Broadway Rehearsals?

Just out of curiousity, does anybody know how many hours a day, how many days a week and how many weeks a broadway show is rehearsed?

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It's more like 10 AM to 5 PM. When I interviewed Boyd Gaines he mentioned rehearsals started at 10 AM. I've met other actors for dinner when rehearsals broke at 5 PM.

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Back in April 08 I took a workshop in NYC with one of the actresses in Wicked. She mentioned that there are brush up rehearsals every Thursday.

One of my friends is the wig designer and costumer at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. I asked him how rehearsing for a professional production differs from a community theatre production (we were rehearsing for Bat Boy at a local comm. theatre) and he said that the equity contract for the actors at the Walnut require 12 hours off between rehearsals. So if a rehearsal ends at midnight, then contractually, the actors are not permitted to report until noon the next day. But the rehearsal day can be long and grueling.

I hope this helps answer your question somewhat.

I don't have this confirmed or not but I'm thinking they'll have brush up rehearsals during the day and not after the show. If they had it after the show they'd be rehearsing at like midnight and I don't think that happens.

Equity rules say:
Rehearsal days are 6 days a week
And each day is a 7/8.5 which means 10:00-1:00 rehearsal then 1 hour lunch break and then 2:00-6:00. And within the last 10 days they can have a rehearsal day to be 9/11. Prior to opening they can have (on stage) only four 10/12 days.
And as a general rule they can't rehearse longer than 5 hours without a break and on the performance day they can't rehearse prior to the performance longer than 5 hours.
People can correct me if I'm wrong but this is what I learned in school... it can be slightly adjusted to the production but this information is straight from the equity handbook.

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Those Thursday "brush up rehearsals" mentioned are actually understudy rehearsals.

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Also it should be noted that you can only rehearse for a maximum of 5 hours on a 1 show day.

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These rules are pretty much the same for all equity contracts. Certain theaters have some specific concessions in their contracts or Letters of Agreement with the Union, but for the most part these rules pretty much apply for most equity jobs. Equity Tours are on the same contract (Production) that their Broadway counterparts are on. The obvious difference between a tour and a Sit down production in New york, in terms of rehearsals, is that the tour has some different rules to follow because of the travel involved in the production. Again though, the rules stated in this thread are generally universal.

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Updated On: 5/4/09 at 04:45 PM

"You think those days are long? Try working on a 1 hour prime time TV show. Though it almost balances out since those only shoot 5 days a week."

Yes. Or being a principal character on a soap - 5 hours of airtime a week, with no repeats and no hiatus.

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Does anyone know where I can get Equity Handbooks?

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Soaps are the worst. Even when you aren't on the clock, there are so many lines at such a fast pace that unless you are amazing at memorizing lines, your off time is consumed looking at your upcoming scenes. Once you're on set, the pressure is definitely on because they move so fast that if you are a day player and you slow them down, you probably won't be back.

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