You don’t think about it at first.

It’s just part of the floor.

Until it moves.

In Les Misérables, the revolve isn’t decorative. It’s structural. Entire perspectives depend on it. Streets rotate into interiors. Scenes travel instead of cutting. The barricade drives on along a track that locks into the revolve so the scale shifts in front of your eyes.

It’s not a feature.

It’s the spine.

Multi-directional.

Left.

Right.

Half.

Quarter.

Back.

You stand still while it moves beneath you.

You walk against it, compensating so your pace looks natural.

You enter mid-rotation.

You sing while it shifts under your feet.

Heels on a moving surface. Breath controlled while the floor isn’t.

The audience sees fluid staging.

You feel torque.

Automation is precise. It moves exactly when programmed. Health and safety doesn’t allow improvisation. If it turns, it turns because it’s meant to.

The risk is human.

A step taken a fraction early. A misjudged count. A heel placed slightly off centre. Losing balance isn’t theatrical — it’s a micro-adjustment that must look intentional.

You learn the rhythm of it. You feel directional change through your feet. You know where the edge is without looking.

And then preview night.

The room is charged. Press. Celebrities. The sense that this is the first real public test.

The revolve breaks down.

Stops.

Not a mistimed cue. Not a human error.

A failure.

And when the revolve stops in that show, perspective stops. The giant barricades that drive on along track cannot align. The visual grammar of the production collapses.

The cast are pumped. Adrenaline high. You can feel the collective instinct.

We’ll make it work.

We’ll build it out of what’s on stage.

We’ll adapt.

Because that’s what theatre people do.

But this isn’t a missing chair.

This is the structural mechanism of the show.

Without the revolve, the barricade sequence cannot function as designed. Sightlines fail. Transitions don’t read. The visual language of the production disintegrates.

The producer makes the call.

Performance cancelled.

Announcement to a heavily celebrity-filled audience.

You stand there in costume, heart still racing from the opening energy that never fully released.

The revolve sits still.

That’s the thing about automation.

When it works, it’s invisible.

When it stops, everything stops with it.

The audience never sees the mental maths required to stand on moving ground and make it look steady.

They don’t see the core strength, the balance adjustments, the timing recalculations.

They don’t see how much of the storytelling depends on that motor turning beneath your feet.

They see spectacle.

You feel machinery.

The revolve doesn’t care how ready you are.

It moves when it moves.

And if it doesn’t—

The entire world above it pauses.

Until it can turn again.

You walk into a rehearsal room and the layout is different.

Chairs in rows.

Music stands.

A full orchestra where there’s usually a piano.

In front of them, a line of microphones.

You don’t face the room.

You face them.

And the Musical Director.

Sitzprobe is the first time you hear the full score live, with the company singing. No staging. No movement. No lighting. Just sound.

Full orchestra.

Not reduced.

Not synthesised.

Strings. Brass. Woodwind. Percussion laid out properly.

You’ve been rehearsing with a piano for weeks. Clean. Functional. Precise.

Then the first downbeat lands.

And it’s not clean.

It’s huge.

You hear every instrument. Every bow change. Every breath in the brass. Percussion that feels physical rather than supportive. It’s raw in a way it never quite is once you’re in the theatre.

On stage in the actual building, the sound can feel distant. You rarely get foldback. You’re often watching the MD closely because certain entries are exposed and tricky. You’re relying on the baton, not the swell.

But in the rehearsal room, it’s direct.

You feel it in your chest.

Your heart rate lifts.

It’s one of those rare moments where you stop thinking about marks and traffic and costume plots and you just register what’s happening.

This is what the show actually sounds like.

You’re suddenly aware of the level of musicianship in front of you. Players who make the score breathe in a way the piano never could. The detail is exposed. The attack sharper. The dynamics wider.

And then the principals sing over it.

That’s the second shift.

You’ve heard them in rehearsal. You know their voices. But against full orchestra, something else happens. The scale changes. The sound lifts.

There’s a moment where you think, quietly, this is ridiculous.

In the best way.

Tempo doesn’t usually change dramatically. It’s been set. It’s agreed. Though you know from watching the show later that different conductors bring slightly different weight. A musical supervisor might favour a fraction more drive. Another might let something breathe.

It’s a balance.

But the first time you hear it all together — orchestra and cast in one room — it’s overwhelming.

Not chaotic.

Overwhelming.

You’re standing at a mic in a rehearsal room, no costume, no set, no lighting.

And it already feels like an event.

There’s something raw about Sitzprobe. No spectacle. No distraction. Just score and voice.

You’re aware of how lucky you are.

Not in a sentimental way.

In a practical one.

You are inside something substantial.

By the time you reach the theatre, it becomes controlled. Balanced. Mixed. Shaped for the space.

But Sitzprobe?

That’s the first time the engine turns over at full power.

And you’re standing right in front of it.

I was never a swing.

And I don’t think I could have been.

It’s harder than people think.

In a company of thirty-two or thirty-three, there were eleven male ensemble tracks.

Eleven.

When I did the show, there were two male swings covering them.

Two.

On paper, that looks efficient.

In practice, it means holding eleven separate choreographies, traffic patterns, harmonies, quick changes, prop plots and spatial maps in your head — knowing you might not physically step into one of those tracks for weeks.

Or months.

And still being expected to execute it cleanly at 7:30pm.

Swings don’t get repetition the same way the rest of us do.

If you’re in one track nightly, muscle memory builds quietly. You stop thinking about corners. You stop calculating traffic. It sits in the body.

A swing doesn’t live in one track.

They store multiple.

If we were doing an understudy run, that was their rehearsal too. If someone moved up to cover a principal, the swing would step into that person’s ensemble track. That was often their only chance to physically refresh it.

Otherwise?

They’re side stage.

During the show.

Watching.

Not casually.

Checking someone’s track. Noting spacing. Marking small adjustments. If something changed in a clean-up rehearsal — a diagonal altered, a lyric shifted, a new cross added — they needed to log it.

Because they are the backup system.

And mathematically, two swings for eleven tracks doesn’t always hold.

I remember nights when people were off and it was physically impossible for two male swings to cover everything. Other cast members doubled up on bits. Picked up traffic that technically wasn’t theirs.

It worked.

But it shouldn’t have been necessary.

Apparently there are four now.

That tells you something.

The biggest misconception is that swings are “just ensemble who cover.”

They’re not.

They can be swings and covers simultaneously. My swing was also second cover for Marius while I was first. So they weren’t sitting around on a show day. They were learning principal material, monitoring ensemble tracks, attending every rehearsal, adjusting to changes.

They are always ready.

An understudy can be called at any moment.

A swing can be called for multiple tracks at once.

That’s a vast amount to retain.

And unlike a principal cover, they don’t get applause for stepping in. They’re often invisible to the audience.

The brain strain isn’t loud.

It’s constant.

Standing side stage during a performance, tracking someone else’s route in case tomorrow it’s yours.

Not watching for enjoyment.

Watching for retention.

They are part of the company in a way that’s easy to overlook.

Without swings, people would work through illness.

Without swings, the structure collapses.

I wasn’t one.

But I watched them.

And it’s not for the faint-hearted.

I took a job at Butlins as a Redcoat in between West End contracts.

It wasn’t a grand career move.

It was a detour.

It was also a refuge.

I didn’t know what direction I was taking. I just knew I needed distance from the pressure and the politics. Butlins felt smaller. Contained. Manageable.

At the time, it felt like stepping sideways.

In hindsight, it was exactly where I was meant to be.

Because that’s where I met her.

She had been a dancer.

She understood performance.

She understood structure.

She ran a tight ship — but she was kind.

She said it as it was. No sugar-coating. But she respected you. She nurtured. She built a team that was genuinely fun to work in.

She could play tough. Especially with the younger ones. I was older, so I wasn’t intimidated. I saw the fairness underneath it.

Kindness. Leadership. Stability.

In a period where I felt untethered, she was structure.

Last Thursday, I sent her a long message.

She was already very ill.

I knew the end was near. I had been told she would be going onto morphine. That once they increased it, she likely wouldn’t come back from it.

She sent a video back.

Struggling to breathe. People around her gently telling her to stop. “Okay, that’s enough.” Trying to protect her energy.

But she kept going.

She wanted to finish.

It was the most wonderful message from a woman who knew she was dying — and still wanted to give something back.

Yesterday, she passed away.

Way too young.

Immensely sad. Immensely unfair.

Over the years, others have gone too.

Actors I’ve worked alongside. People you shared dressing rooms with. People who once felt permanent because they were central to that chapter of your life.

When someone from theatre dies, it hits differently.

You don’t just lose a person.

You lose a rehearsal room. A corridor. A shared joke before places. A version of yourself that existed when they did.

And you ask yourself quiet questions.

Was I close enough? Did I give enough? Did I really know them?

Most of the time, the honest answer is no.

You know the programme bio. You know the roles. You don’t know the full weight they carried.

In theatre, we perform beside each other deeply — but rarely fully.

There’s something strange about this industry.

We think shows last forever.

We think careers last forever.

We think there will always be another contract.

But they don’t.

And there won’t.

You can be in a major West End show and still be gone from the industry quietly a few years later. No headline. No ceremony.

The stage carries on.

It always does.

Butlins felt like a pause in the “real” career.

A detour.

A refuge.

Something temporary before the next big thing.

What I didn’t realise was that the detour would give me something far more lasting than another credit.

It gave me her.

A leader who showed that you can be firm without being cruel.

Structured without being rigid.

Strong without losing humour.

And it gave me a final message — one she insisted on finishing — when she could barely breathe.

In theatre, we think a career lasts forever.

It doesn’t.

The applause fades. The contracts end. The buildings outlive us.

What lasts — if we’re fortunate — is the way someone steadied you when you needed refuge.

And sometimes you only understand the weight of that… when they’re gone.

Tech Week is not glamorous.

It is not a triumphant run-through with lighting magic falling into place.

It is stop.

Start.

Reset.

Again.

You don’t perform the show.

You build it — one technical moment at a time.

Cue to cue is the core of it. You are not running full scenes unless asked. You are jumping from lighting state to lighting state. From automation move to sound cue. The emotional arc of the story is irrelevant. What matters is whether LX 42 fades at the correct count and whether the revolve clears before the blackout.

From the auditorium, it looks surgical.

From the stage, it’s disorientating.

The Director calls out from the stalls:

“Okay, jump to page three… ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’”

There’s a pause.

What page three? Of which scene? Where are we in the timeline?

You rewind mentally at speed. You find the line. You step into it cold. No build. No lead-in. Just emotional mid-sentence.

You deliver it.

“Stop. Again.”

Reset.

Back to your start mark.

This is where it begins to tax the brain.

Actors build performance through flow. Through accumulation. Through listening and response. Tech Week removes that continuity. You are constantly braking and accelerating. Entering heightened scenes without momentum. Dropping them halfway through because a follow spot missed a pickup.

“Reset.”

Back to your spike.

“Again.”

You’re not performing full out unless asked. You conserve voice. You mark choreography. You half-speak lines to protect stamina. But the brain doesn’t mark. It fires fully every time.

It’s the mental gear shift that exhausts you.

The building, meanwhile, is assembling itself.

Lighting is plotting levels. Sound is balancing frequencies. Automation is testing travel distance. Stage management are tracking cue numbers against script margins. Every department is calibrating.

You are a moving variable inside that system.

Sometimes you’ve barely completed a sentence before:

“Hold.”

A note is given. A cue is adjusted.

“Okay, we’re doing that again. Reset. Back to the original costume.”

You step off. Shoes back on. Jacket swapped. Wig checked. Standby again.

It can take forty minutes to perfect twenty seconds.

That’s Tech Week.

The slowness is deceptive. You are on stage for hours, but rarely travelling more than a few pages at a time. Scenes are dismantled into fragments. Emotional beats are interrupted by technical necessity.

And yet it’s precise.

The boredom people assume doesn’t quite describe it. It’s more strain than boredom. You are hyper-alert, but repeatedly halted. Ready to go, then told to stop. You hover in a state of half-performance all day.

Lunch breaks feel short.

Evenings feel longer.

But by the end of it, something solid has formed.

The lighting fades where it should.

The sound lands cleanly.

The revolve clears.

The blackout hits silence.

Tech Week is not about inspiration.

It’s about alignment.

The audience will see seamless storytelling.

They won’t see the twenty resets. The costume swaps backwards and forwards. The Director shouting page numbers from the dark. The actor standing on a mark thinking, where are we now?

They won’t see the stop-start construction that built the illusion of flow.

When the show finally runs without interruption, it feels almost luxurious.

Because for a week, you’ve only known:

“Stop.”

“Reset.”

“Again.”

And somewhere in that repetition, the machine locked into place.

You don’t discover a quick change on the night.

You know about it long before the show opens.

In a long-running production, quick changes are pre-ordained. Timed. Mapped. Rehearsed. If it’s tight, it’s been designed that way. Nothing is accidental.

You’re told where you need to be. Exactly which wing. Exactly which side of the set. Exactly how many seconds you have before you’re visible again.

The only variable is your body.

If I’ve got a muscle knot. If something won’t bend the way it usually does. If speed isn’t there. I’ll flag it early and ask for extra help. Because quick changes rely on rhythm. If one person is off, everyone feels it.

Side stage, it doesn’t look theatrical.

It looks like a pit stop.

You hit your mark and the team is already there.

If it’s particularly fast, there might be three dressers.

No shouting. No panic.

Just sequence.

Trousers down.

If it’s a dress, zip undone and out in one movement.

Shoes kicked off — not thrown, just displaced. One dresser clears the used costume immediately, folding or lifting it away so nothing tangles your feet. Another is already guiding your arms into new sleeves before you’ve fully stepped out of the previous look.

You don’t “get dressed.”

You are dressed.

Arms are directed. Fabric is pulled into place. Fastenings are secured by hands that know exactly where the hook sits without looking.

A third dresser might already be at floor level, cupping the new shoe onto your foot before you’ve even planted it properly. Heels pressed in. Strap done. No wasted motion.

Someone passes you your water bottle. A sip. Not a break. Just maintenance.

Wig off.

New wig on.

Pinned. Secured. Checked by touch rather than sight.

You get a mirror for half a second. Not to admire. Just to confirm alignment. Collar straight. Hairline right. Mic cable sitting properly.

And then you’re gone.

The audience hasn’t seen you for thirty or forty seconds.

In that time:

An entire costume has disappeared. Another has been built onto you. Shoes changed. Wig replaced. Water taken. Fastenings secured. Old track cleared.

And when you step back onstage, you look relaxed. Unhurried. As though nothing happened at all.

That’s the point.

Quick changes aren’t chaos.

They’re choreography without applause.

They only work because of trust. The dressers know your body. Your timing. Which shoulder drops first. Which arm you offer automatically. You learn to move economically — no dramatic gestures, no hesitation. Every movement is practical.

It isn’t glamorous.

It’s coordination.

The audience sees transformation.

Backstage, it’s synergy.

A small team working in rhythm so the illusion never breaks.

The show continues.

You don’t always find out the same way.

Sometimes it’s scheduled. Typed neatly onto the company sheet. Your name printed in the principal column for that performance. Clean. Official.

Sometimes it’s 1:15pm and the phone goes.

That difference matters.

Advance notice allows preparation. You sleep differently. Hydrate properly. Walk the track in your head over breakfast. Think about stamina. Think about where the quick changes sit. You arrive measured.

You send the text.

“Hey Mum, I’m on tonight……”

Late notice shifts the internal rhythm. You start running entrances mentally. You revisit harmonies. You calculate costume timings. You think about spacing that normally belongs to someone else.

Both are workable.

They just feel different.

On the day you’re understudying, the building adjusts — but not theatrically.

Call time is earlier. There may be a brush-up rehearsal. Spacing is walked. Scene transitions are checked. Fights are marked properly. Costume is checked thoroughly. Wigs are secured carefully. Mic placement is double-checked.

No one is offering encouragement.

You know your track.

It’s a job.

Stage management confirm cues in rehearsal at performance pace. Lighting checks focus. Sound listens to balance. The Musical Director watches the first number closely.

The system recalibrates around you.

If you’ve had notice, you pace your energy across the show. If you haven’t, you work scene by scene until it settles.

Backstage, the tone is slightly heightened.

Not emotional.

Concentrated.

Dressers are ready earlier. Stage management are more present on headset. Everyone is simply attentive to joins and timing.

In dressing rooms just before Beginners, someone might say, “Have a good one.”

Not sentiment. Not ceremony.

Just acknowledgement.

At 7:25pm, if you’re a Beginner, you’re side stage. In costume. Mic live. Ready.

The audience sees a performance.

Backstage sees a structure doing exactly what it was built to do.

Understudies aren’t disruption. They’re engineering.

Blocking is logged. Harmonies are charted. Quick changes are plotted. Tracks are documented long before they’re needed.

An understudy night isn’t unusual.

It’s proof the machine works.

By the time you make your first entrance, the monitoring fades. The rehearsal thinking stops. You’re not “covering.”

You’re on.

And somewhere earlier that day, you sent a message that made it official.

“Hey Mum, I’m on tonight……”

The audience sees a show.

Backstage sees the structure flex — and continue.