A Technical Checklist for Remote Theatre Rehearsals

Remote rehearsal is the part of digital theatre practice that audiences never see and companies most often under-resource. A cast scattered across several countries, a stage manager working from a kitchen table and a director watching a grid of faces on a screen need a shared technical baseline before any creative work can happen. This article sets out that baseline as a checklist: what to decide, what to test, and what to write down.

The checklist assumes a small to mid-scale company rehearsing on a video-conferencing platform (most commonly Zoom) with participants in more than one country, at least some of whom are working from domestic spaces with consumer equipment. It is not a specification for large-scale broadcast or for commercial streaming platforms. Where published toolkits exist, they are cited so that readers can consult the fuller documents.

Defining the terms

Remote rehearsal is the use of networked audio and video to run a rehearsal process at a distance, whether or not the resulting performance is itself online. Telepresence describes the sense of shared presence the platform is asked to produce. It is useful to separate these from recorded-live and active-live work: NYU Tisch’s Digital Production Resource Packet distinguishes pre-recorded material from performances that are recorded live and from performances that are genuinely live and interactive, and notes that each demands a different technical configuration. A company that rehearses remotely but performs in a building still needs the rehearsal checklist; it simply stops short of the streaming sections.

The house southeast theatre network describes a toolkit prepared by Creation Theatre with the University of Exeter as covering three areas: a technical checklist for a production performed on Zoom, guidelines for companies including casting and contracting, and advice for creative practitioners, marketing and front-of-house staff, including directorial suggestions and rehearsal logistics. That tripartite division is a reasonable map of the field: technical, contractual, and creative.

Decisions that must precede the checklist

Establish the mode of operation

NYU Tisch’s packet asks companies to begin with “big questions” and then to define a mode of delivery, offering a three-part scale of basic, medium and complex operation before breaking down individual production elements. The practical value of naming the mode is that it settles how much of the checklist applies. A play reading over a single video link is a basic operation; a piece in which performers manipulate shared screen space, pre-recorded material and live sound is complex, and needs its own technical schedule.

Choose the account type deliberately

Creation Theatre’s technical checklist, drafted by production manager Giles Stoakley for The Tempest, opens with the account itself. It notes that Zoom accounts differ in participant numbers, branding options and time limits, and that “webinars” allow large audiences but do not permit interaction, with audiences visible to performers and to one another; because Creation Theatre wanted that interaction, it did not use webinars and normally capped participating devices at 120. The checklist also reminds producers that a participating device is not the same as an audience member, since one device may be watched by several people. Companies should verify current tiers and limits directly at the provider’s pricing page, since commercial terms change.

Decide whether rehearsal and performance share a platform

Rehearsing on the platform you will perform on removes one layer of adaptation, but it also means rehearsal recordings and performance recordings sit in the same account. NYU Tisch’s packet treats the audience viewing platform as a separate production element with its own selection criteria, which is a useful discipline even for small companies.

The checklist

1. Accounts, permissions and access

• Confirm the licence tier, meeting duration limit, participant ceiling and any recording entitlement.
• Assign named hosts and co-hosts; do not leave host rights with one person who may be unavailable.
• Decide who may admit participants, mute others, move people between breakout rooms, and start recording.
• Check that any institutional account you are borrowing permits external guests.

2. Device and connection audit

Creation Theatre’s checklist asks companies to audit their devices because the platform “appears and works differently on different operating systems and devices”, including in relation to virtual backgrounds. In practice the audit means recording, per participant: device type and operating system, processor and memory, camera resolution, microphone and any interface, headphones, wired or wireless connection, and available bandwidth. Ask each participant to test the platform’s own connection diagnostic, and to report the result in writing. Where a participant’s connection is unstable, agree in advance whether they join by audio only.

3. Configuring the home rehearsal space

• Agree a standard framing: camera at eye level, head and shoulders visible, consistent distance from the lens.
• Agree a lighting standard: light on the face, no window directly behind the head.
• Agree a sound standard: external or headset microphone where possible, headphones to prevent feedback, phone silenced, notifications disabled.
• Agree a background standard: plain wall, or the production’s chosen virtual background where the platform and device support it reliably.
• Ask participants to test the exact setup they will use at performance, not an idealised one.

4. Technical roles

Someone must hold technical authority during the call. On The Stage observes that a single person can produce and stream a virtual performance but that this is not necessarily recommended, and that the director’s role remains essential even in unrehearsed formats, at minimum to maintain the structure of the event and to run production and streaming tools. A workable division for a mid-scale rehearsal is set out below; smaller companies will consolidate roles, and should say so explicitly rather than leaving responsibilities implicit.

NYU Tisch’s packet treats stage-management practice, communication and the monitoring of the rehearsal space as distinct technical concerns, which is a helpful reminder that these are jobs with equipment and protocols attached, not simply attitudes.

5. Communication protocol

• Fix one channel for urgent technical interruption (spoken phrase or platform hand-raise) and one for non-urgent notes (chat or a shared document).
• Agree who monitors chat when the director is working.
• Agree a phrase for “stop, the connection has failed” that everyone recognises.
• Agree how notes are delivered after the call, and who compiles them.

6. Scheduling across time zones

Publish call times with the time zone named explicitly, ideally with a shared calendar invitation in which each participant’s own device renders the local time. Avoid converting by hand. Check daylight-saving transitions in every participant’s country for the whole rehearsal period, since a single shift can move a call by an hour for part of the company only. Build a shorter standard session length than you would use in a building, and confirm breaks in writing.

7. Recording, documentation and consent

Decide before the first session whether rehearsals are recorded, who holds the files, where they are stored, how long they are kept, and what participants are told. Recording a rehearsal captures domestic space and sometimes other members of a household; consent should be explicit and revocable where the production allows. Recordings of early-stage work are also poor evidence of the final performance, so label them accordingly in any archive.

8. Multilingual and access provision

Where the company works across languages, the platform becomes part of the translation apparatus. Establish whether interpretation is consecutive or simultaneous, whether an interpreter joins as a separate participant with their own audio settings, whether captions or surtitles will be used, and who checks that translated text is legible at the size it will appear on screen. Captions generated automatically should be reviewed before they are relied upon, particularly with proper names, dialect and verse.

9. Contingency

• Nominate a second platform or a telephone bridge for participants who cannot connect.
• Keep an offline copy of the script, the running order and the contact list.
• Agree a protocol for a participant dropping out mid-scene: pause, cover, or skip.
• Record the technical decisions in one document and version it, so that new company members inherit the same baseline.

Common problems and how they surface

Most difficulties in remote rehearsal are predictable. Audio feedback appears when a participant uses speakers and a microphone in a room with hard surfaces. Unequal presence appears when one participant has a poor camera and another has a studio setup, which becomes an artistic problem as much as a technical one and should be addressed as a casting or design question. Time-zone errors cluster around daylight-saving changes. Permission problems appear when a co-host is absent. Recording consent problems appear late, when material is needed for documentation and nobody knows who agreed to what. Naming these in advance is cheaper than solving them in the final week.

What carries over to performance

A rehearsal checklist is not a performance checklist, but the two overlap. The mode of delivery, the account tier, the device audit, the role allocation, the communication protocol and the recording policy all remain in force when the work moves to an audience. Companies that keep the checklist as a living document, revised at each technical rehearsal, find that the transition from rehearsal room to networked stage requires adaptation rather than reinvention.