The Musicians: Diary Week 6

  Tuesday 25th May 2021

To start us off today Kelly taught us a new game called 'Catch'- in this game someone gets chosen as the 'catcher' and has to try and catch someone by getting someone to link arms with them around the person. If the person managed to duck before they lined arms they were free if they didn't they were out, we had to run  around a lot to not get caught and try to help the 'catcher' catch as many people as possible. This was extremely tiring game but i came about 5th so I was very pleased with myself. Izzy came 3rd and she ended up getting to choose the next game and she chose 'Wink Murder' so we had a couple games of that before starting rehearsal. Today in 'Like There's No Tomorrow' rehearsal we concentrated on the scene changes with the ensemble to tidy it up a bit and get the cues on point. We changed the scene changes for the family scenes- we had builders come in and put the furniture down then come and take it away once the house set is no longer needed. 

After lunch we did another practice of the lines during the music but this time when it went wrong it wasn't entirely our fault- we realised there would be a better place to turn the music down and where we turn the music back up again the music picks up dramatically and everything goes up by 100%. Something that we noticed was I needed to learn who stood up when to remember this I wrote the order in my book with help from everyone else so I could look through it at home too. The photo of the order is below:

After making a few more tweaks we performed the full concert without any interruptions and Kelly said it was making her emotional to watch as it's really starting to come together and look more real. Sophie an Kate ran through the first couple scenes and I got to be my other character and become part of the orchestra. We brought in coats and hats to make us believe we are really cold but I didn't have any hats but Izzy kindly borrowed me one of hers for the show. This was really fun and gave us a taste of what it will be like on the night- the only bad part of this costume is we will actually be really warm while pretending to be cold. This will take a bit of getting used to! Here are some of the photos me and Izzy got together: 

Kelly had also been to Asda before the lesson to get bits of costume we needed so we tried everything on to make sure we had the right sizes.So we spent quite a bit of time making sure everyone was happy with the fitting and we went into a dress rehearsal of the scene we made up to see if being in costume helps at all and it really did make a difference because we looked the part which helped us get into their head space better. 

 Wednesday 26th May 2021

This morning we got to go down to the theatre with Tom to rehearse Like There's No Tomorrow but first we did a warm up. First we did some normal stretches then some mouth stretches, a quick walk around the room to get to know the space and then we did some tongue twisters to warm up our voices. It was hard to remember which side of the stage I should be on as I'm so used to performing it in the dance studio. The feedback was that we needed to be louder and project our voices more as it is a larger space than what we are used to and we needed more energy to make it really come alive but we agreed that adrenaline will make the energy higher on the night. This is a list of when I need to come on the stage:

• Enter during prologue for the festival and the 'Great Mother' scene then leave when a strange sound starts.
• Come back for scene change to school (just walk across the stage talking)
• Walk across stage and take a flyer off them but overall ignore them. 
• Carry a cupboard (or something else) on with Declan as builders to transition into family scenes. 
• Walk over crack whilst on my phone (scene 8). 
• In the crowds for all of Bobby Brunt's speeches
• Final scene. 

Next we all went back upstairs to the dance studio to watch a bit of everyone's performances. We started by watching both of  the 1st years show 'stuff''. It was really interesting to see what they have been working on and it looks like they have been working really had and it has clearly paid off.

After this me and Kate performed our opening scene in front of everyone, it was nice to have an audience watching us but I could definitely feel my nerves getting worse but I tried to build of them and turn them into adrenaline so I could make the performance better. There is still a few things we need to work on with this scene like spacing and projection but overall Kelly and Tom were happy with our progress, after all we can only get better. Next we thought we may as well have an extra rehearsal of the concert part of the play whilst we have an audience and so everyone can have a go doing something in front of an audience. Me and Sophie switched over so she could see what it felt like being Rosie while being watched- she handled the pressure really well!

After lunch we were told that Nina and some of the makeup students were coming up to watch us rehearse a few scenes so we could test our new staging properly. Before this we quickly get changed into our costumes for the concert and went around various places in the college to get some photos of us together in costume. These photos were taken by Adrian again and he did a really good job because they turned out great! Here are a few of the photos: 

Finally, we were ready to perform in front of our second audience of the day! Sophie really wanted to rehearse the opening scene in front of an audience but her Alex (Kate W) wasn't in for today's rehearsal so Kate D offered to do it with her. We also showed them the concert piece before they had to leave but they said they enjoyed it and they were looking forwards to seeing the full thing. After this it was time to get changed and go home as we were done for the day. Although next week if half- term but we decided it would be very beneficial to come in on the Tuesday for Like There's No Tomorrow and Friday for The Musicians rehearsal.