What Is Tech Week Like at Ohio Northern University?

Countdown clock from the Freed Center's Scene Shop. They like to have fun and make jokes there as you can see here.

Ohio Northern University's (ONU) Theatre Arts Department entered the dreaded "tech week" for their production of "Sweet Charity" on April 13. This musical follows a hopelessly romantic dance hall hostess, Charity Hope Valentine, in New York City in the 1960s on her quest to find love and a life better than the one she has. Junior, Hallie Heffernan, has done an incredible job on this role and it is not one you are going to want to miss. However, this blog post isn't about the show or the cast. This blog post is here to explain what a tech week is like for students. faculty and guest artists at ONU.

Many of you may not know what this tech week is, or why it is dreaded, but fear not because I am here to explain. Tech week occurs the week before a show opens and is time for the cast to move into the actual performance space and finally add technical elements to the show (hence the name tech week). The week starts off with what is known as a designer run so the costumers, set designers, lighting designers and props crew can get an idea of how the production is going  on before the show moves to the actual theatre. Before moving into the performance space, we rehearsed in the Mathile Lab Theatre on the third floor. The week is typically led by the stage manager and their assistant stage managers. Our stage manager, Kristin Sutter, is an incredibly efficient and straight to the point professional. Sutter and the rest of the stage management team of Connor Rock Brunken, Sarah Matlow and Rachel Breitgam do an excellent job of helping the cast with the incorporation of props, set pieces, microphones, costumes, a full orchestra and the adjustment of the spacing of each scene to make sure it looks good on the stage. As Sutter told our cast multiple times, tech week is all about the backstage aspects of the show because we've had about six weeks to rehearse the show, and the people in charge of the technical aspects only have one week to make sure everything looks and sounds good. It takes a lot of work to pull together a full show in one week, which brings me to why most people dread tech week.

The inclusion of lighting, sound, new spacing and special effects includes a lot of standing silent on the stage for long periods of time so the creative team can focus lights, fix sound issues, adjust positions, reset set pieces and adjust/fix any of the randoms issues that somehow become a problem throughout the run. Since there is only one week for all of this to happen before a show opens, tech rehearsals are typically very long. As I am typing this right now it is 11:30 p.m. and I was just released from a rehearsal that I have been at since 1 p.m. so I could hurry up and wait around wherever/whenever I am needed. Tensions tend to run high when everyone is bored, tired, having to be quiet and feeling burnt out, but this tech week has been great compared to some of the tech weeks I experienced back at home.

I feel as if I haven't left the dressing room, stage or green room in months when we have only been in the Freed Center for two days. I am constantly tired. Monday is the first day we are adding costumes, since we have been focusing on scene transitions, spacing and lighting these last two days. The cast was able to work with the orchestra and music director on Saturday morning during what is known as a sitzprobe, and they will join us again on Tuesday. Wednesday is then the final rehearsal before we open on Thursday. 

There're only three more days of tech week. Despite all the sleep I will lose trying to do my assignments frantically after rehearsal knowing there are only three more days to get through is a lovely thought.