Ever wondered what it’s like to be in the 14/48:HS band? Here’s a breakdown to help you get a sense of what this wacky-awesome festival looks like!

Before the 48 hours officially start, you’ll come to the theater Friday night for a party! There’s activities to get to know everyone, then we go over some agenda items (like important people’s contact info) for the festival, do a meet and greet, and of course pull the theme for Saturday’s shows!

To start the day, you’ll arrive at 9:00 because band is the coolest and gets that extra hour of sleep, baby!!!!

Meet up with fellow bandmates and get assigned to your rehearsal space

After setting up equipment, band will begin a rough draft for the original song (sort of the theme song for the show).

Around a half an hour into the songwriting process your lovely stage manager will provide each band member with the seven scripts from each one act

Band will then skim through each script and come up with various ideas for play ons and plays offs (very rarely will you might pitch for something in the middle that’s usually a request from the directors) These ideas are mostly to help out if a director hasn’t had the chance to think about music yet.

After coming up with ideas the band will walk around with the stage manager, lighting designers, and sound designers to visit all seven shows and begin the plan for how they want their show to look, sound, etc.

After the full rotation the band will go back to their rehearsal space and from this moment on the day looks like how you want it to. (This means that how much music the directors wanted and how far you got on the original song earlier will dictate the rest of your day.)

Around halfway through the day someone will come remind you that you need to have lunch.

After a quick lunch, band has about a half an hour to finish things up until it’s tech which means re-setting up equipment on stage which will be your home for the next couple hours. At this point you should be done with the original song and the directors’ requests 

These next couple hours consist of working with all seven shows on music (if they have any) and how it will look during the show. Tech is a lot of sitting around and waiting, so this is the peak of band bonding

After tech is over band has about an hour to get ready for the show (that means eating a few snacks, getting changed, etc.) This also gives you time to figure out your set list that you play before the show

Then it’s showtime, baby!!!!  (The best part about being in band is getting to have the best seats in the house while watching the shows.)

If you are there the second day you will then help out with strike to make the space look even better than it did in the morning.

After strike you say goodbye to your band mates and head home to get some sleep!