The Room Where It Happens

There’s something sacred about a rehearsal room. It doesn’t matter if it’s a fluorescent lit community hall, a state of the art studio, or a makeshift space with taped lines on the floor—we walk in with our scripts, our hopes, and our nerves. What we create together in that room can be astonishing. For me, a life in rehearsal rooms has been a life of discovering what people are capable of when they dare to be open, curious, and brave.

Over the years, I’ve come to think of rehearsal rooms as laboratories for empathy. They are where we dissect humanity, its beauty, its absurdity, its flaws, and reassemble it, scene by scene, moment by moment. There’s sweat and sometimes tears, and always laughter. And though the world sees the polished production at the end, it’s those weeks in the rehearsal room that hold the real story.

Finding the Spark

I didn’t fall into the theatre. I ran toward it. There was something about the alchemy of storytelling onstage that grabbed me early in life. I’ve been privileged to work with some of Australia’s most dedicated actors, designers, stage managers, and crew members through my roles at Black Swan State Theatre Company and NIDA, and every new process has taught me something.

There’s no set formula for how to rehearse a show. Each one is its own animal. Sometimes a production comes together like clockwork. Other times it fights you. But whether I’m directing Shakespeare or a brand new Australian script, I live for the moment the scene lifts off the page and begins to breathe.

The Beautiful Mess

Rehearsal rooms are rarely tidy. The process is often messy by design. We try things. We fail. We try again. An actor might spend hours exploring a monologue, only to completely abandon that interpretation the next day. A choreographer might rework a sequence five times before it lands. I’ve had entire set pieces reimagined mid process because the energy in the room told us we needed something different.

It’s in this chaos that creativity thrives. We push past politeness, past fear of being wrong, and into something raw and real. One of the joys of my career has been fostering a space where people feel safe to make bold choices, even if those choices don’t make it into the final production. Because risk is essential. Without it, theatre loses its urgency.

Moments That Stay With You

Some moments in rehearsal rooms become imprinted on your memory. I remember working with a young actor who had just come out of drama school. She was tackling a scene about loss, and it wasn’t quite landing. We paused. I asked her to speak the words as if she were telling them to someone she loved. She began again, softly, simply, and the room went still. There was no acting. Just truth. That scene ended up being the emotional core of the show, and it was born in that moment of vulnerability.

There was another time a set designer burst into tears after seeing an early run. Not because anything was wrong, but because it moved her. It reminded me that the work we do resonates beyond the cast. We build something together that touches people, sometimes in ways we can’t predict.

Training Grounds for Life

I often say the rehearsal room is a microcosm of life. It teaches you how to listen, how to collaborate, how to handle failure and start again. It demands presence. You can’t phone in a performance, and you can’t lead a team without being fully there with them.

Leading arts institutions like NIDA taught me that rehearsal rooms are also spaces of learning, especially for emerging artists. They are where the next generation of creatives discover their voices. I’ve watched shy students become bold storytellers. I’ve seen ensemble members grow into directors and writers. Theatre is generous that way, it makes room for growth.

The Magic You Can’t Fake

Despite all the planning, spreadsheets, lighting plots, and costume fittings, the heart of theatre remains a kind of mystery. You never really know what will happen when the lights go up. But you trust that what was forged in the rehearsal room, the hours of work, the laughter, the frustrations, the small breakthroughs, will hold.

And most of the time, it does. That’s the magic. The transformation of a script into a living, breathing experience that moves an audience. It’s a shared act of imagination, and it never gets old.

A Thank You to the Room

So, here’s to the rehearsal rooms, the scuffed floors, the whiteboards, the coffee stained scripts. To the stage managers who keep us honest, to the actors who bare their souls, to the creatives who dream out loud. Thank you for the joy, the chaos, and the magic.

If you’ve ever been lucky enough to spend time in a rehearsal room, you’ll understand. It’s not just where the show begins, it’s where the heart of the theatre lives. And I, for one, will always be grateful to have lived a life inside those four walls.