \u201cOh no they\u2019re not!\u201d<\/p>\n Cinders and the Prince were mobbed by children wanting their picture taken with them (Full disclosure: it was three little girls in Cinderella costumes\u2014a very small mob. Oh\u2014and it was a \u201cfeature\u201d 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\u2014that\u2019s panto for you!<\/p>\n Using this sample, we cannot conclude that a bad dress rehearsal heralds a great first night and vice versa, because (a) we didn\u2019t have a bad dress rehearsal, and (b) we didn\u2019t have a bad first night either.<\/p>\n So what is it with this \u201cbad dress means great first night\u201d thing?<\/p>\n 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\u2019ve had an original thought, and that actually worries me, given the volume of content on the wonderweb!<\/p>\n 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\u2019s mileage may vary.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve been in theatre for any length of time no matter at what level, you\u2019ll be able to cite an exception that proves the rule under discussion.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Wrong. One third of the cast (it was a three person cast) didn\u2019t show\u2014she got sick, lost her voice\u2014actually, I don\u2019t 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n Was that experience and exception that proved the rule? Or does it prove that the \u201crule\u201d is a myth?<\/p>\n What\u2019s 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\u2019t. I\u2019m not sure that I see \u201clousy dress rehearsal means a great first night\u201d 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.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m going to give \u201csuperstition\u201d the thumbs down.<\/p>\n I found this thought-provoking option on a Scottish Acting Coach\u2019s blog. I haven\u2019t given any serious thought to it, nor have I researched it further\u2014to do so would have risked disproving it and not being able to use it in this article!<\/p>\n Apparently, the mathematical principle involved is called \u201cRegression to the Mean\u201d apparently. I won\u2019t try to explain it in my own words; if you\u2019re interested, take a look here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Given our Cinderella experience, I\u2019m 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 \u201cmediocre\u201d in the disaster-triumph scale, and I can state with confidence that the ratings for the remaining nine performances won\u2019t be confined to the area on that scale between the ratings for dress and opening night.<\/p>\n So much for statistical certainty.<\/p>\n Given that superstitious people don\u2019t use the \u201cbad dress means great first night\u201d phenomenon in a manipulative way, and given that we bucked the statistical certainty, I\u2019m forced to conclude that what we have here is nothing more than a good old-fashioned myth. What\u2019s your experience of the comparative quality of dress rehearsal and opening night? Any disasters you care to share? Leave a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019d write and share a journal, then examine the saying. As I write this, the theatre group I belong… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[490],"tags":[28,26,27,29,11],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-commentaries","tag-bad-dress-rehearsal","tag-dewdney-players","tag-opening-night","tag-panto","tag-pantomime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1599,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/1599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sunday<\/h2>\n
Monday<\/h2>\n
Tuesday<\/h3>\n
Wednesday<\/h2>\n
Part II<\/h1>\n
Preview Night<\/h2>\n
Opening Night<\/h2>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
Myth? Superstition? Statistical Certainty?<\/h1>\n
It\u2019s a Myth!<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s Just Superstition!<\/h2>\n
\nEven non-theatre people know the two most popular theatre superstitions; you don\u2019t wish each other good luck, and you don\u2019t mention the title of Shakespeare\u2019s 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.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a Statistical Certainty!<\/h2>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
\nThis is a great relief for me, because now I realize that it\u2019s a little luck and lot of hard work that get the results, I\u2019ll never again have to worry when we have a good rehearsal.
\nI wonder if I could get this article published in a scientific journal?<\/p>\nYour Turn<\/h1>\n