Technical rehearsals, Dress Rehearsals and Performance

timotheuswidmer
Mar 1, 2022
2 min read

Updated: Mar 31, 2022

#1: Technical Rehearsal

Everyone was jumping from cue to cue and quite quickly done. Whereas I had much more cues and I was asked to run it twice. It was freezing cold, I had obviously no pants and no shoes on and I was so nervous that I kept messing up my lines. It was horrible and made me even more nervous for the performance. But it was still exciting to see everything come together and I thought I would make it up in the Dress run the next day and gain some confidence with the piece.

#2: Dress Rehearsal

I did not do well. I messed up lines again and I was so nervous that I could hardly stand it. In the whole week I never had a good run and the show was coming closer and closer. I was almost panicking ans I never did before. It was not only not being confident with the lines because I kept messing them up but also being the writer of the piece. Sharing my thoughts, my creativity with the audience made me very nervous. What if they completely disagreed with what I was saying?

#3: The Performance

When it came to the Performance I tried not to think about all the bad runs I had. I did an intensive warm up and some exercises to calm down. Then the moment came and this is what happened:

#4: Conclusion

I had a very intense writing process with a lot of changes and multiple obstacles to overcome. I was very happy with my text but very nervous about the performance. It was a challenge to perform a lot of text in a short amount of time. It is a physically and vocally demanding piece because I started with a thirty second dance and then speak in a very high pace with challenging words. So when tech week came I was nervous.

For me it was a very instructive project where I learned how to put myself in a very vulnerable place being the writer and performer putting up a very personal piece.

I think it was the right project to experiment in the full extent and I did.

And Zois did not only support that but pushed me even further and I'm very grateful for that.

I draw a very positive conclusion. I should have been braver earlier but I'm very happy where I ended up. And I am also happy with my performance. I was able to channel the nervousness well for how nervous I was and I think it was a very energetic performance. I got a lot of positive feedback which pushed my self confidence and encourages me to keep working.