how do you prepare for the evening's performance?

This is my typical pre-show routine. It's a 20-step process: 1) Set alarm for one hour before I estimate I need to leave the house (Night before. Usually about 1.30am, regardless of what God-awful time I might need to be up). 2) Keep hitting the snooze button (anywhere up to half an hour). 3) Sensibly have prepared a second alarm to go off in the bathroom, which I HAVE to get up to switch off. (night before) 4) Hot shower to wake up and get neck & shoulders moving, sinuses clear. (About 10 minutes. Probably a good opportunity to start a vocal warm up, although I never do) 5) Get dressed. (2 minutes, except if it is just TOO early and dark, when my brain can get stumped at just figuring out what Tshirt or sock to put on. Extra 5 minutes of stupor.) 6) Breakfast (toast or cereal & fruit, coffee) while checking emails. (18 minutes. I'm now 5 minutes late) 7) No need to pack costume/script, as I didn't bother taking them out of the car to wash/look at the night before. Check street directory and realise all the morning's itinerary times are about 12 minutes inadequate 8) Drive to pick up first cast mate. (30-40 minutes. This is also the vocal warm up, singing along to radio advertising jingles...although take note that it's still about 2 hours to showtime.) 9) Next leg of journey, either to pick up next cast mate or to swap into the company truck. (20-30min) 10) Repeat step 9. (If we're already driving in the truck, add 15 minutes.) And invariably someone along the way has been late. Add 10 minutes. 11) Truck and all cast now navigates to school. (30-45min, or add 25min if we've jagged peak hour traffic)) 12) Park in school carpark and find reception. (2 minutes.) 13) An apt number...receptionist will have no idea where we ought to be or how to contact the only person who knows. Will waste time photocopying our working-with-children checks, printing out ID badges which we're not going to wear once we put our costumes on, and phoning various departments to confirm what we already know, that we're meant to be in the gym, and could have been set up by now if we'd just driven straight there. Still have to wait for the drama teacher to get out of their current class and come and repeat personally everything we've already managed to figure out. (35 minutes. It's now almost the half-hour call) 14) Need to reverse truck out of the carpark, go around the block, wait for the gardener to unlock the side gate, drive across the oval, and park only slightly closer to the venue than we were when we arrived. (10 minutes) 15) Inspect venue. Usually have to remove chairs that were set up where we didn't want them, negotiate staging that has been left in our way, remove library displays that will obstruct the audience's view, and/or wait for a basketball game to finish in the space we're supposed to be booked into. (If it's a canteen area, we might take time out to buy a cheese toasty, depending on how easily we can jump the queue.) Play 'find the hidden power outlet', which sometimes involves relocating the gardener so he can activate the fusebox. (8 minutes) 16) Unpack truck, carry stuff up stairs, assemble set, place props, set up sound system and check levels, deal with teachers/students/parents who wander in, re-choreograph any business that now won't work because of sightlines/pillars/ceiling fans/encyclopaedia shelving, possibly attempt to figure out the venue's lighting desk and point the badly placed lamps roughly in the vicinity of the stage, do similar mucking about with the heating/air conditioning to get it working if it's available, do emergency maintenance on broken set/props/costumes/amplifiers (gaffer tape!). Don't forget this IS your physical warmup! (Time allocated in schedule, 50 minutes. Actual time available, 13 minutes) 17) Grab costumes, and all cram into the single allocated toilet cubicle/sports cupboard/canteen kitchen to change. (2 minutes. First class has arrived early, usually travelling through this very room.) 18) Final 2 minutes before show goes up is spent seating the kids. And so is the next 9 minutes, as all the classes arrive in dribs and drabs, and teachers collect money and call the roll. 19) Show starts, 9 minutes late. 20) About 6 minutes into show, cue lawnmower/deputy's announcement/clarinet practice. There will also be an unforeseen wind-tunnel effect, requiring one of the cast to surreptitiously make it to the toolbox in the truck and back to tie down a dangerously teetering piece of set, all while changing costume and operating the next sound cues. This has been my preparation routine for, I estimate, around 1500 performances. For roughly another 1200 shows the routine was virtually the same, except it was the afternoon and I didn't get the wake-up shower. Cheers, Craig ~<8>-/====\---------