Sometimes a director will call the entire cast of a play or musical to be there at a certain time and stay until the rehearsal is over. They then start from the first scene and rehearse the scenes in order until it’s time to stop. This works if there is a small cast and everyone in the cast is in most or all of the scenes. It does not work if you have a large cast, as in a musical, or if some of the characters only appear in one scene. In a play, it could mean some characters sit there for the whole time, then rehearsal ends before they get to the scene they are in. In a musical, it’s even worse. Either the chorus watches while the speaking roles rehearse, or you rehearse only the chorus scenes, dances, etc. before running out of time.
The solution is to have out-of-sequence rehearsals until everyone has learned their parts. For a musical, it’s better to have two rehearsal spaces — one large space for the chorus and dance, and a smaller space for the speaking roles and solo songs. For a play, the scenes should be divided into which characters are in those scenes. If there are any scenes with only a few actors, or actors who appear in only one scene, rehearse those scenes either at the beginning of the rehearsal or at the very end, so that the actor who has only one or two scenes does not need to be there the whole time.
Try to group the list of scenes to be rehearsed by which actors are together in certain scenes. This also helps the actors with nonsequential scenes to tie their characterizations together better. In the first rehearsal, it’s important to have all the actors with speaking roles present for the group read so they can see how their part fits in with the entire script. You can do a group read at a table (called a “table read”) or you can go through the script on stage with rough blocking.
The chorus members do not need to be present for the group read, and in fact might find it incredibly boring, or feel that the chorus is not really important to the story line. It’s better to have the chorus practice their songs and dances together at the first rehearsal, which means you really need to have both a director and a music/dance director. If your director is also the music/dance director, which often happens in high school musicals, then what is needed is an assistant director who can switch places with the director so that they can work with both the actors and the chorus. The other strategy might be to have the chorus and the speaking actors come on different days.
One problem directors have is spending too much time on one scene and running out of time to go through all of the scenes. Even if a scene has a serious problem, it’s not a good idea to spend too much time on any particular scene. Make a time line, allotting a certain number of minutes to each scene depending on the length of the scene. If a scene has problems, go to the next scene on your schedule, then you can work on the problem scene after the official rehearsal is over or at some other time. This way you can work through every scene at every rehearsal.
At some point, you will need to bring the entire cast together and rehearse the show in sequence. There should be at least two full cast rehearsals before the dress rehearsals. At this point you will need a stage manager to get people on the stage for their scenes. If you have to wait between scenes to get people out of the green room and onto the stage, you will run out of time.
If you don’t have headsets for your crew, then you will need a person to run the stage manager’s instructions down to the green room. It isn’t a good idea to allow the entire cast to sit in the auditorium during the full cast or dress rehearsals. Besides the unwanted talking, they need to get used to getting their calls and getting to the stage to enter on time. The younger your cast, the more important this is.
If you are not experienced with out of sequence planning, it may take a few adjustments in the beginning. You may find you’ve allowed too much time for one scene and not enough for another. Explain to your actors that these times are approximate and they should be adaptable. With good planning and hopefully some good helpers, you should be able to complete your rehearsals without too many problems and have a great show.