Hell Week. It’s the (sometimes) mythological week that freshman fear before entering high school; the week in which the upperclassman more or less psychologically torture the newcomers. Unfortunately, every year I have to fear my own Hell Week; two of them, in fact.

But these seven days of pain aren’t related to the class or the school itself, really. It’s what those in theatre affectionately refer to the last week before the opening show as. And for all intensive purposes, it is hell. There will be tears; that’s a given. Someone will probably have a breakdown. There will most certainly be an injury or two. But, between the thunderous emotional events lie precious eyes of storm, those fleeting moments when friendships form, relationships grow, and scenic memories are made.

This last week of rehearsal is awful. But I always come back for more.

This last show, The Curious Savage, was, of course, no different. Those of you who actually went to see the show saw me, in all my moustache-ified glory, in what some people thought was our best play to date. In truth, it turned out quite nicely. Getting it all together was an ordeal, though.

This previous Hell Week officially started on Saturday , November 3rd. It was one of those days when everyone, cast and crew, works together to get as much done with the set as possible. Our director was taking it all surprisingly well, considering the fact that there was still much to be done, and that she had five classes to worry about besides the play. So the day was fairly good as far as “Tech” days go…

Until a student scratched her car on a Home-Depot run.

That in itself was a pretty bad start to the titular week, but things started going a bit downhill.

For one, people had a problem getting all their costume pieces together, or continuously complained about their existing ones (I’m still not sure if one of our actors ever got that belt); we were having some major problems with the set and its pieces and, to be honest, I was wondering if we’d be able to have all the lines memorized in time (the first two shows definitely weren’t word perfect).

Every day, after the bell rang, I’d go throw my Pokémon backpack on the auditorium seats, grab my stuff from my locker, and run upstairs for an hour to get all my makeup and hair styling done, run downstairs to help put together the set, run downstairs (more) to put on my 100.3 –degrees-three-piece suit and itchy-as-a-sandpaper-demon fake moustache, run back upstairs and try to finish my biography for the Playbill, get as much homework as I can, review my lines, chug as much water as possible, and put on my game face. It’s about five o’clock to the rest of you right now. To me, it’s showtime.

For the next two hours and fifteen minutes, I will act, sweat, scream, laugh, cry and bow. I will joke backstage, rush to change my costume, claw at my brain for lines, and improvise onstage for others’ mistakes. For the next two hours and fifteen minutes, I will be a part of theatre.

It’s for that time, it’s for those friends, and it’s for this school that I live through Hell Week over and over again. Perhaps I’m a glutton for punishment. Perhaps I just love those moments that much. No matter why, it’s always been worth it. So, those of you who are scared to join the play – well you should be. It’s an awful lot of work and an awful lot of time. But I promise you, you’ll love it. Go to Hell Week.