Guides

Running a rehearsal without a coach

Most independent troupes can't afford a weekly coach — here's how to run a practice that actually improves the team instead of just playing.

A coached rehearsal and an uncoached one differ in exactly one thing: someone is responsible for noticing. Absent that, practice becomes a private show — fun, warm, and flat, month after month. The fix isn't hiring someone; it's structure.

The shape

Ninety minutes, three parts, and the ratios matter more than the contents:

Warm-up (15 minutes). Two games, always ending with something that gets people making eye contact and agreeing — Mind Meld or Pass the Clap over anything wordy. The warm-up's job is not energy; it's converting eight individuals into one group. You can feel when it's worked.

Focused reps (60 minutes). One focus per night, announced before the first scene: object work, emotional honesty, game-finding, edits. Short scenes — two to three minutes, then cut. More scenes with more people beats fewer, longer, funnier ones; rehearsal optimizes for reps, shows optimize for laughs, and confusing the two is how teams plateau.

Run the format (15 minutes). Whatever your show is, do it straight through, no stopping. Teams that only drill are shocked by their own format on show night.

The rotating eye

Each week, one member sits out as the outside eye — they don't play, they watch, and they give notes. Rotate strictly; everyone learns most in the chair. The role needs guardrails or it curdles:

• Notes name choices, not people: "the scene left the kitchen premise fast" — not "you bailed."
• Every note pairs with one thing that worked, and the thing that worked gets said first and meant.
• The note-giver's opinion is a fact about one viewer, not a verdict. Disagreement is allowed and doesn't get relitigated — try it the other way next scene and see.

Once a month, replace the outside eye with a phone on a chair and watch the recording together the following week. It's uncomfortable and worth triple a normal rehearsal — everyone finally sees the pause they didn't know they take.

The failure modes

The three ways self-run rehearsals rot, in order of frequency: social drift (warm-up chat eats forty minutes — cure: start the first game at start time, always, even with three people); the same scenes (same pairings, same energies — cure: draw pairings from a hat for the first half); and notelessness (nobody wants to be the critic, so nothing is ever said and nothing changes — cure: the rotating-eye structure above, which makes noticing a job instead of an act of aggression).

A rehearsal ends well when someone can answer one question: what will we do differently next week? Write the answer in the group chat before everyone's home. That single sentence is the whole difference between practising and meeting.