Shakespeare's Rehearsal Conditions

Right now, I'm on the travel portion of a Shakespeare-related travel course. We've been studying the theatrical context of Shakespeare's writing - what it took to write and stage a show in Elizabethan England. The theater we're visiting is a replica of an Elizabethan stage (yes, they had closed-roof theaters back then). During their Renaissance season, they stage shows similar to how Shakespeare's actors would have done it.
What does that mean for the actors?

1. Instead of getting full scripts of the whole show, the actors only get "cue scripts."  This means that the 12 members of the company get books with their lines and 1-3 words of the line before.
2. The actors have about 48 hours to do group rehearsals before the show goes up. If a show is supposed to open on Friday, this does not mean the actors put in 8 hours a day from Sunday to Friday. This means that they start rehearsing in group for Friday's show on Wednesday. (I assume the actors DO have their lines at least 80% committed when they walk in for rehearsal on Wednesday, though.)
3. The actors direct themselves. When we sat in for part of a rehearsal on Friday, one of the actors mentioned bringing in a bed, since the scene was in a bedroom, and her character "probably wouldn't sit on the floor" for one of her scene partners. The actors in the scene, after some discussion of How To Get The Bed Onstage, took the note and ran with it. (This resulted in an action-movie-style dive over the bed to aim a gun at someone.) The staging, the props, the blocking, the costumes - everything is up to the actors.

Obviously, this is a really intense process, and the theater we're visiting only invites actors who are experienced with the company to work in the Renaissance season. There's a lot of trust involved in the process of staging a show without a director; someone with my level of acting experience (i.e. have barely done acting since high school) just isn't cut out for doing this level of rehearsal intensity. (I was once called upon to be in a show with a few days rehearsal time; however, I had a director, I was in three or four bit parts, and everything was pretty much already staged, I just had to be told where to stand.)

In all, our stay here has been really cool, and I've enjoyed it immensely.