When it comes to hell week, nothing is more important than the show. Well, except maybe your voice, but let’s pretend that’s not an issue.
Hell week is the week before a show, in which the technicians appear to make a show fantastic and magical, but it’s also the week in which actors and technicians stay at the theater for hours upon hours. We stress over opening night as it hangs up in the air, growing closer and closer.
We go cue by cue, note by note, and hope that everything comes together in perfect harmony. Sadly, that is a rare occurrence in the theater.
There will always be something that goes wrong. Whether it be someone who just won’t shut up backstage, causing everyone around them to grow extremely pissed off, or a prop piece that falls apart on stage while moving it.
All of these things are terrifying, and make us want to rip our hair out, but at the same time, they test our abilities as performers and technicians. They challenge us to adapt to situations. That’s not something you can learn in any normal classroom.
Personally, I have several stories that I could share about the troubles of hell week, but I’ll settle on one.
I was seventeen years old, so not too long ago at all, and I’m in an amazing show. The cast is amazing, the creative team has put together a show I would never even have dreamed of, and the music is phenomenal. The one problem is that not everyone on that stage was as friendly as I would hope they would be.
Everyone wants a spotlight on them, whether it be for one line, or for every single scene they’re in. Everyone wishes to be the star of a show.
This was the dilemma I was faced with while working on this show.
One girl, who was the same age as me, did whatever she could to take up space on the stage. She would shove people to the side and pretend it was her character’s actions, then continue to do anything she could to keep people away from her. Turning in frantic circles, waving her arms around wildly, doing all sorts of things that caused people to back off in fear of getting smacked in the face.
I was the one person who didn’t back off, and I got an elbow to the nose as a result.
This girl was the bane of my existence. Because we were the same age and essentially had the same part, the perceived motives for her actions were that she wanted nothing more than to make sure I was seen as lesser than her.
Throughout hell week I found her stepping on my toes, hip bumping me out of the way, and trying to make me feel uncomfortable on stage so I would move away.
This was high school, not a kick boxing match. So I had no clue why she wanted to get her five seconds in the spotlight so badly.
Hell week does that to people. They suddenly realize what additional things they can do to make themselves stand out more, and it gets to their heads.
It’s nothing that we can change, but it is something that we can deal with.
When people say that ignoring is the best way to handle a situation, they’re right. For something like this, showing that you’re not bothered or annoyed by their actions can go a long way.
The one thing that people need to understand is that it is also okay to speak up. If you’re getting physically injured or feel unsafe, or uncomfortable on stage, then you have every right to speak to that person.
I know that, for me, speaking to them was the only option. I was being hurt every day, but I was also very uncomfortable with how they were breaking my bubble, not asking if doing certain actions around me, that involved contact with me, was okay. When someone grabs me by the waste, or checks me in the hip, it makes me uncomfortable, and I shouldn’t be ashamed to say that.
No one else should, either.
Hell week may be stressful, it may cause people to act out and try to get their shining moment, but even during this time, it’s not okay to put others in harm’s way.
It’s called hell week for a reason.
