The Musicians: Diary Week 5

  Tuesday 18th May 2021 

As we are getting closer to the date of the show Kelly decided it would be a really good idea to make a rehearsal schedule, this will make sure we all know what we are doing each day and we can prepare before the day. Which will also help the flow of the rehearsals if everyone is prepared meaning we can get even more done in a day. Here is the rehearsal schedule:

Today we dedicated our rehearsal time mainly to scene 8 which we all dread, this scene includes almost all of the cast including the ensemble so there is a lot to this scene that we need to get right. It is a stressful scene because everyone needs to be on point as if anything goes wrong it could ruin the flow of the whole scene. This scene needs to look really busy as everyone is going past the crack as if its there first time seeing it. A lot of people just walk over it and don't actually care, some people are worried and some people even use it as a dumping ground! There is also reporters, YouTubers and so on. Therefore it is very hectic and can easily so we desperately need to get this spot on as early as possible and the energy needs to be high to help the audience understand the chaos that is happening. 

In between this scene we had to pop out and get our head shots taken by Adrian from the 1st year film and TV course. These were for our programs in The Musicians and I am so excited to see how they turn out!!

The next scene we went through was the very end scene where Bobby Brunt leads the entire town to find Fin and Maru. When we find them Bobby makes a speech about how she is going to fill in the cracks and save the town and everyone is rooting for her, until Maru and Asher interrupt with their speeches causing a bit of  commotion in the audience when everyone stops shouting because Asher sings a song to unite all the characters. We still have a few scenes we need to go over but the major scene are almost complete which was our first priority.

After lunch we went straight into rehearsal for The Musicians. We went through our usual scene first to adapt that to the new style of staging, we had to keep stopping and adjusting a few things to make sure it looked right. After a few run troughs we decided to video us doing that scene, here is a time lapse of that video:

After this Kelly had to leave but she left us with a challenge- she wanted us to create a scene where the characters are getting ready to go on to the stage before the performance. She had also brought in a load of bow ties for us to wear so we look more professional. We improvised trying to get bow ties on and calming each other down because there would be a lot of nerves. We would be feeling a lot of other emotions as well as nerves so we wanted to show this by moving around the space a lot and creating a lot of noise to give the audience the impression we are getting ready to perform. Most of this will be improvisation on the show days but we wanted to set out a basic idea of what we would do. Doing this show has made all of us a lot more confident with improvising as there is a lot of that needed in this play- we would dread doing anything to do with improvising before this and I am so proud of us for sticking with it and now I'd personally say we are actually really good. Here is a video of our first attempt at this new scene:

Then Kane came in and we decided to practice a brand new scene that we haven't gone through yet- the scene towards the end of the play where we surprise Alex with a guitar. He is really excited and thankful at first until he opens the case up and finds there is actually no guitar inside. The orchestra immediately starts to blame each other and Rosie is in utter disbelief until Double Bass (Daniel) runs on with the real guitar and everyone goes quiet and Alex is happy once again. This if the final joke of the show so we really need to make it the best it could possibly be. It was only right to go from this scene straight into the Pinball Wizard song where we need to completely let loose, it was a great way to end the day and the song has been stuck in my head since which isn't necessarily a bad thing. 

 Wednesday 19th May 2021

Today for our warm up we played 3 games as we wanted to make sure we were really ready for today's rehearsal, the games we played were Splat, Wink Murder and 3truths and one lie. We did a full run through of the play today so we could see exactly what parts needed more practice than the others. Kelly made notes whilst we were performing so we could have something to look back on and check if we are improving. Here are the notes below:

      My notes are-

•  I always need a reason to move around on the stage.
• Me and Kate need to always be aware of where each other are on the stage so we don't block each other.
• In my monologue on page 21 I need to look out into the audience more so it looks like I'm really imaging what I'm saying because it is supposed to be heartfelt. Also need to pay attention to the 'beats' that are wrote in the script.
  
• When me and Kate talk about being a poof we need to drag it out a bit longer and have more meaning behind what we are saying.
• Need to learn 'Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen' in Russian.

• Finally, I need to know who stands up when during the musical piece so it actually looks like I'm pulling them up.  

Most of this should come naturally the more we rehearse but to improve on these points I am going to make sure I've learned all my lines and know exactly what I should be doing at all times. I also think me and Kate need a little bit more practice together to get the important moments together across to the audience better. I have also spent a bit of time learning the Russian- it translates to 'Dobryy vecher, damy i gospoda'.

Next we showed Kelly what we created yesterday after she left- the back stage scene. This time I got to play as Rosie, I walk up and down the space worrying about the show then Sadie (2nd Flute) finds me and calms me down with some breathing exercises and helps me put my bow tie on. My favourite part of this scene is me and Sadie are the last 2 left of the stage and I give her hug which she is very shocked by then we run off ready to enter the actual stage and 'play' the music. To keep the flow going we carried on with the actual performance which went incredibly well! I think the scene before hand really prepared us to perform because it is exactly how it feels before we go on stage in front of an audience. 

The last thing we needed to go through for this part of the play was the lines we say throughout the music- we needed to work on the timing because we only have a minute to get through all of the lines before the music gets turned back up. So this will have to be something we concentrate on in tomorrows lesson. 

  Thursday 20th May 2021

Today we did some zumba for our warm up which was led by Sophie. This was a really fun and creative start to the morning and it made the energy really high before we even started rehearsal. Then we played a quick imitation game where we did impressions of each other and everyone else had to try and guess the person they were trying to act as. It was good to get the 1st years involved with this too which shows they are starting to get more and more comfortable around us.

 After this we continued with what we were working on yesterday, doing a run through of when we play the music now we have everyone. Everything ran smoothly so we moved onto working on getting the lines right. Having everyone in helped the lines flow better since we don't have to read in for other lines, we can fully concentrate on our own. We worked on the cues of the lines a few times so we could remember which line came after which so there was no pauses. We still need to practise the lines whilst playing the instruments which will be another challenge but we can tackle anything at this point.

Next we recapped the first scene with the orchestra again and realised that some of the line that we shared out don't actually suit the character they were given to. Some of the 1st years offered to take some lines which was really helpful because we were struggling to decide who to give them to plus it gives them more of a chance to show off how good they are. When we first gave out these lines we didn't know our characters as well but as we have gone on we started to understand our characters better so we knew when a line felt wrong coming from that character. The only thing that is really left to work on with this scene is the timings of the lines and the energy we have whilst speaking. 

The last thing we did for today was work on the spacing and emotions of the last scene before The Pinball Wizard song. Originally we all clumped around but we decided we would spread out more to make it look more natural. We spent some discussing how the characters would feel at this point because the concert was only the night before and they are that thankful for Alex they wanted to get him something. Their emotions would be running high at this point and with our reactions we wanted the audience to feel how we are feeling to end the play.