Author Topic: Reharsal Report AND Notes?  (Read 5382 times)

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Liz113

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Reharsal Report AND Notes?
« on: Jan 30, 2013, 02:46 pm »
Hello All,
I have a question for you about what is used in a real-world non-acadmeic setting as far as notes and reports go?
At my college I was taught to have a document of the Rehearsal report which is for the designers, director and crew. It has any needs that we have discovered in rehearsal, questions we have for designers, times of rehearsals ect.
Then there is a separate document called Rehearsal Notes. This is a document for the actors containing a quick summary of what was discussed in rehearsal- things the director would like the cast to think about, any back story that was established ect.

I've worked in a couple professional settings with SMs who have used this method. I am now working with an SM who doesn't do rehearsal notes at all. Just the report.

My question is this: were the notes just a learning, academic tool, to assist the young actors? Or is it just a preference thing?

RuthNY

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Re: Rehearsal Report AND Notes?
« Reply #1 on: Jan 30, 2013, 03:16 pm »
I have never sent notes to actors, as above, after rehearsal, on a regular basis.  However, when it is requested by the Director, for example, to make a list of all changes made, say, on the day you first move to the stage, or in Tech., or in rehearsals during the preview period, I certainly do collate and prepare those, and post them and/or email them out, whichever the director prefers.
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Maribeth

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Re: Reharsal Report AND Notes?
« Reply #2 on: Jan 30, 2013, 03:19 pm »
I've never sent out a daily set of rehearsal notes to actors, just the next day's schedule, with call times, any fittings scheduled, photo calls, etc. If the director asks me to send something out to the actors, like an article relating to the play, or a reminder about something that we discussed, then of course I'm happy to do so. But in a professional setting, I'm not sure what purpose the notes would serve.


EFMcMullen

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Re: Reharsal Report AND Notes?
« Reply #3 on: Jan 30, 2013, 06:27 pm »
Seconding both RuthNY and Maribeth.

ejsmith3130

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Re: Reharsal Report AND Notes?
« Reply #4 on: Jan 30, 2013, 06:27 pm »
During my internship at an Equity theatre the director would type up the notes on his macbook as we rehearsed and send them to the SM at the end. We would e-mail them to the actors. This is the only time I have encountered this, and it was due to time constraints in the process with a new work (we had to avoid overtime with the actors). They were told that they were welcome to discuss their notes with the director at the next rehearsal. We would also e-mail out the script changes, but that is another matter.

ASM

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Re: Reharsal Report AND Notes?
« Reply #5 on: Jan 30, 2013, 06:40 pm »
For the production which I am working on right now, we have a Google Drive folder set up. The whole folder for the show is 'shared' with the director and my stage manager (I am ASM-ing). We then have specific folders shared with specific people on the production team. As far as your question is concerned, we have decided to have a folder containing rehearsal reports shared with the entire production team. There is also another folder we have containing notes which is shared with our actors. We thought that it was helpful to have everything in one place, instead of sending files as attachments on emails.

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MatthewShiner

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Re: Reharsal Report AND Notes?
« Reply #6 on: Jan 30, 2013, 09:38 pm »
I started recently, if a show required it - sending out notes, but only during performances.

It included run time for that performance (or performances)
General Notes for all the cast (Usually just cut and paste from the performance report)
And any specific notes for the cast that affected the entire cast, and then sent out specific actor notes directly.

It was a show that was under-rehearsed and we had a lot of settling.

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leastlikely

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Re: Reharsal Report AND Notes?
« Reply #7 on: Jan 31, 2013, 12:21 am »
Actors should be taking their own notes during rehearsals. I don't think it's the SM's job to pass notes from director to actor... then the actors will just get lazy and not take notes, because they know an email is coming that has all the information so why bother writing it themselves? It's important for me to know it, but it's not my job to know it FOR the actor.

I think it's a good idea for the SM to TAKE notes particularly in tablework, just record whatever ideas are spouted out... so that you have a resource to look back to, when somebody says "ok now what did we decide I was doing on this line?" or "go back to the way you were doing it before" etc. But those notes don't need to be emailed to the actors. Actors should be recording all notes that are given to them by the director, whether it's in rehearsal or, occasionally, via email (on those nights when you run out of time to give notes in rehearsal).

The only time I think it's acceptable to email notes to an actor is, for instance, last night was Q2Q. One of my actors called me saying "I'm on my way to rehearsal but I just brought my child to the hospital..." so as soon as he arrived we excused from rehearsal to go back and be with his family. We ran Q2Q and I took an individual set of notes for that actor - "make sure you arrive at your place by this line!" or the director calling out "hey [Actor] is going to have to wait for the sound to run before he speaks," but this was a really unique circumstance and it's absolutely not something I would do just for your everyday rehearsal. I'm definitely not going to just record everything the director says to the actors' faces and then send a copy of that to the actors...

I have been in situations where my director has typed up notes from a rehearsal, and sent them to me to ask me to distribute them to the cast, for consistency's sake... but in those situations it was made very clear that the notes were coming from the director and the actors should respond to her with questions, not me.

I do sometimes email performance notes, if the nature of the show is not conducive to giving face-to-face notes. So I'll email notes such as runtime, significant flubs, "this one scene was dragging a lot more than usual," "there was a traffic jam during a scene change, we're going to run it at call tomorrow," "your facial scruff is getting to be too much, please shave for tomorrow's show," etc.

 

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