If you’ve never been in a show or production, you probably don’t know the time and effort that goes into Tech Week. What is Tech Week? Tech Week is the week of a production and it is when everything gels together and the whole product is seen for the first time. This week is called Tech Week because it is the first time all of the tech for the show is being used in full force. That means sound, light, costumes, make-up, etc. Typically, every day of Tech Week is a full dress rehearsal. This means the show is run in its entirety and there are no stops unless absolutely necessary.

Tech week takes an especially hard toll on the actors. They go under a tremendous amount of mental and physical stress. When it comes to schools and tech week, everyone involved in the production is often at the school from 8:00am to 8:30-9:00pm depending on how clean the run of the show goes and how much work it needs. A clean run of the show qualifies as a full run with little to no big mistakes, which includes forgetting lines, forgetting blocking, or a technical mistake. This seems stressful, but there’s more. During dress rehearsals, no one has time to do homework, so they have to wait until they get home that night, which could be as late as 9:30pm. After getting home at an unreasonable hour, the average student has around 2-3 hours of homework a night. This means it could be 11:30-12:30 that night before you even start thinking about going to sleep.

Tech Week is not anything to take lightly. It is very stressful and very time-consuming for all parties involved. Here at LHS, the week of October 24th has been Tech Week for our fall show, Much Ado About Nothing. The technical team and the actors have put in copious amounts of work and careful preparation. Much Ado About Nothing runs October 28th and 29th at 7pm, and October 30th at 3pm. General admission is $8, and $5 for students. If you come out to see the show, you will truly see how much practice and hard work has been put into making it great, and maybe it will help you appreciate how much effort it takes to put on a production.