Backstage
Every morning, an empty theatre
Between the lorry pulling in at seven and the house going dark at half past eight, there is a whole day the audience never sees.
A tour is not a show that travels. It is a show taken apart and rebuilt, identical to the last, fifty times a season, in theatres that share neither the same dimensions nor the same fly grid.
The technical crew arrives before daylight. The structure goes up first: dozens of metres of aluminium truss bolted together on the floor, then raised in a single lift. Then come the painted cloths, the rostra, the machinery. A touring stage is built the opposite way round from how the audience sees it: from the top, from the cables, from whatever has to hold.
The afternoon belongs to the lighting. Every lantern is refocused, theatre by theatre: the lighting plot was written for the premiere, but no two houses give back the same thing. Meanwhile the corps de ballet takes over the stage for barre, then for a partial run-through, above all the lifts, because the floor changes, and for a dancer the floor changes everything.
Wardrobe sets up wherever it can: a corridor, a dressing room, sometimes a corner of the foyer. A hundred and forty costumes travel with the production, and there is always a seam to be redone that same day. At eleven at night, everything comes down again. The lorries leave in the dark for the next city, where the same day will begin all over again.