It's Showtime!

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

This lesson explores how a show gets ready to perform, step-by-step.

Before getting started, take a peek at the rehearsals for the London production of The Lion King in The Lion King: In the Rehearsal Room from Disney on Broadway:

• How does a rehearsal look different from the finished product that you saw earlier?
• How do the actors seem to feel about rehearsal?

Rehearsal for a play or musical is just like practice for a sport - the whole team gets together and tries to make the show as perfect as they can so that everything looks amazing when it's time to do the show for real!

The whole rehearsal process can last as long as a few months, or it can be as short as a couple weeks. So let's go step-by-step through the process and learn some vocabulary words along the way!

Before you can even start rehearsing, you have to cast the show. This means you have auditions, or tryouts. Then, the people who fit the show best get picked to be in the cast, which includes all the actors onstage.

To make it into the cast, actors have to audition for the director and casting director, who is in charge of finding the perfect people for the roles.

In this video from Ticketmaster Australia, you can peek into the casting process for the Australian production of The Lion King.

Road to Pride Rock: Episode 8 - Casting Simba and Nala:

• What are some of the things casting directors look for when they're trying to find the perfect person for a role?

Once the cast is decided on, rehearsals can begin!

The first rehearsal is usually a read through, which means that everyone sits down with their scripts and reads through the show. This way, everyone can hear the other actors do their parts and read their own lines out loud.

After that, you can start music rehearsal.

In a show like The Lion King, there are a lot of songs to learn! The music director teaches everyone their singing parts and makes sure that the cast has all their music learned before they start moving around the stage.

Once music is learned, the actors start to learn their choreography, which is all the dances, and their staging, which is where they go onstage during scenes.

In The Lion King, the actors have an extra challenge of learning how to operate puppets for the show!

Listen to the woman who plays Rafiki tell you more about how the rehearsal process works for The Lion King in Australia in Road to Pride Rock: Rehearsals from Disney on Broadway:

Now all the actors and dancers have learned the music, lines, dances, and staging for the whole show.

• All done, right?

Nope! The actors have been rehearsing in the rehearsal space, and now they have to switch to putting the show onto the actual stage with the set and costumes and lighting!

This can be harder than it sounds. Imagine practing a show in the same room for hours every day, and then right at the last minute you have to do the same thing in a totally different space, with new set pieces moving all around you!

This part of the process is called tech rehearsal because it is where you add in all of the technical parts of the show.

Until this part of rehearsal, designers and performers have been working separately. Now they get to bring their talents together to create the whole show!

Watch Road to Pride Rock: Final Rehearsals, from Disney on Broadway, to hear the actors who play Mufasa and Sarabi tell you about their technical rehearsals:

Only when all the pieces have been put together can the show start!

The first night of the show is called opening night, and the actors finally get an audience! From there, they keep doing the show until closing night, which is their last performance.

In the Got It? section, you'll test yourself on some of these new rehearsal terms and make sure you know in what order all of these steps take place!