What Is A Rehearsal Report?
The Rehearsal Report is written and sent after each rehearsal by the Stage Manager to update everyone on the production team of any new information. This includes general notes, hours for the day, and specific departmental updates and requests.
In this guide, I will try to help fill in the blanks on how to write a report as well as provide examples.
What should be included in a rehearsal report?
Sections to include:
- Header with the show name and company name
- Date, start time, end time, breaks, rehearsal number, and location
- Late/Absent
- Equity hours
- General notes section
- A section for each department (Scenic, lighting, props, costumes, etc.)
- SM/Crew section
- Miscellaneous
- Next rehearsal schedule
Each show will require slightly different sections based on what technical elements are involved so include extra sections if needed for your show.
Who should the rehearsal report be sent to?
Simply put, the report should be distributed to anyone involved on the production who is not an actor. Every technician, department head, admin staff member, and designer should revise the report each night after rehearsal. Use the contact sheet you created during prep week and include anyone that isn’t in the cast.
the general notes section
The general notes section should include notes for the group as a whole, a general idea of how the rehearsal went, and what was covered. Try to keep things in this order to ensure people skimming through will see the general note first before moving on to the other sections.
Notes for individual departments
Include notes specific to each department within their own section to ensure they see it. Any note that could relate to more than one department I tend to include in both. here are some example situations:
- During rehearsal a purse strap broke, and this was going to be the show purse. Unless previously specified, I would put this in both props and costumes, since this type of item could be considered either a prop or a costume accessory.
- The director wants to add a light up element to a costume piece. I would put this in both electrics and costumes, since both departments may need to work together to accomplish this.
Side note: Good designers will typically read every section to ensure they notice things that may effect them, but don’t rely on this. In my experience, technicians are typically the ones that don’t read the entire report, so anything that may relate to them from another department should be included.
Wording requests for success
Wording is everything when making requests of departments. Your wording and tone in an email can make all the difference in the emotional state of the people completing those requests. This can be the difference between someone putting in the extra effort to complete a project you requested on time or not.
During my senior year of undergrad, I was the student SM supervisor, basically guiding all new SM’s through their first few productions. The first thing I noticed during my time helping to train new stage managers, was that they all took a bit of time to learn how to word their requests in a polite, but firm way.
After spending time as a Production Manager in professional theatre, this is something I think a lot of SM’s can still work on. Although you may get frustrated with a department that is struggling to keep up with requests, try your best no to let it show through in your reports.
Let’s walk through an example request
Say we need to ask for a larger table to replace the one currently on stage. This request will go into the scenic section, but wording this request as “We need a bigger table ASAP” is likely to be received poorly. Most people are professional and will still accommodate the request if possible, but ideally we can keep people on our side when making requests.
One option is to word your request as a question. Instead of saying “We need a bigger table ASAP”, try thinking of it as “Could we get a bigger table for tomorrow’s rehearsal?”. This method tends to work best for small things, like getting another version of a hand prop you happen to know is in stock and would just need to be pulled. Let’s look at ways to word larger requests.
For large scale requests that will likely be time consuming, I find it’s best to word them in a few parts. Let’s continue with the table example but now we will assume that the table was custom built in the scene shop for the production in order to accommodate 4 people at once dancing on it. Building another table or modifying the smaller one will likely take time and push other projects behind schedule.
In this situation I might say “We would like the table to be 1 foot larger in each direction than the current one. There isn’t enough space for 4 dancers to move at it’s current size and we are concerned about safety. Ideally we would like this for tomorrow so we can finish choreographing these scenes if at all possible.”
Although this request is much longer, it provides much more detail without people needing to ask questions back and forth over email.
Know when to Check in
Ideally the Production Manager will do the checking in with the departments, but they likely will not be at rehearsals on a daily basis, if at all. When possible, I like to check in once a week with each department during rehearsals to offer up clarification on any questions they might have.
This generally only happens in smaller theaters where the different shops are within the same building or across the parking lot. In these cases, spending an extra 15-20 minutes one day a week making rounds can save lots of work and solve issues before they become emergencies later on.
rehearsal report templates
This is the part of rehearsal reports that there is no set methodology on. Each SM seems to prefer a different style of their report. In the regional theatre world over the last few years, I have noticed a shift of more and more SM’s using a similar very basic template which includes just the information with no frills. I have seen them using this same style for both reports and for daily calls.
The Template is created by using a table in word, and letting each cell in the table be it’s own section. this allows for resizing and easy adjustments when necessary. I tend to like a little color in my documents to differentiate the header area, but this can easily be applied to the basic template provided here.
The Basic Option
CLICK HERE for the downloadable Word doc version of the basic template.
If you find these templates helpful, please consider supporting Everything Backstage by writing for us, or through a donation. Your support helps us keep the lights on so we can provide helpful content to more Stage Managers like you.
Detailed Rehearsal Report Option
CLICK HERE to download the Word doc version of the detailed Template
If you find these templates helpful, please consider supporting Everything Backstage by writing for us, or through a donation. Your support helps us keep the lights on so we can provide helpful content to more Stage Managers like you.
This page on SMNetwork has other templates available, but most were posted in 2006 so some no longer work because they were created on previous versions of word.
