When it comes to rehearsing for a big event, many speakers think one dress rehearsal is sufficient. After all, they will have the chance to run through their whole presentation on the main stage—isn’t that enough? The answer is a resounding NO.
Speakers who jump straight to dress rehearsal are leaving a huge resource on the table: the Speaker Ready Room.
What is a Speaker Ready Room?
The Speaker Ready Room is a small space in an event venue where speakers can prepare for their big presentation before they rehearse on the main stage. The room is designed to support the speaker, sharpen their presentation, acquaint them with the technology, and allow them to better engage their audience during their live performance.
Why should you include a Speaker Ready Room in your next event, and why should your speakers attend? Here are three reasons why.
1. Get Time to Align on Message
Many event speakers are busy executives who may not be able to spend much time on their speeches until the last few weeks leading up to their event. Speakers may discover in rehearsal that their presentation needs to be fine-tuned, tweaked, or massaged. Sometimes, more radical restructuring may be necessary—but by the time the speaker is in their mainstage dress rehearsal, it can be too late.
At a large event we had recently, one speaker rewrote and redid all the slides right there on-site, in the Speaker Ready Room.
“At a large event we had recently, one speaker rewrote and redid all the slides right there on-site, in the Speaker Ready Room,” says Richard “Mank” Mankiewicz, director of production at Stagedge. “There have been a couple of other times when the speaker literally rewrote the whole presentation with the writer and graphic artist because they didn't like what had been done for them.”
The Speaker Ready Room lets speakers take all the time they need to get their message right.
2. Improve Presentation and Delivery
On the mock stage of the Speaker Ready Room, speakers can practice how they’re going to present and act on stage with a seasoned producer. For example, they have the opportunity to practice glancing between the downstage teleprompter monitor and their audience, transitioning their slides (clicker or cues?), and finetuning their cadence as they deliver important messages. The Speaker Ready Room allows speakers to make changes to their presentation before they are blocked, lit, and locked into A/V cues on the main stage.
It’s one thing to perform in front of an assistant at your desk, it’s a whole other thing to do it while you’re standing under the lights.
“It’s one thing to perform in front of an assistant at your desk,” says Aaron “Reno” Brown, Senior Technical Director at Stagedge. “It’s a whole other thing to do it while you’re standing under the lights. Simulating the real situation can be supremely valuable to help with timing and transitions: how you bring in the next people, how you enter and exit the stage—practical things that are often overlooked.”
Smoothing these more subtle delivery details in the Speaker Ready Room helps speakers shine and better engage audiences when they’re onstage.
3. Save Your Schedule and Your Budget
One of the chief reasons to have a Speaker Ready Room at your next event is that it can save event teams both time and money—lots of it. After all, the mainstage rehearsal is for more than the speakers. It requires a full crew of professionals, from visual and audio engineers to lighting engineers, a technical director, a stage manager, a camera crew, and more—whose job is to finalize the entire session’s look, feel, and flow before audiences arrive. Speakers who pause the dress rehearsal to make changes to their script, presentation, or delivery have a cascading effect on the event’s rehearsal schedule as they push back each subsequent rehearsal in turn.
We’d rather [speakers] spend the time in the Speaker Ready Room to get it right.
Unfortunately, this can balloon event budgets to their limit if a large stage crew needs to be paid overtime. Consider that while the Speaker Ready Room requires three or four staff members, the mainstage rehearsal has almost 30. “We’d rather [speakers] spend the time in the Speaker Ready Room to get it right,” says Joey Toppan, Senior Producer at Stagedge.
Providing speakers even just an hour in the Speaker Ready Room can yield big dividends for event teams who want to keep their show on schedule and on budget—and their teams in good spirits.
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Master the Material––Then the Performance
An important reminder for speakers is that the onstage dress rehearsal should be a dry run of their actual performance—not the place where they are finetuning their presentations. The Speaker Ready Room offers a dedicated, low-stress environment where they can master their material, while the onstage rehearsal becomes the place to master their performance.
Once speakers have used a Speaker Ready Room, they immediately realize the benefit and then want it for every show moving forward.
“Once speakers have used a Speaker Ready Room, they immediately realize the benefit and then want it for every show moving forward,” says Mankiewicz.
Even for the pros, a little rehearsal goes a long way.
The Speaker Ready Room is just one way that Stagedge helps our customers host events that are unforgettable in all the right ways. For more ways to help your speaker get the most out of their performance, read these five tips for helping your speaker shine. Or contact our crew at Stagedge for more information on how we give your speakers—and events—a competitive edge.
Stagedge: Creating Immersive Experiences for nearly 50 years is proud to be one of the nation's leading full-service event production companies dedicated to conceiving, creating, and executing immersive brand experiences through live, virtual & hybrid events, domestically, and worldwide.