I am considering advising our Community Theatre Board to change opening nights for our next season from Fridays to Saturdays.  We are finding our adult cast members (most of whom work during the weekdays) just exhausted by Friday and unable to give out the amount of energy required for a great opening night performance. 

They rebound on Saturdays and for the Sunday matinees (our best performance times energy-wise) but then by the next Friday are lackluster again.  Any other theatres have this problem? 

Originally posted by k8tt I am considering advising our Community Theatre Board to change opening nights for our next season from Fridays to Saturdays.  We are finding our adult cast members (most of whom work during the weekdays) just exhausted by Friday and unable to give out the amount of energy required for a great opening night performance.  They rebound on Saturdays and for the Sunday matinees (our best performance times energy-wise) but then by the next Friday are lackluster again.  Any other theatres have this problem?

Yes, in my experience Saturday's are normally the best performances, but it should not be necessary to give up your opening Friday. One of the directors that I work with a lot actually gives the cast off on the day before opening. This might seem scary to some directors, but I can say from experience that it works, a day of rest may actaully do more good then a day of rehersal at that point.

Another downside to shortening your opening weekend is that your reduce the amount of "word of mouth" that gets out about your show. The more people that see a show opening weekend, the more work of mouth that will help drive sales for the rest of the run.

Dan

Perhaps a dress rehearsal on the Wednesday instead of the Thursday would be better for a Friday opening.  One of our problems is that we don't have our own theatre space and have to rent, so we want to get the most out of our time.  We cram a lot into those few days before opening night.  Too much, maybe.

We do our dress rehearsal on Thursday and have opening night on Friday.  We pay royalties for the dress rehearsal, call it a "Sneak Preview" and invite another non-profit to use it as a fund raiser for their organization.  Some make a big dinner out of it and charge $25 a person others just put a premium on the ticket price.  In either case the other non-profit keeps all the money.  All it costs us is $60 for the royalties.  In return we get a good audience out for fun for our dress rehearsal which helps us a lot.

Our closing night almost always sells out so we started having closing night on Sunday night.  We have great houses on both Saturday and on Sunday.

Well, it would really depend on your personal situation.

Questions to ask....

Is your Friday night your best attended show?.....Is it the worst attended?.....Could you afford to lose your Friday night audiance?.....Is there another possible solution to the problem?.....Could you possible make Friday a "sneak peak" dress rehearsal and charge less?

Another thing you could do is get a piece of paper. Make two columns. Label them "Pro" and "Con". Lists the pros and cons of not having a Friday show. This will make it easier to make a final decision.

Hope I have helped!

Wishbone