Week Twenty-two

 07/03/2022

Its show week! Today we had to rehearse in the dance studio again as the musical theatre course are rehearsing in the theatre. The first thing we did as a warm up was to get in a circle and quickly say our lines without stopping. This was only meant to last a few minutes as its meant to be super quick. For us it took longer than the show is meant to be. It took us around 1h and 30mins to finish. This was because people still haven't learnt their lines and ques. It was a select of people each time. What made it even harder, was that every time it went silent everyone would loose focus and start to chat. It was really frustrating for the people who listened and knew when they needed to say a line. We had someone come in from the degree course who spoke to us and definitely helped some people to work harder. She had done this show about five years ago so she told us how it can be hard to learn the ques for the ensemble lines. She also talked to us about not having the drive to do this show because many people don't particularly like it. Since were doing blood brothers next, a lot of people are just excited to start that. Her group are also doing a show right after the one there doing now and are just looking forward to doing that, so she told us how she knows the feeling of wanting to get to doing a show they rather. After doing a rehearsal you could tell that people really wanted to get better. It was a big improvement from last week, but it still could get so much better. Today were meant to finish at 12:30, but since the show is in 2 days we stayed for a few more hours. We got some really good news that we could have the theatre! so we did one full rehearsal run through. It was better but could be way better in ques. Me and my yoga group came up with a few more ideas that we could do:

-Bring in a water bottle so that it shows that we are being active

-Bring in a bag with a wine bottle in it and cups so that we have something to do for when we stop doing yoga as the sun begins to set. 

-I also suggested bringing some crystals in as i feel like crystals links in with spirituality and meditation(It also gives us another thing to do for when we stop doing yoga

-We also sorted out a pattern to put our yoga mats in so that it looks better. 

After we rehearsed we had to get into groups. These groups were with the people we talk to in the show. We had to say and practise our lines together. Me and my group did it straight away as were really confident with them. We repeated them a few times then we began working on some ideas that we could use for this show (the ones listed above). After we did that I went to my marketing team and we did some work on it. Some people who had nothing else to do helped with the set. We created our tree today! The first thing we did for the marketing was follow a lot of people from the APTA group. This got us from 34 followers to 150. Whenever we can we will try to follow more people as it allows our page to grow. The second thing we did was make some drafts. We then let our teacher decide whether to post them or not. One that she did post was some behind the scenes photos of our show. We then put in the caption how many days we have left before the show, we put the link for the tickets in and the did a lot of # to get us trending. We made a few other drafts that show us working on the show and another showing some photos of some self tapes for the show. We finished at around 4:45 which was good as a lot of the things we did needed to be done. 

08/03/2022

Today we were not meant to be in the theatre but we were lucky enough to be in there all day! Today everyone knew there lines and ques which upend the performance by 100% It looked a lot more smooth and there were no unnecessary gaps. Today we had tutorial so we didn't get as much rehearsal time as yesterday. One thing we figured out for my yoga group was that we cant fit four yoga mats in. It took too much space up and it didn't look that good, so we decided that we were only going to have three and the two main leaders, me and Tamara, would share a mat. The other person who didn't bring a mat onto the stage would bring on a bag with all the things we needed inside. Today was also our first day rehearsing with the full set. It looked absolutely amazing, but since it was different it also meant we had to adapt to it more and change a few things. It wasn't hard and it was super easy to get a hang of. The things that we added on was fake leaves so that everyone could tell it was Autumn, a tree as its the main thing we need for the story, some branches on the floor to tell that its a park, a bin and a lot of trash on the floor for the park tacker has something to do and pick up whilst on stage. We still have a few more things to add on for the set to make it complete. Today we also came in out costumes. I think that this really helped people to connect to their character. It also really help to make the show look more realistic as we look like our characters. 

09/03/2022

Its show day! Today we didn't do any full rehearsals we just went around the group and people said which part they think should be worked on. Everyone said the end bit, so we worked on that. the main characters worked out where they are going to stand and how the fighting scene should be placed. We got some feedback so people separately worked on that. Something that the main characters had to work on a lot was where they are going to be going on and off the stage. This was because a lot of the time the people who were running away got of stage where the people who were trying to catch them got on stage. After we had lunch we began working on set again. we added in a platform for when the main characters need to go up the tree and then added some park posters such as no dogs and no littering etc. I and some others painted some things black again. We had lunch and then we began preparing for our 2:20 show. This show was free for anyone to come and watch. Even though this wasn't going to be watched by Tom who is going to help us win to preform in the national theatre, we still have to treat it the same. People are coming to watch and they deserve to enjoy it. Everyone was really nervous but we did it. It was way better than all of our rehearsals but I still felt that it hadn't gone that well. Everyone did a great job at acting, but I feel like there were many small things that made it go down a little more and if we improve those things it could look 10x better. The thing that went the worst was probably the bows. It felt like the most awkward thing ever. No one knew when they had to go on and bow as we never rehearsed it so it just looked super scruffy. This can easily be fixed by just going through it quickly later on. Tom the head of acting came to watch this show and told us how much we improved since he last saw us go through it and said how well we did which was super nice. One of our teachers had to go but she wrote down some notes for us, and our other teacher read them out to us. The main one was volume. Sometimes the audience couldn't hear what we were saying. Everyone knew that this is something we needed to improve on. The only feedback that I got given was that when I say a certain line the bullies begin to laugh and the audience cant hear what I say, so I should just give them some time to laugh then I'll say my line. Something that we got told that was amazing was that we had created an ensemble. Once we got given all the feedback we had a break for dinner. Then its our next show, the 7 O clock one. We went through the bows 2 times and then everyone knew what to do for it now. Everyone was a tad bit more nervous for this one since Tom was going to be watching. We did the show, and all I can say is that it was sooooo much better. Even though I was in the show I carefully listened and could tell that everyone thought about every thing they said and every action they took. I listened out to see if people took in the feedback and I'm pretty sure they did, including myself! I'm super proud for everyone, for how well they improved and how amazing they overall are! After the pref romance Tom congratulated us and talked to us about the show and asked us questions about what we found the hardest. We said learning the que lines, and he told us that everyone who has done this show said the same thing. He also asked us how we came up with the ideas of the characters who aren't named, and said how there really unique and he would never have came up with them. Before he left he congratulated us again. He was supper nice and supportive about it. In about a week time he is going to send a proper full feedback about the show to our teacher, and that will hopefully help us to improve the show and make it even better. 

Oh yeah and today we took a photo in character and in ourselves :)

10/03/2022

Its writing day again. As usual we started of with the six word stories

-How the world ended: Nature destroyed over the human race

-Whats your super power: You cant see me amongst earth

We then carried on our sick-com. We had to make a pyramid and answer some questions within a few words:

Catherine/ Jennifer Black

Uptight/ bold

Morbid made humorous

carelessness caused a miscommunication

Writing down the wrong date

Turning up to the wrong funeral

Reciting a speech about an unknown woman 

Clarification on the problem that Jenny had caused

On top of the pyramid we had to write down a title fir it but we couldn't decide, here are some of our options:

-The wrong funeral

-The invalid funeral

-The mourning of a stranger

-The phoney sisters

-The faulty sisters

-The wrong time

-The erroneous funeral

After we did this we then had to work on something else. We got given two tweets. The first one being:

-To @emilychang - after fifteen years of blissful happiness I would like to ask for your hand in marriage?

and the last tweet being:

- @maxkiesler - yes, I do!

We had to get into partners and fill in a conversation for the middle. We came up with this: