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The professional warm-up

July 27, 2023   ·   1 Comments

By Keith Schell

Just before High School was let out for the summer in 1977, my attention was caught by a posted note on the bulletin board outside of the school administrative offices.

Our local arts center needed volunteer students to serve as ushers for the local live theatre performances put on over the summer stock season by professional actors. There was no pay, but in exchange for your efforts, you got a free seat to watch the performance that evening. Having performed on the stage of the local arts centre for a couple of sold-out public and high school plays in my younger years, I liked attending the theatre anyways, so that was good enough for me.

I tore off one of the supplied telephone numbers at the bottom of the page and made the necessary arrangements to be an usher that night.

I had a quick dinner at home and borrowed my parents’ car to rush back into town to be early for the evening performance at the local arts centre.

I was somewhat familiar with the backstage layouts of the building but, at the time, didn’t know that much about the seating arrangements or being in the audience of the theatre. Never having ushered before and not knowing quite what to expect, I got permission to go into the seating area early to get the lay of the land, so to speak.

When I opened the theatre doors at the top of the stairs to check out the seating area, I was suddenly face-to-face with a handful of professional actors in the aisles singing scales, warbling, leaping, stretching, and doing other assorted warm-up exercises in preparation for their performance that evening.

As surprised to see me as I was to see them, I quickly explained I was one of the ushers for the evening and just wanted to get familiar with the seating arrangements for the night’s performance. They were fine with that, and I just made a point to stay out of their way as they prepared for their evening performance.  

I tried to look around the theatre seating area to get the lay of the land but instead ended up watching the actors and actresses in quiet fascination as they went through their strenuous and taxing pre-show warmups, both vocal and physical. I honestly had no idea what was involved in their advance preparations before the curtain went up on their professional performance. When I performed in my comedy-oriented school plays in this same building, we simply got changed backstage and went out and did our performance and just hoped we didn’t flub our lines. But of course, they were just public school and high school performances put on for a sold-out house full of proud parents and friends of parents.

Watching the professional actors and actresses warming up, I began to realize that the more professional you became in your chosen field, the more you had to invest in your preparation beforehand to put on your best performance for the audience that evening.

In a way, I began to understand that in this situation, there was a kind of commonality between athletes and actors: Like professional athletes warming up their bodies in preparation for a game, professional theatre actors and actresses have to warm up both their bodies and their vocal cords beforehand, especially if they are doing some kind of musical theatre or bawdy physical type of performance. This is your craft and your living, and you have to approach it with a much more serious and professional attitude than you would for a mere High School performance.

So after witnessing the pre-show preparations of the summer stock performers that year, I guess the moral of the story is this: Regardless of whether the performance is artistic or athletic, a true professional takes pride in their chosen vocation and will do everything they possibly can to properly prepare their bodies for an optimal performance that evening.

All for the enjoyment and appreciation of you, the viewing audience.    

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