Week 23- Y2- 'Old Times' show week & Evaluation

 13/03/23

I can't believe our show is this week on Thursday! Most of us brought our costumes in today. Me and Gracie who plays older Belle were talking and we chose our costume together. She had already had an idea so I kind of chose mine to make it as similar as I can to hers. She is wearing black flares, a beige turtle neck and a beige trench coat. I tried to recreate it with what I've got at home, I also had to make it look like it's for a 14 year old. I have black flares so I'll be wearing that. I personally don't think that a 14 year old would wear a turtle neck so I just switched it out for a plain black top. I don't have a trench coat so I just chose something with the same colour which turned out to be this plaid beige shirt that I'll wear as a cover up. Then were both wearing pearl necklaces. I felt like there was one more thing that could tie the two characters together so I thought that we could have our hair in half up half down and a black bow on top. Gracie really liked the idea and I think that it helps to recognise the character plus I think that it suits Belle a lot! The understudy cast also have a show this Thursday so we took turns rehearsing today. We started off by doing three scenes each time. Today didn't go great which was so stressful. It just felt flat. Seeing the other cast made me stress out quite a lot, there's had so much energy and it just made ours look... well just not great. It was a rocky start today, but it honestly just really motivated my cast quite a lot. We really wanted to go through it again but we had no time so on Wednesday were gonna smash it. 

14/03/23

We have a little break for connections today. We all met at the edge bar to film the retirement party scene for 'Unbroken'. I learnt quite a bit about filming how it is to be extra for a film. I feel prepared to be an extra for a real film now haha. Since it's a part there's music, buttt we had to film it without music, so we had to dance in silence which is honestly so awkward. This is because the actors talking needs to be heard clearly. The music will then be added in the editing stage. We managed to film all the shots they needed which was great! 

15/03/23

We had our first dress run through today. It went sooo much better today! I think what also helped was that we now know where were coming on and off from and it's just more familiar now. We polished of our costumes today as well. We've all picked a colour to represent our characters so the Belles are wearing Beige, Zafer is wearing white, Stefi is wearing grey etc.

Weve also got loads of cool props to help us act out the scene. Kelly has also added this kind of dump think, it's a pile with loads of garbage in it. It's really helped us to act off of it for when the youngers go into the Ansten house. Tom also uses it for the scene where we run into the Ansten house for the first time as he gets a brick from to throw from it, and then again in scene 10 where Tom gets mad right before the 'mad tramp' comes in. He throws the boxes and chairs around, and omg it adds so much too it! Another prop that we have is a cast for when Belle breaks her hand which is great. We also have a fake heart and fake intestines for scene 8. They look so real too! I just love this show so much and I'm so grateful to be in it. Today we went through the whole show, and polished off the ending scenes. I can't wait for tomorrow, but I'm also extremely nervous. 

16/03/23

Show day!!! Our show starts at 7 and the understudy casts show starts at around 8/8:30 depending on how long we talk to Lucie for (Lucie is from the national theatre, who will give us feedback on what we can improve on to get to London).  We had a few hours to rehearse today so we focused on the 'hot spots'. The main one I wanted to focus one was scene 8, as this scene always lack energy. It went good when we ran through it. We also went through scene 10 to the end. We wanted to get the police officers scenes spot on, and also not look slow when coming on and off for them. i forgot to mention one thing we did for the police officer thing that honestly gives me goosebumps. When Ray is being questioned by the police he says one line, "Stop hassling me!", Kelly has done it so that both the younger and older Ray say it together, I can't say enough how powerful it becomes. We have a table specific for police scenes so that it's not in the way, but in the ending scenes were all on the floor and the police officers come to us as the spotlight hits. After this we did a whole run through. I kept on worrying about the quick costume change, but after going through it one more time today I felt confident. There's also another scene which changed last week which I forgot to mention. It's where they go through the window. We normally just come out of the front stage curtains and not go through a window, but weve changed it so that we use the police table as a window and it looks so much better. The photo for under the 15th is from that scene. 

Now the evaluation: This is in about every single show I do, I always feel like I could have done better. But I have no clue what. I felt like I was a bit bland, but i acted how I normally do. I just think that I'm hard on myself. Something did go wrong however. Scene 11 had gone wrong. It was the part where we all come on stage and sit/stand in front of the olders and the police officers and reporters come on stage. Zafer was mid talking and my police officer began her line thinking that it was her que, it surprised me but I just went with. This mixed everyone up so loads of lines got skipped and eventually we went back but it did just make people a little lost. I do think that I presented my lines well for that scene though! Even though we all knew that, that wasn't meant to happen we all kept our cool and tried to turn it back. Another scene I think could have gone better would have been the bulldog scene, it was good except my fall. No one ever pushes me haha so I have to throw myself to the floor, which honestly really hurts because I fall the wrong way, i just think that we can make it more realistic. Of course Lucie didn't notice that it went wrong as she doesn't know the script and the same with the audience, the only problem is that, it was recorded and that tape needs to be sent to the national theatre. There were quite long beats in scene 11 due to the fluff up. But except all these everyone really did do an amazing job, and I'm so proud! Lucie talked to us afterwards. She said that she loves the characterisation, and the story and how we told it. She didn't really say much she just asked us a lot of questions such as, how did we build the characters and our favourite part of the process. When we go back on Monday we will talk about what needs improving and what we can change. This just allows us to do an even better performance in Sunderland.