Getting ready to perform: warm-up, dressing and dressing-room needs

The warm-up is not a formality

A warm-up raises the body’s temperature, mobilises the joints and runs through the most demanding passages of the act at reduced intensity. A cold body asked for maximum effort straight away is a risk of injury — not a question of comfort.

The length varies with the discipline: allow twenty to forty-five minutes as a general rule, more for aerial and acrobatic disciplines. Current practice favours a warm-up in movement rather than long passive stretching just before going on. That calls for real space: not a corridor crossed by service staff, not a corner of a kitchen.

Finally, a warm-up expires. An artist warmed up at 8 pm who ends up going on at 10.30 pm is cold again. Give an honest stage time, and give notice of any delay as soon as it is known — that is what allows them to warm up again at the right moment.

Walking the space before the audience arrives

A walk on the stage before the doors open settles the majority of incidents: the condition and the grip of the floor, any slope, cables, visual marks, exits, where the tables actually sit once they are laid, and the areas where the light hits hard.

The sound check is run on the venue’s system, not on a rehearsal speaker: a track that holds up in a studio can dissolve in a reception hall. Settle at the same time who starts the music, on what cue, and what happens if the file does not play.

Give the artist a written running order: real times, the name and number of the contact on site, and who is authorised to give the go. Three extra lines in a document save half an hour of drifting on the night.

Make-up and dressing take the time they take

Stage make-up, particularly in the classical forms and in cabaret, often takes more than an hour. It cannot be rushed: it is designed to be read from a distance and under stage lighting, and hurried make-up shows from the back of the room.

Some traditional costumes are sewn directly onto the body and require help. Headdresses go on last. This means an artist is unavailable for a long time before their slot, and again for a long time afterwards.

Translate that into your running order: do not put the welcome speech, the photograph session and the entrance in the same ten minutes. And announce the real schedule rather than an optimistic one — an informed artist organises themselves, a surprised artist improvises.

What a dressing room has to contain

A usable dressing room is an enclosed space, away from the audience, where a person can change without being seen. It needs a lit mirror at face height, a chair, a table, power sockets, a clothes rail and a flat surface. A toilet or a corner of a corridor behind a curtain fulfils none of these functions.

Add water, a bearable temperature, and a waiting area that is neither in full sun nor under the lights. An artist who waits for an hour in full costume in the heat does not go on stage in the same state as an artist who is rested.

Check the route between the dressing room and the stage, its distance and its clearance height. And leave the dressing room available after the act: many events take the room back on the last note, just as removing make-up and packing away the costumes is only beginning.

• —An enclosed space, away from the audience, with somewhere secure to store belongings.
• —A lit mirror, a chair, a table, power sockets, a clothes rail, a flat surface.
• —Water, ventilation or air conditioning, a shaded waiting area.
• —Direct access to the stage, without crossing through the audience.
• —The dressing room kept after the performance, not handed back immediately.