PROFESSIONALISM: Hell Week...?

[ddsherrer]

I was reading some new and old postings today and was a little discouraged that Tech Week was referred to as "hell week"  as often as  it is.  Isn't it our job as stage managers to keep everything flowing above the nine levels of hell?  Sure, things can get ridiculously hard, but if we start out assuming the tech week will be a week of hell aren't we setting ourselves up for some kind of devastation?  The teacher in me screams things like, "If you set a child up for success, they'll reach it.  And if you set them up for failure, well they'll reach that too."  If we as stage managers go into a tech with a sense of dread that can only be invoked by the word "hell," what are we setting ourselves up for?
Now I'm not saying that tech week should be called "Lollipops and Rainbows Week" but could cutting this simple thing out of our vocabulary make a difference?  I don't know. Let's discuss...

[ddsherrer]

Maybe I'm out of the loop...but what does IMHO mean?

[hbelden]

The term "hell week" doesn't bother me nearly as much as calling the prompt book a "show bible".  Don't know why, exactly.  Maybe it's that there's something team-building, in a boot camp sort of way, to know that we're all going into a difficult period willingly and with support for each other.

[Jessie_K]

I haven't called tech week hell week since high school.  It wasn't hell then, it certainly has been hell at other times.  I agree we should focus on the positive.

I do object to the term show bible.  a prompt script should hold a lot of info, but  . . .

[LizH]

I haven't called tech week hell week since high school. 

Same here. It was fun to say back then, but it's not a phrase I use in professional settings.

[PSMKay]

I have never heard it referred to as "hell week."  Mattciulla is the only person I've ever actually heard use the term outside of high school sports, although his frequent use of it seems to have spread like a virus throughout the younger members of this site.  We must, each of us, remember that many starstruck younger readers take everything we say on this site as gospel.

Hell week in high school for me (ca. 1994... ouch...) was a term used by the athletes, cheerleaders and pep squad during the week leading up to the final football game of autumn.  The origin of the term for us, I think, was in the countless acts of intimidation and assorted pranks visited on the rival high schools' teams during said week.  It eventually came to also mean that the whole week was hell for the folks involved with those pranks.

Our high school drama club had fake letterman jackets to assuage the teenage psyches that theatre was as important and prestigious as sports were.  (In my town, it wasn't.)   My assumption is that "hell week" has been borrowed from the sports side of things in high schools for the same reason that we wore our jackets.  I don't consider it a terribly mature term and would probably not be interested in working with someone who used the term for the reasons ddsherrer pointed out - setting oneself up to fail is rarely a good idea.  It would also indicate to me that the person in question does not like to work hard.

There's a lot of colloquialisms and slang that start out of a need to simplify terms for community and educational theatre.  Within their own environments they're just fine, but placed in a pro venue they stick out a bit.  I encountered that transferring from school to pro myself with "gel" vs. "color" and "lekos" vs. "ellipsoidals," although some of that may have also been due to my regional transplanting from New England to the Midwest around the same time.

[MatthewShiner]

Come on, the week is hell.  Tech week is hard.  Call a spade a spade.  (It's more Hell for actors then for me . . . I recently spent a tech week sitting around ala an actor, an to be honest, being called for 10 hours and working 30 minutes of was a bit of my version of hell.)

Now, that having been said, I would never call tech week hell week.

[KMC]

I agree with what ddsherrer said previously, especially in a public setting.  As the SM your behavior, mood and actions are the primary barometer by which others (especially actors) read a situation.  The SM needs to instill confidence heading into tech week, not a "get ready for the worst week of your life, hope you can survive!" attitude.  Sure, there are definitely aspects of tech that are not fun for anyone, but it's a much better environment for everyone involved if the attitude is positive and upbeat.

[SMrose]

If I'm on my game--as a good stage manager should be--then I've prepared for tech week.  The more prepared, the more I'm able to get through the huge task of keeping the actors/crew/designers/ et all together and simultaniously calling a great show.  Preparation, I feel, is key to a good "hell" week.

[geoffsm]

I haven't called tech "hell" since high school.  I don't use the term now, nor does anybody in the company that I work with.  That being said...tech in high school IS hell.  Typically, you are working with inexperienced technicians and actors and very limited rehearsal time, so obviously it's going to take a lot of work to make things come together.  Many times, you're training the crew as the show goes into tech.  I know my high school musicals wouldn't rehearse with the orchestra at all until first tech (when we were also trying to build light cues and work out mics, and set changes).  If that's not theater hell for a 16-year-old, then I don't know what is.

[Tempest]

While it's not a term I would use before hand in refering to tech week, I have been known to say, after, "Well, that was a week of hell.  I need whiskey and cheesecake."
But only when it really WAS a week of hell and deserved it.  Usually it was only the usual level of pain, frustration and annoyance, and I'm just glad to get some sleep.

Frankly, I usually just focus on one day or tech week at a time and don't refer to it as an entity in its own right, at any point.

[ScooterSM]

Having just finished a tech week for a show with 60 actors, 20 crew, more than 500 light cues, one run with an under rehearsed orchestra before having an audience, with a horrible cold to boot, I understand how it can feel like hell.  However, I have to say that the term "Hell Week" drives me crazy.  Yes, sometimes the hours are long and the people are difficult.  But it is just part of the job.  Do accountants call the week before April 15th when taxes are due hell week?  I don't think so.  As everyone else has said it is a term that is used in high schools and community theatres, but doesn't have a place in the professional world.

[Jessie_K]

Having just finished a tech week for a show with 60 actors, 20 crew, more than 500 light cues, one run with an under rehearsed orchestra before having an audience, with a horrible cold to boot, I understand how it can feel like hell.  However, I have to say that the term "Hell Week" drives me crazy.  Yes, sometimes the hours are long and the people are difficult.  But it is just part of the job.  Do accountants call the week before April 15th when taxes are due hell week?  I don't think so.  As everyone else has said it is a term that is used in high schools and community theatres, but doesn't have a place in the professional world.

When I read this post, I turned to the accountant sitting beside me in my office and said, "Is there an industry slang term for tax season?" and he said, "It's just hell."

But upon further questioning, he did admit that he would not ever publicly use that term.

(Not that this in anyway changes my complete agreement with Scooter, I just thought that it was a funny tidbit.)

[Mikesmith]

The theater I grew up in from high school and into college always called the final week of rehearsals Hell Week.  It became part of my vocab for theater.  It was a shock to me to find that no one else seemed to call it that.  This is the first time I've heard it mentioned in about five years.  Glad to see the name is in use at least somewhere.

mike

[BalletPSM]

Hmm....

sometimes it's dictated by the theatre's tradition.

I worked at a theatre in Michigan (granted, it's a community theatre) that always refers to the first sunday of tech - which is always a first tech in the afternoon, followed by dinner (provided by the board producers), and then a dress in the evening (or Act I tech in the AM, Act II tech in the evening, in the case of a super long and/or difficult show).   It's called "hell sunday."  That's just what it's been called there since the beginning of the theatre probably, and what everyone knows it as - all the staff, resident designers, returning directors, stage managers, actors, crew, etc.  To change it up would be...like breaking tradition and ya'll know how superstitious we theatre people can get!