Building up to opening night

Sorry it has been a bit quiet round here, the last fortnight of rehearsals is where everyone really cranks up the energy to polish everything ready for this week.
Yesterday was spent in the theatre building the set, which is a combination of the tedium of painting huge amounts of rostra that form the raised areas of the set and some more ingenious constructions which I won't tell you about now so as not to ruin the surprise ;-)
Tonight we will be saying lines in the theatre for the first time, it won't be an acting rehearsal, but the technical which is there to ensure that lighting, entrances, sound queues, scene changes, costumes etc, ad nauseum, work. This is the most frustrating session for everyone, the actors have to stand around or skip parts of their scenes, the techies, no matter how good they are will be too early or too late on cues, the stage crew will find that the changes as written don't work and the director is just getting wound up.
Tommorrow is the dress rehearsal, everyone says that the dress should be run as if it is a real performance, but personally I can never get quite into that frame of mind, the sheer terror doesn't quite hit. However in all other respects it is a real show and unless things go utterly fubar it shouldn't stop and it is the point where the doctrine that you are on your own really digs in. The company runs without a prompt, it is up to everyone to do their best to get a friend out of a hole if they forget a line, miss a cue or get stuck in a loop. One of the hardest things to change is binning the "sorries" that pepper rehearsals in the studios, they are the worst thing you can do on stage if you haven't got out of the habit by the dress you are real trouble.