Rehearsal Room Research Articles

WFH at the Maison de Molière: the Comédie-Française’s use of rehearsal to respond to Covid-19

ABSTRACT France’s policy of confinement in response to Covid-19 posed an existential threat to theatres. The Comédie-Française responded with a range of digital and cinematic programming. This article examines Christophe Honoré’s film Guermantes (2021), created following the cancellation of his stage adaptation of Marcel Proust’s Le Côté de Guermantes, and Théâtre à la table, a series of staged readings posted to YouTube between November 2020 and June 2021. These projects are notable for how they centred rehearsal. The article shows how the Comédie-Française mobilised the intimacy of the rehearsal room to compensate for the loss of corporeal presence, and then interrogates Guermantes’s argument for the aesthetic value of rehearsal as an end in itself. However, while these works claim to show the process rather than the product, they in fact show little of the repetitive work of the répétition. Both were also preceded by rehearsals to which audiences were not given access. Noting the proliferation in recent years of rehearsal diaries and documentaries in France, the article concludes by arguing that the Comédie-Française’s response to the pandemic reflects a broader interrogation in contemporary French theatre of the aesthetic value of the rehearsal.

Rehearsal Studies - Inside the Rehearsal Room: Process, Collaboration and Decision-making. By Robert Marsden. Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama, 2022; 234 pp. $90.00 cloth, $22.00 paper, e-book available. - Rehearsal Practices of Indigenous Women Theatre Makers: Australia, Aotearoa, and Turtle Island. By Liza-Mare Syron. Springer/Palgrave Macmillan, 2021; 129 pp.; illustrations. $64.99 cloth, e-book available. - Staging Sex: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques for

Exploring diverse strategies of process-focused research from historical reconstructions of period practices to staged intimacy coaching, seven new titles offer a representative but not exhaustive overview of the expanding field of rehearsal studies.

Intelligent Construction of University Music Education Teaching System Based on Artificial Intelligence Technology

The university music education teaching system plays a vital role in nurturing aspiring musicians and music enthusiasts by providing a comprehensive framework for musical learning and development. This system typically encompasses a diverse range of courses, workshops, and performance opportunities designed to cultivate students' musical talents, theoretical knowledge, and practical skills. Through a combination of classroom instruction, ensemble rehearsals, private lessons, and hands-on experiences, students receive a well-rounded musical education that covers various genres, styles, and traditions. Moreover, university music education teaching systems often incorporate state-of-the-art facilities, including rehearsal rooms, recording studios, and performance venues, to support students' artistic growth and creative expression. This paper presents an innovative approach to the intelligent construction of university music education teaching systems, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technology with Intelligent Fuzzy Regression Classification (IFRC). Recognizing the complexity and diversity of music education, this research aims to optimize teaching methodologies and enhance learning outcomes through AI-driven strategies. The proposed approach integrates AI technology, particularly IFRC, into the design and implementation of university music education teaching systems. IFRC combines fuzzy logic with regression analysis and classification techniques to model and predict complex relationships within music education datasets, enabling the system to adapt and respond dynamically to student needs and preferences. The IFRC-enhanced teaching system can generate personalized learning pathways, recommend tailored resources, and provide real-time feedback to students and instructors alike. This intelligent adaptation to individual learning styles and progress fosters a more engaging, effective, and inclusive music education environment. The IFRC-enhanced teaching system achieves an average improvement of 25% in student performance compared to traditional teaching methods. Moreover, specific musical skills, such as sight-reading, ear training, and music theory comprehension, exhibit notable enhancements, with average score increases of 30%, 20%, and 35%, respectively.

Beckett’s Wasted Breath

Abject breath, running over with its own refuse and yet refusing to stop breathing, forms a gasping undertone to Beckett’s oeuvre. To give a sense of the longevity and development of Beckettian respiration, this article examines passages across the range of his career, paying attention to several prose works – the short story ‘Dante and the Lobster’ (1934) and the novels Murphy (1938) and Molloy (1951/55) – and two brief plays: Breath (1969) and Not I (1972). While there is no simple development of Beckett’s writing on the breath, an ambiguous movement can be traced from an initial rejection of a conception of the breath as immaculate and easeful to a deeper exploration of breath as polluted and broken, and to a final, insistent association of respiration with rubbish, and life with death. If there is hope to be found in the Beckettian breath, it lies not on the page but in the breath-carried conversations of the rehearsal room, exemplified above all by his collaboration with Billie Whitelaw on Not I.

Wooden Rehearsal Rooms from the Construction Process to the Musical Performance

Rehearsal rooms play an important role in musicians’ activities to obtain the best results during a performance in front of an audience. Numerous rehearsal rooms are located in complex buildings, such as opera houses and cultural centers, where new research outcomes have led to increasingly complex projects and construction phases. Furthermore, technical complexity has also increased due to the large quantity of used materials and the innovation level of the process. In this context, a new methodology becomes mandatory to control the indoor air quality and the acoustic quality in rehearsal rooms. This paper aims to offer a procedure for rehearsal rooms for large ensembles during the construction and life cycle phases to optimize the indoor environmental quality according to different types of ensembles and repertoires. In particular, rehearsal rooms with wood panel cladding are considered. The proposed methodology is controlled by a digital twin (DT) based on building information modeling (BIM), integrated with acoustic measurements, sensors and actuators aimed at implementing the database in real time. A case study is presented, in which the cladding system is described, the new methodology is applied, and the results are compared with the criteria suggested in the standard ISO 23591.

Superspreading of SARS-CoV-2 at a choir rehearsal in Finland-A computational fluid dynamics view on aerosol transmission and patient interviews.

COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the role of aerosol transmission and the importance of superspreading events. We analyzed a choir rehearsal in November 2020, where all participants, except one who had recently earlier recovered from COVID-19, were infected. We explore the risk factors for severe disease in this event and model the aerosol dispersion in the rehearsal room. Characteristics of participants were collected by interviews and supplemented with patient records. A computational simulation of aerosol distribution in the rehearsal room and the efficacy of potential safety measures was conducted using the Large-Eddy Simulation approach. Infection risk was studied by analyzing quanta emission and exposure with the Wells-Riley equation. The simulation showed that airborne transmission likely explains this mass contagion event. Every singer was exposed to the virus in only 5 min from the beginning of the rehearsal, and maximum concentration levels were reached at 20 min the concentration levels started to approach a steady state after 20 min. Although concentration differences existed in the room, risk levels near (1 m) and far (5 m) from the aerosol source were similar for certain singers. Modeling indicated infection risk levels of 70-100% after one hour; the risk would have been considerably reduced by wearing high-filtration respirators. Age and pre-existing comorbidities predicted more severe disease. The high incidence of illness may be partly attributed to the relatively high median age of individuals. Additionally, those admitted to the hospital had multiple underlying health conditions that predispose them to more severe disease. Airborne transmission and indoor space can explain this mass exposure event. High-filtration respirators could have prevented some infections. The importance of safety distances diminishes the longer the indoor event. The concept of safety distance is challenging, as our study suggests that long range airborne transmission may occur in indoor events with extended duration. We encourage informing the public, especially persons at risk, of safety measures during epidemics.

Norwegian music students' perceptions and experiences of challenges and resources for health.

Music students in higher education experience health-related challenges linked to practice and performance, while an understanding of these challenges and access to resources to deal with them are required to promote the students´ health. Health literacy and health education are integral parts of health promotion and resources for health, which encompasses health-related knowledge and competence aiming to improve health. The aim of this study was to explore Norwegian music students' perceptions and experiences of resources and challenges for health and address the following research question: What health-related challenges do music students in higher music education meet, and what health promoting resources do they need and use to deal with these challenges and promote their health? We conducted a qualitative study including three focus group interviews with 13 music students aged between 19 and 31 years studying classical, folk, jazz or rhythmic genres from five different music departments in Norwegian universities. The Salutogenic model of health was used as theoretical framework and a few questions regarding the concept of health literacy were included in the interviews. We used thematic network analysis to analyze the data. Main health challenges were related to performance pressure and difficulties implementing good health habits in the students` daily lives. Furthermore, the findings revealed several resources that promoted the students' health: (1) Personal resources included situational understanding, using adequate coping strategies, high motivation and participating in regular physical activity. (2) Social resources involved an understanding of the importance of social support from peers and teachers and synergy created between themselves and the audience through sharing of music. (3) Environmental resources were linked to access to good rehearsal rooms. The music students expressed a need for increased competence in health promoting routines during practice and performance and suggested that health-related topics should be an integrated part of education.

Active Analysis in the beginning acting classroom

ABSTRACT Often, the exercises in the acting classroom can feel at odds with the processes used in the rehearsal room. I believe Konstantin Stanislavsky’s rehearsal method of Active Analysis provides tools and perspectives for dealing with these challenges. At The S Word Symposium in November 2022, I outlined a process I developed for teaching beginning acting using principles of Active Analysis as a tool to bridge the gap between training and rehearsing. This article expands on that presentation, including the experiences and thought processes that went into creating this class structure, and reviews the benefits for students. Applied in this way, Stanislavsky’s impulse to place embodied action before intellectual analysis yields valuable results in the classroom as well as the rehearsal hall.

Pinter and Stoppard: A Director’s View

Pinter and Stoppard: A Director’s View

From the Spirit of Music

Theatre music has been a key driver of theatrical invention, innovation, and style since 2010 in German theatre and arguably for some years before that. This is evidenced in creative partnerships between individual directors and composers (and sometimes bands), in a strong presence of music in the rehearsal rooms, in musical forms of postdramatic writing, and in forms of acting styles and performance aesthetics where music plays a formative role.

Process of Departures: Conversations and Practice in Adapting Titus Andronicus

Abstract: While most adaptation scholarship has predominantly concentrated on product—comparing source material to adapted script—there is a noticeable lack of process analysis applied to understanding new adaptations. The focus of this article is to examine the working process of adaptation under the permissive classification of "departure" from a rehearsal room perspective, and to propose a framework for analyzing that process. This article endeavors to answer the question of what the working process of intentionally departing from Shakespeare looks like in our contemporary theater practice. Using autoethnography, ethnography, and literature review, I detail and compare the creation processes of two contemporary Shakespeare departures based on Titus Andronicus—The Society for the Destitute Presents Titus Bouffonius and Black Fly—and propose an analytical framework that is based on collaboration between artists, negotiations of fidelity, and a reclamation of narrative.

Taking stock: Revaluing theatre’s costume stores

Hanging on racks and squeezed into shelves, past performances’ ghosts are visible in the costumes left behind. The costumes held in stock by most theatre companies are material memories of previous productions. They hold traces of the performance, have eased and shaped to fit performers’ bodies over weeks or months of daily wear, have been stressed by a consistent action or absorbed stains from ‘blood’ despite diligent washing. These traces, and the costumes themselves, provide a history of the performance that contradicts the routine complaint of theatre as an ephemeral medium. However, despite, or perhaps, because of these traces, costume stock is often regarded with misgivings. A pejorative attitude to stock costume reflects a significant change in its valuing over the last two centuries, one that does not reflect its active role in producing new works. This article contrasts costume stock’s position in the theatrical imagination with the many and often overlapping roles it plays in the costume workshop, rehearsal room and onstage to develop a taxonomy of costume stock use. It argues for a revaluation of costume stores as a creative tool in theatrical design and performance making.

Stage Management Theory as a Guide to Practice: Cultivating a Creative Approach by Lisa Porter and Narda E. Alcorn

Reviewed by: Stage Management Theory as a Guide to Practice: Cultivating a Creative Approach by Lisa Porter and Narda E. Alcorn Tom Humes He/Him Stage Management Theory as a Guide to Practice: Cultivating a Creative Approach. Lisa Porter and Narda E. Alcorn. New York: Routledge, 2020; pp. 133. Stage Management Theory as a Guide to Practice has been on my reading list since it became available for preorder in late 2019. I was drawn to it by recommendations from my colleagues and practitioner friends. This book stands apart from other textbooks due to the authors' focus on more subtle nuances of stage management, such as navigating systems of communication that may be culturally different than those to which the stage manager is accustomed. Other stage management textbooks scratch the surface when it comes to conflict, but they do not dig deep to discover the roots of why the conflict may arise, let alone explore a series of tools to resolve it. Porter and Alcorn divide the book into eight chapters that investigate factors that influence a stage manager's leadership: Theory, Practice, Environment, Communication, Orchestration, Culture, Ethics, and Purpose. These chapters focus on person-centered management, not only of the collaborators on the various teams with which the stage manager interacts but also of the stage manager themself. Person-centered management takes into account factors that may be influencing a person's viewpoint or process rather than focusing on a single metric such as productivity or output. Anecdotal examples of the authors' experience in various art forms ranging from Broadway to opera to circus provide the reader an understanding of situations in which they've triumphed or have learned the hard way to adapt. At the end of each chapter, Porter and Alcorn urge the reader to examine each factor from their own perspective with the sections "In Theory and Practice," which leads the reader through some guided exercises to implement strategies from the chapter, and "Think Like a Stage Manager," which provides thoughtful questions to reinforce continued critical thinking about and examination of the reader's current and future processes. Porter and Alcorn have done a great job of discussing these factors without getting too mired in the explanation of how to stage manage. Readers looking for more instructive or introductive texts might turn to Larry Fazio's Stage Manager: The Professional Experience or Thomas Kelly's The Back Stage Guide to Stage Management. In contrast, Stage Management Theory as a Guide to Practice can serve as a resource for an advanced stage management course for junior or senior undergraduate students or a graduate student course. This book will help stage managers who have plenty of experience with traditional theatre structures but find themselves working in shows/theatres/genres that are unfamiliar and may need to adapt to new ways of thinking. For example, in the "Ethics" chapter, there is a subsection about intimacy and ways that stage managers can and should advocate for safe practices within their rehearsal spaces. Intimacy coordination and direction are newer responses to some of the more harmful practices that have taken place in the rehearsal room, and if participants are informed about these methods, harm can be actively reduced. However, when the stage manager finds themself without a coordinator in a process that delves into physical or cultural intimacy, they can learn the basic building blocks of creating and advocating for a respectful space in Porter and Alcorn's book. The stage manager sets the tone for a respectful rehearsal space, and usually they are seen as the person who may need to step up and speak out when someone crosses a line. A moment within this book that resonates with me is Alcorn's firsthand account of a time within a process where a white collaborator spoke the "N-word," referencing a line within the play text. She writes: "I called a break and privately explained that his language was inappropriate. I expected an apology, but he told me he had used it in other productions where it had appeared in the script and no one had seemed upset" (101). I have wrestled with situations of a similar nature in some...

What To Perform When You're Expecting

This article reflects on two pregnancies spent in the rehearsal room and the academy. I reflect on my experiences in order to explore the institutional pressures and limitations placed on pregnant women and the ideological underpinnings of those pressures. It serves in part as a confessional and in part as an attempt to provoke conversations about the treatment of pregnant bodies in the theater. By folding together my own reflections on the ways I performed pregnancy and the ways I performed while pregnant with research from the social sciences on the ways in which institutions frame pregnancy as an illness, I hope to suggest possibilities toward reframing some of the discourse around pregnancy in the rehearsal room and the academy.

Disruptive Collaboration in a Theatre of Radical Compassion

Amid calls to rethink hierarchical structures in theatre and decolonize pedagogical, rehearsal and performance spaces, Jacob Buttry and Kristina Friedgen began to develop and explore a Theatre of Radical Compassion (TRC) as a philosophical approach to performance that centers relationship care within rehearsals and productions. As such, our initial application of TRC on a production of Everybody at Arizona State University proved successful in cultivating a space of encouragement, collaboration, and mutual respect that took root in productive and humanizing ways. This paper offers an account of how a primary focus on relationship care in rehearsal led to a productive and empowering space through collaboration and inclusive practices that ultimately led young artists to contribute more deeply to the interpretation of the play and to thereby exercise more ownership over the rehearsal process and product than they traditionally had experienced. We conclude that our rehearsal process for Everybody employed an intentional gathering of diverse perspectives in the rehearsal room, a collaborative method of artistic creation, and designated times of playful exploration, resulting in positive outcomes for company members such as inclusive representation of experiences in the final production, collective ownership of the creative output, and mutual growth for company members.

A mothering dramaturgy: the creative co-practices of mothering and directing in contemporary rehearsal rooms

ABSTRACT This essay considers the conceptual diversity in the current discourse on dramaturgy within contemporary theater making and adds an embodied maternal dramaturgy. Featuring interviews with six prominent women directors who are mothers, the essay presents key mothering moments and their presence in rehearsal practice. The essay highlights the corporeal knowledge of the postpartum director, and the kinds of adjustments to practices and work models that emerge from the needs of the director as mother. We present a mothering dramaturgy as a political act: a process that disrupts and unsettles divisions of labor, social constructs, and commonly accepted notions of body.

Opening rehearsal rooms as a way of broadening access, demystifying the process and breaking barriers

Access to the theatre industry is often frustrated through lack of experience. Many theatre companies have a stated aim to widen participation in order to fully represent the communities and society that they work in. This study assesses how opening up access to the rehearsal room can embolden and accelerate change as well as encourage a multiplicity of routinely marginalized voices to speak and be heard. It seeks to ask whether opening access to the rehearsal room has benefits for participants, companies and the industry at large. In this context, opening the rehearsal room means to facilitate observation access for those not directly involved in the production. After a nascent, small-scale version of the observation offer, a questionnaire was circulated to those who were invited and/or actively participated in the observation offer with conclusions drawn from responses and other related contextualizing literature. The results suggest that the offer can help to increase participation, with suggestions as to how it can be fine-tuned in further, future iterations.

Evaluation of a rehearsal/recording room project for symphonic orchestra based on ISO23591

The School of Music of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte is one of the fewer Federal Institutions in Brazil that is equipped with a recording studio attending a technical course in recording production. In 2021, the School of Music started a plan for its expansion with the project of a 7-storey building that will house a recording studio connected with several rehearsal rooms. One of the rooms was specifically planned to hold rehearsals and recordings of the UFRN Philharmonic Orchestra and the Big Band Jerimum Jazz. The objective of this research is to show the procedures used to evaluate, during the planning processes, the acoustics of the Philharmonic’s rehearsal room using as reference the new standard ISO 23591. Results showed that it was possible to identify initial acoustical problems and indicate solutions for the best modification of the space, even in the initial stages of the project. The room, with approximately 235 m2 and 6 m in height, was readjusted to a height of 9 m so that the space could comply with the recommendations of the standard. Next challenge will be to properly plan its isolation, since the new school library is above this room.

Two case studies in approach to the renovation of volumetrically challenged music rehearsal spaces

A music rehearsal room renovation can be acoustically challenging in that there is often limited room volume, lack of loudness control, and budget constraints. Two case studies detail these challenges. (1) The University of North Texas’ choral rehearsal room was due for renovation and with a volume of only 44,000 cubic feet, the room had to accommodate choral ensembles varying from 20–85 people for daily use, over 100 voices for an annual festival, and an added recital use. At an appropriate budget, the renovation used room shaping to simultaneously break up parallel surfaces and support voices while also adding adjustable acoustics to allow for tuning of the room for each rehearsal or performance. (2) The University of Texas at San Antonio’s large band, orchestra, and jazz rehearsal room lacked loudness control even with an approximate volume of 73,500 cubic feet to serve 30 – 70 + musicians. At a much more limited budget, the solution was to flip the orientation of the musician layout in the room to take advantage of the existing room geometry and to introduce variable absorption stored exposed to the room which increased the overall absorption while also giving the ensembles an opportunity to tune the room.

Undersized music ensemble rooms: Challenges and case study design approaches

Music ensemble rooms require sufficient volume to develop adequate and appropriate reverberation, facilitate ensemble balance, and avoid excess loudness. Typical design practice begins with establishing minimum volume requirements based on expected ensemble sizes and types. When faced with inadequate room volume (e.g., due to existing building limitations, or otherwise), creative design solutions must be employed to achieve the best possible hearing conditions—and to avoid excess loudness in particular, which can be an occupational hazard for musicians. Case studies will illustrate a variety of design approaches: adding volume to existing spaces at the Crane School of Music (SUNY Potsdam), electronic reverberation enhancement (also at Crane), adding absorptive materials to an existing space and master-planning for larger spaces at Arkansas Tech, creative diffusive and absorptive material for the chorus rehearsal room at Boston Symphony Hall, and programming work to match ensembles to the most appropriate rooms available at a variety of educational institutions.