It’s Mental Health Awareness Week 2025, so it felt like a good moment to challenge myself to write something to mark the occasion – so here is a practical look at how I try to embed mental health awareness into the culture of the rehearsal room, every single day.
Risk, Rest, Repeat – Directing with Mental Health in Mind
We’ve all been talking about safe spaces lately – and rightly so. In theatre, where the work is emotional, physical, personal, and public all at once, my provocation today is that safety shouldn’t be the end goal – it should be the start.
Because really, we’re not just trying to make safe spaces, are we? We’re trying to make brave spaces – rooms where people feel supported enough to take risks, speak honestly, try something wild, fail, feel, and try again.
But that doesn’t happen by accident. It takes structure – intention – thought – leadership – and a rehearsal culture that actively supports mental health, rather than hoping it takes care of itself.
Over the years, I’ve worked across all kinds of shows – big and small, brand new and well-established. And whatever the project, I’ve learned this: the culture in the rehearsal room becomes the fabric of the show.
Process is product. You can’t make bold, human, emotionally intelligent theatre in a room that doesn’t feel safe, curious, or honest. The way we rehearse – how we listen, how we risk, how we rest – all of it shows up in the work. So building a mentally healthy rehearsal space isn’t a luxury. It’s a foundation. At the core? People first. Extraordinary work should never come at the cost of the people making it, and creativity can’t flourish in a space that forgets we’re human.
Recently I’ve been working with the brilliant team at Soundcastle on our Mental Health First Aid training offer, exploring how organisations can embed mental health awareness into their day-to-day culture – not just as a response, but as part of how they operate.
And it got me thinking about what that looks like in my own practice. So, I’ve taken a moment to write down some of the ways I try to build mentally healthy, creatively brave spaces – not just in theory, but by actively designing the right culture into daily working life in rehearsal.
Start with Structure (Not Just Vibes)
Mental health-aware practice isn’t about being “nice.” It’s about putting systems in place that let people bring their full, bold, real selves into the room – safely.
That means:
- Clear daily calls and finish times
- Advance signposting to support. If you’re having a low day, you may not have the beans to go and find out who you can talk to and how to access support in the workplace. Make it part of the induction.
- Realistic planning (no last-minute call change chaos if we can help it)
- Transparent comms – nobody should need to be guessing about anything if we can give them the information.
Structure helps lower anxiety. When people know what to expect, they’re freer to focus on the work and not on bracing for the next surprise.
Check-Ins Are Part of the Work
We start each day with a check-in. It might be a quiet word, a weather report, a stretch, a shared breath, a warm up – something simple to arrive with. On large-cast productions, I will share the task with an assistant director, a stage manager, or the choreographer. It’s not always the same format, but it’s always there, even if the actors don’t know it’s happening.
Sometimes it’s in the schedule – when we were rehearsing Claus – an ensemble piece with everyone onstage all the time and nowhere to hide – we developed a particular check-in practice that became the heartbeat of the room (and thanks to Ned Glasier for this one). Each day, the full cast would gather in a circle, and we’d go randomly around the circle – one by one – asking and answering a single question: “How are you?” The only rule was to pause before replying. To actually take a breath. And to let the answer land.
There was no hierarchy. Someone different took the lead each day. People shared joy, grief, silence, overwhelm. It was democratic. Ensemble-led. Just like the show. (And actually – there’s nothing like hearing your ASM say out loud ‘I’m mentally good, but my legs ache from six hours of prop shopping yesterday’ to make darn sure they aren’t the one picking up the discarded teacups at the end of the day.)
One day, someone new to the industry came to observe rehearsals. At the end of the day, he said, “That bit where you made everyone share their feelings – yeah, that’s not really for me.” And it struck me how far we’d come – how natural this process had become to us all, how much of a support system for our whole selves the room had become – and how unusual it might still feel from the outside.
Check-ins build:
- Emotional literacy
- Trust across the company
- A sense of being seen – which makes the work better, fuller, braver
If we’re asking people to go to big emotional places, we have to know how they’re arriving. And no – I do NOT ever make anyone share their feelings. But if they are having feelings, they don’t have to lock them away.
Build in the Breaks
Scheduling – scheduling – scheduling.
I schedule EVERYTHING in advance. Including the sessions that say ‘tbc’ because really – CAN you schedule everything in advance? No. Yes. I do – and here’s how and why.
Writing a good schedule takes time. But I’d rather do that thinking in the calm before rehearsals than spend an hour a day reworking things when I’ve got rehearsal brain and decision fatigue. I work backwards:
- It’s a three-week rehearsal period.
- We need a stagger-through by the end of week two.
- That gives us week three to refine.
Once I’ve locked the first run, everything else falls into place. The team’s internal satnav gets set to ambitiously achievable within the timeframe – and we go from there.
I always leave room for the unexpected: catchups, things that shift, dance cleaning calls, the inevitable “we’ll need a bit more time on that.” Those hidden badgers will catch you out if you don’t plan for them.
And most importantly: I schedule the breaks. And then I stick to them. Even if it’s not finished. Even if “just five more minutes” might get us over the line.
It’s good for us to learn to stop at 90% and get comfortable with picking it up tomorrow. Rest is not just recovery – it’s a strategy. Sleep on it. Come back clearer.
The work’s not finished – and that’s ok. It will be – and in the meantime, there’s safety in routine. When rehearsals calls are set in advance and breaks are consistent, the cast and team can plan their lives around them – phone their agent, pop out and cuddle a baby, check in with a partner, take a moment of quiet.
That stability is part of the support structure. It’s not just time management – it’s about building a room that respects human rhythms – where people can do their best work without burning out. When people feel looked after, they work braver. Routine makes space for risk.
High Expectation, High Support
I expect a lot from people – presence, preparation, generosity, craft. But I’ve learnt that you can’t drop that expectation into the room and walk away from it – you have to match it with support, structure, and clear direction.
For me, “high support” doesn’t mean hand-holding. It means being available, predictable, honest. It means equipping people to succeed, making sure the tools are there, and never asking someone to leap without a landing.
This is in how you organise the work. You might know that you need to start with the hardest bit first so it can get easy over time (has anyone who’s done Legally Blonde ever NOT done the skipping in the first three days?). Or you might start with some easy wins so that the company build confidence by getting a few things in the bag immediately. I build the day so it loops back on itself – what we stage later often starts in the warm-up. Then you can say ‘remember that thing we did this morning..?’ and it’s already familiar.
We don’t get great work by dialling down the ambition; we get it by building a room where people feel trusted, held, and capable of flying.
This graphic by Vivid Leadership is excellent – Google to find other graphics that lay it out clearly and with different wording!
Quiet Hour (credit: Jemma Gross)
The last hour of the day is sacred – we call it Quiet Hour (odd, because it’s often anything but quiet!). Everyone stays in the room, but the energy shifts. It’s self-directed: a chance to get your reps in, run lines, get off book, try that prop moment again, check in with the company manager, or record the vocal you missed.
The room is calm, focused, adult. The director and stage management team use the time to prep reports or notes so that they can be sent off and the work doesn’t spill into the evening. The creative team are available for the whispered queries – so those don’t need to happen in the breaks.
Quiet Hour decompresses the room before people transition back into their real lives. Because let’s be honest – no one is truly productive between 5 and 6pm anyway. This is the best use of time.
Be Yourself (On Purpose)
I don’t ask people to be professional at the expense of being human. In fact, I’ve learned that the more people can bring their actual selves into the room – not just their curated, careful versions – the better the work gets.
That doesn’t mean oversharing or making the room a therapy space. It means recognising that creativity comes from people, and people come with context. You can’t separate the two.
So we make space for:
- Personality and humour
- Identity and difference
- Needs and boundaries
- Quietness, weirdness, and not knowing yet
I try to model this by showing up as myself: curious, fallible, listening. Not performing authority, not always knowing all the answers. Just holding the room clearly and consistently. And I try to make sure people know they don’t have to act like a version of themselves they think the team want – they just have to show up, do the work, and stay kind.
Trust the Company
If you’ve read this far, this might all sound like a lot. But actually, you don’t need to hold every single person every second of the day: if the culture is good, people start holding each other.
You’ll see it in warm-ups, in shared looks, in someone nudging their scene partner to breathe. That’s when you know the room is working.
Handing over responsibility – when appropriate – is part of building brave spaces. Let people surprise you. Let them solve something without you. The best rooms don’t revolve around the director. They revolve around the work.
The Culture Outlives You
Here’s the real test: what happens when you’re not in the room?
If the values disappear the second you leave for a design meeting, the culture wasn’t really embedded, it was borrowed.
But if people keep the vibe alive – if the company starts holding the line on breaks, check-ins, boundaries, kindness – then you’ve done your job.
That’s the goal. Not a perfectly behaved company. A self-sustaining one. A room where care has become collective – where safety is quietly built in, not bolted on, and everyone knows how to look after themselves and each other.
Because when we talk about mental health in the rehearsal room, we’re really talking about culture – how we treat each other, how we move through conflict, how we balance ambition with care.
And culture isn’t something you announce in the welcome meeting on the first day – it’s what you practice in the ordinary moments.
In how you hold the break.
In what you say when someone’s late.
In how the room feels on a tired Thursday afternoon.
If we want rehearsal rooms where people feel brave enough to risk, feel, fail, and create boldly… then we have to set them up in a way that makes that possible. I hope that none of this reads like hushed voices or scented candles or a vanilla approach – anyone that’s been in rehearsal with me knows that it’s often utter magnificent riotous joyful chaos – but it’s safe chaos.
People first – always.
Want to bring this approach into your own rehearsal room or organisation?
Soundcastle deliver Mental Health First Aid training and offer business wellbeing consultancy. Feel free to reach out to Soundcastle for Training, or directly to me for more chat about the theatre angle specifically!