Little Shop of Horrors: Day 27

Today, we had our dress rehearsal. It started really well, everyone knew what they were doing and knew their lines. Which was brilliant. The dialogue seemed to flow and we improvised where necessary. I felt that the singing was good in solos also. However. Some chorus numbers did seem flat and the energy seemed to die away the more we performed. Feed me was a bit of a disaster as we only had the piano for it, meaning it sounded completely new to us and we didn't know where to start, I tried to carry on best I could and felt that I carried out my bits rather well. We stopped at the end of act 1 to sing numbers with the piano. In addition, Mushnik and son seemed a lot slower than normally, so we wet through that too. All I can think of is that the show just needs a lot it's energy and character. Two or three people being over the top isn't enough and throughout the run through today I felt as if the show was flat, which is extremely disappointing, as we have all worked hard on this.

Little Shop of Horrors: Research

The whole idea of Little Shop of Horrors can be traced to 1960, when director, Roger Corman, set about producing an American style black comedy based on the writings of author Charles B Griffith. The original film has a similar plot to the 1986 remake as well as the stage musical. Where a man eating plant finds its way to earth and sets about world domination, with help from florist assistant, Seymour Krelborn. It is said, that the inspiration for the story line came from the 1932 film, "Green Thoughts" by John Collier, about a man eating plant. Although, there is also speculation that some inspiration came from Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Reluctant Orchid."

The original film was produced under the title of "The Passionate People Eater" on a budget of $30,000 and filmed in just two days. The original cast included Jonathan Haze as Seymour, Mel Welles as Gravis Mushnick (now Mr Mushnik) and Jackie Joseph as Audrey.

From Screen to Stage:

As the film became more and more popular during the 60's and 70's, it paved way to the creation of a musical. Composer Alan Menken, very famous for his work in Disney, and writer Howard Ashman were the brains behind the operation.  Menken composed music in the 60's style to fit the time era. The musical had its off Broadway première in 1982 and ran for 5 years, proving to be the highest grossing off Broadway show in history.

The Differences from Screen to Stage:

• The musical is based on the basic concept of the 1960 film, although it changes much of the story.
• Firstly, the setting is moved from Skid Row in LA to Skid Row in New York. 
• Seymour's Jewish mother is cut in the musical, with Seymour becoming an orphan in the care of Mr Mushnik.
• The characters of Mrs. Siddie Shiva and Burson Fouch are also omitted, although Mrs. Shiva is mentioned in the musical
•  The dental patient, originally played by Jack Nicholson is not in the musical but is in the 1986 film, played by Bill Murray.
• In the musical the dentist, Orin Scrivello, is killed by suffocation from his gas mask instead of being stabbed with a dental instrument in the film. 
• His abusive relationship with Audrey is added to the musical to give Seymour a motive to attempt to kill him, although does not. 
• In the film, Seymour murders several innocent bystanders, and Mushnik tricks a thief into looking for money inside the plant, which eats the thief. In the musical, Seymour tricks Mushnik in the same way when Mushnik plans to turn Seymour over to the police after discovering a dentists uniform in the bin.
• The two neighbourhood girls in the film are replaced in the musical by a chorus of three girls, Crystal, Chffon and Ronnette (Although we have a Ronn!), named after 1960s girl groups.
•  In the original film, the plant is called Audrey junior, in the musical it is called Audrey II.
• Perhaps the biggest difference is the ending. The musical ends with Orin, Mushnik, Audrey and Seymour all eaten by the plant, and the three girls report that Audrey II's progeny continues to consume people. In the 1960 film, Mushnik and Audrey survive, and the plant's flowers bloom with the faces of its victims, including Seymour. The musical references this ending in its finale, in which the Plant's four victims' faces are seen in its blooming flowers, which we have had to cut out, as we cannot think off a way to do this.

Little Shop of Horrors: 1986

In 1986, Director, Frank Oz recreated the musical into a film version. It starred Rick Moranis as Seymour, Vincent Gardenia as Mr Mushnik and Ellen Greene reprising her role from the Off Broadway show as Audrey. Steve Martin appeared as the Dentist with a cameo from Bill Murray and Levi Stubbs lending his voice to Audrey II. 

 The 1986 film follows the plot of the musical closely but cuts the songs "Ya Never Know", "Mushnik and Son", "Now (It's Just the Gas)", "Closed for Renovation" and "Call Back in the Morning"; the ending also cuts "Finale Ultimo (Don't Feed The Plants)". 

One main change is a  new ending, in which Seymour is able to save Audrey then, in typical Hollywood style, marry and move to the home of her dreams, but a small Audrey II-type bud is seen in their garden, which suggests a possible spread of the alien plants.

 An ending more loyal to the stage version was also filmed, in which the plant eats Audrey and Seymour and ,goes on a  rampage through New York. However, it was received poorly by test audiences, and the upbeat alternate ending was used for the theatrical cut.

Since the 1986 film, an animated series was produced in 1991, with a 2003 reintroduction of the musical on Broadway and a west end appearance of the show in 2006-2007.

Little shop of horrors: Day 26

Today, as we are one week from the show. We went for our first full run of the show. I felt that we needed this a lot. Seeing as we had only practiced act 1 and 2 separately, it felt satisfying to be able to tie the story together. I went the whole time without my script and needed prompting only once. So, personally, I was very pleased at how confident I was with my lines. I think it all went very well. Everyone knew what thy were doing and there were minor errors throughout. So I think we can be pleased. One problem though. Remained to be closed for renovation, where the timing of the song changed and didn't fit what we are used to. In addition, myself and Meg need to go over call back in the morning with the music as the vamp we used was horrendously difficult to sing along to. Again, as I always say, live music would be a great help for us in terms of timing. The only thing we can do, as performers, is to know our songs perfectly.

Little shop of horrors: Day 25


We ran act 2 again today. I think it went very well again. I knew what I was doing, all that needs to be done is to perfect our lines and make sure our timings in our songs are spot on. Again, it would help once we can get on the stage and practice with props and the plant !

After our run through, were given notes on our performance. For me in particular. I was asked to make sure that I'm not gazing off into some mid distance when I was singing. So since I've been working hard on trying to interact with others around me whilst singing. To try and act out the song at the same time and almost live in the song.

Little shop of horrors: Day 24

Today, we performed act 2 again. This time though. I went as much as I could without a script and realised I knew more than I thought, albeit with a few hiccups and blanks here and there was able to think on my feet if I went wrong to try and get myself out of trouble. Again, the main problem was call back in the morning, as the backing track was extremely difficult to pick up, hopefully, with our live band, it will be easier to know when to come in and when not to. I was extremely pleased with how much I remembered and without my script I had a much greater range of movement.

Afterwards, one of our new teachers came to work with us on harmonies and singing. She sat us down and listened to us perform skid row before asking us to perform with more emphasis on our face and shortening the down towns. Making for a sharper more powerful opening number. She also worked on the group harmonies, giving the song more substance and power. We did the same for ya never know. I think we learned a lot from that session. Especially how our facial expressions effect our diction and the song as a whole.

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 23

Today we began with Act 1 as we hadn't worked on any rehearsals for a while whilst we designed the set and worked on the more administrative side of the show. As we've been saying for a while, the show is in a very good state and ready to go. The only main issue is line learning, personally I feel that I'm getting better with lines in every practice. But I think as a group, our main target is to make sure we get the lines learnt as that will allow us to move around a lot more as give the performance our own creative edge, without the rigid structure of the script and immobilisation holding the script gives us. Throughout, I was making an effort to learn my lines as I performed but did encounter a nosebleed during Mushnik and Son, which stopped us from practicing. So i think, that is one musical number that we need to work on.

When we finished performing act 1 we moved into the hall and carried on working on the set, plant and whatever needed doing. As I'm in charge of the programme I continued working on that and organising the structure of what I wanted to put in it. Again, everyone knew what they needed to do and got on. Leading to it being another productive lesson.

Little shop of horrors: day 22

Today we decided that the set and behind the scenes actions needed to take place. This led to us dividing the class into teams. I took the lead on the marketing team where other categories included tech, box office, front of house and so on. In my team, we were in charge of designing posters, programmes and advertising the show. I decided to lead the programme section whilst Danny lambert designed the poster, which was very impressive. Once the poster was finished he emailed it to me to use as the front cover of the programme. In the inside I decided to write the opening lines to the play as I thought it was a good synopsis to have and have very little away. The cast I decided to do in order of appearance as it immediately eradicated the feeling of a hierarchy in the play.

I think the whole day ran very efficiently. Everyone got on with what they were doing, and helped each other where they could. Meaning lots got done very quickly. I think a lot of work still ha to go in to getting the set completely finished as well as Audrey II.

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 20-21-22


The previous two days, we took a break from rehearsals to work on the set and Audrey II. And to get any odd jobs that needed doing. As there is a lot to do !

Today, we were able to get one of our teachers to come and play the piano for us and help us get the musical numbers in order. We sang through all the musical numbers and looked at our timing. However, as he had only seen the music about half an hour before, he was still learning it, so we spent time getting the music right, however I thought the piano was far better than the backing tracks and have us much more flexibility as performers. In between songs we tried to paper mâché the Audrey 2 further with coloured paper, and it is now looking much better with colour.

Little shop of horrors: Day 19

Today, we began with another warm up (surprising, isn't it) before setting with the beginning of act 2 and running everything until the end. I think it went well again. I think we all knew that act 2 is perhaps our weaker side so worked on it. Although I had my script in my hand, I tried not to look at it as much as possible and made a conscious effort to learn them whilst rehearsing at the same time and I feel more confident as a result. 

Also, we were given the missing pages to the dialogue running into supper time, which was helpful as we don't have to try and make up a bit of dialogue! So we ran the whole scene and it made sense!

We experienced a few problems with the meek shall inherit in terms of wording and movement. However these were only minor hiccups and were ironed out with a sing through and step by step movement run through before we performed it properly. Furthermore, we found suddenly Seymour a little more difficult as we couldn't pick out the harmonies, something we will have to address when we have our live musicians to tell us what the harmony is. 

That aside, it was another good rehearsal. I'm finding my character more comfortable to perform in for greater periods of time and feel as if i know the role much better than when we started. From here, it's all about perfecting scenes now and trying to set it on stage. 

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 18

As always we began with a warm up before running through "now it's just the gas" to make sure that we all knew what we were doing at the right time and practiced this to make sure everything was in time and looking good.

We then moved onto running all the musical numbers in the dog as well as dialogue leading into it to see how far off the dances and words we are. Which appears to be rather good. And again, to perhaps tweak and polish parts here and there.

In addition, in my frees I continued to work on making the Audrey 2, which is beginning to take shape. As well as staying after school to work on it.

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 17

Again, we began with a warm up as it is becoming a bit of a routine to do so at the beginning of every drama lesson.

After warming up we started where we left off yesterday with the beginning of act 2. Like performing act 1 this was beneficial as it highlighted areas that we perhaps need to work on as well as help is learn more lines. We performed all songs with the backing tracks which allowed us to sing without having the cast singers to fall back on, also exposing us so to speak. It required us to be able to time ourselves properly and sing with enough volume. However, some of the songs were extremely difficult to song through as the underscoring was confusing. With live music it should be much easier as the musicians will be able to go with us and with a combination of actors and musicians, the timing should be much more precise.

After, our teacher took myself and Dan S to work on "now it's just the gas" as we hadn't yet done so. We sand the song through, which is particularly wordy, before moving onto the scene and performed the dialogue. We then set the scene, figuring out how to stage it, where we stand and at what time, how we stand, when do I get up or sit down. Things like this. I think we still need to work on it as it felt very new and robotic almost. It needed a stamp of originality and authenticity, which I think will come as we get more comfortable, helping the piece flow and hopefully, making it easier to watch from an audiences point of view.

In the other room. The others were devising a small movement to the song. In which they rather menacingly sway in their chairs like string puppets which fits the creepy vibe of the piece perfectly. We put our scene and their movement together. We decided to position everyone's seats in a v shape to allow myself and Dan to be seen and have the dentists chair in the middle of the v.

After this we went back to perform the opening number and skid row with as much energy and volume as possible, as they are the opening two numbers. Again, I think the lore we do, the better it gets and I think all that is required is to keep practicing, which will allow us to get more creative with the piece as we go on. We do need to finish the Audrey two though !!

Little shop of horrors: Day 16

Today, we were allowed back into the hall, and more importantly onto the stage. This allowed us to run the whole of act 1 in this lesson. This was extremely beneficial as it allowed us to pinpoint areas of weakness in the performance, which we can work on to make the performance stronger as a whole. And there were areas that need work and practice on such as feed me and closed for renovation and transitions between scenes. However, saying this, I thought the run through was rather good and had many strong parts in it. I think the more we do, the stronger it will become, it's as simple as that. We were also given notes on our performance of act 1 to give us suggestions and tips on how to make the performance look better to an audience.

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 15

Again, we began with a warm up to get us ready for the rehearsal. Today, we sang through all chorus numbers to see how much we remembered in terms of words, staging and dancing. We performed the opening number twice as the first time was a bit rusty. As I was moved in this dance I was caught out with minor adjustments to my dance, which I soon became familiar with. We also performed "skid row" "ya never know" "the meek shall inherit" and "don't feed the plants".

After this myself and dan decided to go and work on "feed me" as it had been a long time since we had done it together. We done this a couple of times and as far as dialogue and timing is for me, I know what I'm doing. Now I think we need to plan what we are actually going to be doing whilst the song is going on as well as dialogue halfway through the song. We also worked on supper time and sominex to practice our timings. I felt rather strong in this lesson as I knew what my lines where for the songs, I think now, a greater emphasis needs to be put on trying to learn possibly more
Tricky songs such as "Mushnik and son" and "now it's just the gas". As we are yet to do these and need to be addressed.

Little shop of horrors: Day 14

Today, our teacher took Meg, Dan and myself out into the dance studio to practice our scenes in act 2. This included running the whole act 2 from the end of The Meek Shall Inherit to the finale song. I felt doing this was very helpful as we hadn't really looked at the ending and it was an area that needed working on. The most difficult part I found was actually running on stage and trying to pull Meg from the plant and getting her onto the floor and being allowing her to still be facing the audience. We worked on this in our frees the next day, we decided it would be easier if she becomes a dead weight in my hands and allow me to position her so her head rests on my shoulder and back on my knees, as I crouch. This also makes it easier for me to scoop her up and put her in the plant when she dies.

Once we had run this a couple of times we rejoined the others who were singing all musical numbers in the performance. Before running the whole of act 2 together. I think this went rather well, although it was a lot shorter than I realised. For me, the main problem was Closed for Renovation, the pace got the better of me again, which was why I decided we should practice it in our frees the next day also. It is, however, the song I find most difficult. But apart from that, I felt that the rest of act 2 was good and will get better with practice.

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 13

Today, most people were assigned the task of updating their blogs. As I only had to to copy and paste my rehearsal notes from my phone notes to blogger, I was up to date in two minutes. This allowed myself, Harry and Dan to set the dance to Mushnik and Son, that Dan had choreographed. At first, we both found the dance rather difficult purely due to the pace of the song and how quick the transitions into different moves were. The routine itself was simple to remember, the main problem was trying to execute it at the speed required without messing up.

Afterwards, we ran through the dance to Little Shop of Horrors and Ya Never Know before our teacher took myself and Meg to go and work on the dialogue running into Suddenly Seymour, which we set and practiced through a couple of times. I think the most important aspect to get right in the song is the movement. Many times, we both moved too fast which didn't fit the tender and slow pace of the song. Therefore, I think we need to work on getting the movements slow enough and with enough meaning to show the audience that these two characters are in love with each other, but are timid in showing it to each other.

Then we moved  into the opening number to Act 2: Call Back in the Morning. This number proves to be extremely difficult due to how quick the bars are and the pace of the spoken word as well as the singing, combined with the tune and frequent changes between myself and meg in singing. We decided to listen to the song a couple of times to try and grasp the tune and pace, so hopefully, we will gradually be able to start singing along with the cast track before performing the piece with the backing track.

Little Shop of Horrors

Today's lesson began with us watching a channel 4 documentary on the business side of west end theatres to help us grasp the financial aspects of the theatre. I found this very interesting and it made me realise how much pressure there is on producers and directions to succeed and how much of a high risk profession show business is. There is so much money involved and losses can be made extremely quickly, resulting in shows closing without much notice time. It certainly opened my eyes to how much money and pressure is involved in the west end.

From here we started another warm up session as we will be at the start of every lesson.

Next we sang through ya never know  to recap yesterday's lesson before moving on to singing "da doo" with the vocals and then backing track. I often found myself speaking to quickly or at least, starting my lines to quickly so I worked on slowing it down to allow it to, perhaps flow more smoothly into the chorus lines. Next we performed the piece before performing "the meek shall inherit" which I think went well personally, I used my script but felt confident that I didn't really need it and was more acknowledging the words on my paper than following them.

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 11

Today, as the start of a new term we began with a 20 minute warm up/work out and vocal warm up in order to get us to focus more and hopefully be and add more energy into our performances when we began.

From here, as I missed the last lesson due to an exam I watched the dance the class had set to "ya never know". As I don't really dance a great deal in the dance I had to concentrate in how my character would react to the interactions with people in the number. I found this difficult as there isn't really a lot I can do , more just reacting surprised and uncomfortable in a typical Seymour way. This meant that for large parts of the lesson. I wasn't particularly needed as our choreographer worked with the people dancing for a majority of the lesson. Although he did tell me what I was doing and when, which I noted and practiced on my own as I had nothing else to do, therefore making use of my time. So when needed we could pull the two parts into each other with minimal mistakes. We moved onto filming it so we had a video to learn from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDmC5W3rfYI

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 10

To begin we started with sitting down and writing in as much detail as we could about our characters in order to gain a firmer understanding of how we want to play our characters and to get a wider variety of characters in the chorus in the show.

Seymour:

• Lacking confidence and charisma 
• Hard working and reliable 
• Geeky and nerdy
• Very found of Audrey, perhaps shy and awkward when talking to her, probably inexperienced with girls
• Grows in confidence as the performance goes on, becoming more outgoing and strong
• Wants a better life and to get out of skid row
• Is an orphan, perhaps never loved and craves that feeling
• Awkward in social situations at first 
• General nice guy but begins to become more frustrated and have a meaner edge towards end
• Clumsy, sensitive and solitary but not by choice. 

I considered all these traits and facts about my character and from this I can gain an idea of how I want to play him and what kind of a person he is. How he would react in certain situations, how he feels inside and how he would respond to speech.

We then shared our ideas and went onto perform Skid row. This time with out new characters in mind. The purpose of this was to try and be as animated as possible to really emphasise the range in our characters and allow our personalities to shine throughout the performance. We performed this twice as the first time wasn't as our teacher expected of us and lacked energy so we made sure to try and up the energy the second time.

Next, we moved onto Da doo, again, with the main idea in mind to show how animated our characters were in the piece.

From there we carried on with dialogue and I got to perform "grow for me" for the first time, which could do with improvement. Before singing through "ya never know" for the first time as it was a whole chorus number. We still need to set it though  , which means we need to put a real effort in to learn all the songs we are in. Personally, over the week long break I need to learn some more lines, however I was pleased that sometimes I found myself performing scenes with my script closed and the beginning scenes without my script.

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 9

Today, we began by singing the finale "Don't feed the plants" and then filmed it the second time as seen below. I bottled the last line of "we'll have tomorrow" as I didn't feel as if I would pull it off and the camera made me a little
More nervous than normal which was strange as I sang the higher octave (albeit a bit patchy) for every other practice.

After that, we filmed the "dentist" musical number which looked as funny as before.

From here, we went onto set "the meek shall inherit" we began by listening to the song through as a class. From here, we set the dialogue in time with the music and acted out the whole piece, before going back over pieces and adding in little things such as how the girls move me to each contracter on the stage. To our choreographer forming a cluster of the cast on every chorus line to do a sequence of movements. We practiced this a few times before out teachers gave us ideas of how to stage scenes, ideal places to stand and question for when to form the cluster. In addition , I was given ideas on how to stage my solo verse , which involved me coming out to the front. At the same time I grid to add my own actions to the lines to make sure I wasn't jut standing there and being boring. I turned on the end line to walk away before turning slowly to sing my cute, slow, slightly cringy line to show I had only just remembered and how Seymour feels for Audrey.  We went through the piece again before our choreographer added a final movement piece to the end line of raining our arms and throwing them down. We then filmed the performance which took us up to the end of the lesson. One thing I found hard about this song is my reactions. Obviously Seymour is going to be unsure and shocked, but maintaining that act constantly is hard as I feel as if I could be dong something else as well. However, I need to watch the video back to see where improvements can be made.

Finally, we moved on to do the rest of act 2 which only took around 5 minutes as we skipped some numbers and we were near the end anyway, but it helped us get a grasp of the end of the show and gave me ideas of how I will perform these scenes.

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 8

Today, we began by rehearsing the finale song and polishing it up such as our movements on lines such as "lookout, here comes Audrey 2" whilst our choreographer organised our bows and what lines each person came in. He also added a nice touch where Seymour and Audrey move into the centre and hold hands whilst singing "we'll have tomorrow" giving it a real heart warming end with the whole cast putting in great effort. 

We practiced the song and bow orders for 20 minutes or so before we realised myself and Dan (Orin) would need to switch places for the bows to run smoothly for the positions we had in mind. 

From there, Harry (Mushnik) Meg (Audrey) and myself went to work on our own scenes whilst the rest of the cast worked on creating the the dentists musical number. We worked on our musical numbers and sang through "Mushnik  and son" and "suddenly Seymour" before we done "closed for renovation" and Meg sang "somwhere that's green" for the first time. In addition we ran through our opening scene trying to use as little help from our scripts to see how much we ha actually learnt, which we seemed to do pretty successfully. From there, we went back into the main studio and watched "dentist" which was brilliant and very creative as well as funny for a piece divided in only 25 minutes. I'm sure it will be extremely entertaining once polished. From here, I think learning the songs is going to be very important as it will save a lot of time for us to be able to work on dialogue and staging scenes and songs.

I also found a great piece of material to use for our little Audrey 2. I found it whilst working and it is the perfect shape for the plants head. I'm very proud of this  find !!

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 7

Today we started on act 2 and ran all the dialogue until the end. This gave us all an understanding of the plot. We also briefly set the finale song "don't feed the plants" we began by listening to the song a couple of times before singing it through and finally setting it. We done this by individually walking onto the stage and turning to the audience.

Thankfully, I found myself in drama in my frees that day and ended up in a conversation about how we would get the plant for the show. Our teacher had looked at hiring a plant but worked out it would be to expensive to go and get. So I suggested we could do some fundraising events, which seemed to be the way forward until she was put off driving to Norfolk by Tom. From there we decided it would be better if we actually made the plant ourselves as our teacher and another student had already devised a plan where they would use a tent as the plants head. I said I could source materials such as cardboard from work... A lot of cardboard. And we threw ideas in such as egg boxes for teeth. We also looked at pictures of other plants on the internet and got an idea of using foam noodles for the lips, which we just so happen to have !!! So as a group I feel that we could make a really good plant, especially by looking at other plants made on the internet. I certainly feel we can make better ones

Little Shop of Horrors: Day 5 and 6

Day 5: We began today by running all the musical numbers we had set so far and dialogue up to closed for renovation. We then started to work on the musical number. We began by dividing up and organising who said what line of the song between Mushnik, Audrey and Seymour. We listened through it a couple of times before our choreographer set the piece, telling us where to go and when, tweaking parts of the timings as we went on and at the same time, allowing people to know when the large Audrey 2 is brought on, allowing Harry, Meg and myself to work where the plant wasn't going to be. After this we performed "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Skid Row". Once with the real track and then with the backing track.






Day 6: Today, we began with running through skid row once with backing vocals and then with purely the backing track to see how far we had come and how good we were without the broadway version playing over the top of us. Thankfully, I said all the lines of my part in the right order and now feel confident enough in terms of the vocals, what I now need to work on is how I stand, for how long I stand and how I move during the piece, as I was unsure and probably remained to static during singing, which would be boring from an audiences point of view, but at the same time, I don't want to draw attention to myself as the people dancing have a nice routine and create an atmosphere. I wouldn't want to detract from that by moving around too much. After that we a started from the dialogue and ran all the way to the end of act 1 skipping out the musical numbers to aid us in line learning and allowing us to set scenes and gain an understanding of what happens as we continue through the play. We also set the scene for when the dentist gasses himself to death. Of course, we are still very early in developing the scenes, but eventually we will get more and more used to the scenes and perhaps begin to add some of our own creative spins on the piece. Which is something I'm certainly looking to do. Of course, Seymour is a very specific character with a very unique personality, as are all of the characters in the musical. However, I don't want to just regurgitate the characters I've seen from the film and broadway musical. I want to play Seymour in my own way, whilst still remaining believable and with enough of the original Seymour, which I will develop more of as we act the scenes out more, as well as practicing with ideas at home.

Little shop of horrors: day 4

Today we worked on running the whole of act 1 that we ha set so far. This included "little shop of horrors" dialogue, "skid row" and everything up to "da doo" where Seymour is left in the shop alone.

I felt that the opening dance went a lot better this time around. Mainly because our choreographer offered to help me in our frees. So this time, I knew more of the dance. And felt more confident in it as a result.

We then went straight into running the dialogue. I felt comfortable with this part as I had watched the film and read the opening scenes. So I knew how to carry out the scene efficiently and to a decent standard.

In terms of skid row. We re jigged the positioning of some people to make the stage look a bit tidier. Then ran through the piece without fault. My only hiccup was saying the last three lines of the song in the wrong order. That said, I should be able to rectify that easily. Just by looking at my script!

We carried on to da doo. Which we repeated a few times. First of all, the whole positioning of the cast was messy and was too far back on the stage, we were not animated enough  and as a result the piece seemed weak. Personally, I tried to make myself as animated as I could by trying to act out what my character was saying, and reacting as strongly as possible to my lines. We added a nice touch in the fact that we all look up to the right on the line "total eclipse of the sun" only to have a light shine in the opposite direction. Adding comedy value to the piece.

From there, we split into groups, I was sent to work with our teacher with Mushnik and Audrey where we looked at the scenes after "closed for renovation" we looked into subtext and just got an early feel for what we could do with the scene. In addition. Myself and Audrey worked on the scene before "suddenly Seymour" where we looked at the context of the scene, how our characters were feeling, what had happened before hand. I had to make sure that it was clear that Seymour is in love with Audrey. I made my movements tender, yet anxious inside to show Seymour's nerves. I felt that we made a good start to these scenes. Personally, I need to work on the body language again, but saying that, if my script wasn't in my hand, I would be able to show this more.

To end with, we performed "little shop of horrors" and "skid row" with simply backing tracks to see how it sounded. Thankfully, I think this was successful and carried out well. We need to work on nailing the opening dance and looking at lines so the performance comes together quickly and we can get our scripts down to begin to act properly.

Little shop of horrors: Day 3

Today we set the dance to the opening number Little Shop of Horror. If I'm honest, I found this difficult. Mainly due to the fact that I am a weak dancer, but made worse so because I'm positioned in the front 4, meaning I felt more pressure to get he dance right, which in know I messed up a number of times and am really struggling with it. I found the timing, steps and pace very difficult an often lost my way, causing me to become very frustrated. I think a lot of practice needs to go into making me perform the dance sufficiently, which I will do until I know the dance.

Little shop of horrors: Day 2

Today we began with a run thorough of skid row to remind ourselves of how it went and to rehearse it a little further to make sure it would be fresh in our mind. After practicing we filmed it with the backing track, however one of our choreographers main concern was that the piece looked a bit basic and it didn't flow one movement into another and involved us waiting around momentarily before continuing on. Fortunately, there is a lot of time and room for us to fill in parts and polish it as we go, I'm sure it will change before our final performance.

For the rest of the day, we worked on Da-Doo, we began by watching the film version of the song to gain ideas of how it was set. Then, we split into groups to come up with ideas ourselves. I was kept in the group with Audrey and Mushnik, with the customer who comes into the shop. We rehearsed our scene and thought of ideas of how we could stage it. We were very cautious of our staging and wanted to give it layers. So we had standing, siting and leaning in the scene. Again, one of my main problems was that I wasn't acting geeky enough. The way I stood was still to cool for Seymour, so I had to work on my body language again. In terms of accent I think I'm fine, I jut really need to work on my posture and body language to make it more geeky and lacking confidence, which is difficult for me to mantain as naturally, I have confidence.

After we worked on the scene and experimented with how we said certain lines or actions to go with it, the other groups came back in and presented their idea of how to set the piece. It turned out to be very nice and for the beat very well and we were all very impressed. The next step was for our choreographer to include the parts he done with the three girls Into the piece, again this fit very well as they walked across the front of the stage, whilst all the cootion happened in the background. Then, I stepped into the action to complete the piece. I felt that, in pieces, I made the piece look a bit messy as I didn't know where to stand and when, so I was just ambling around at times, so I think that that is also an area to think about. So for the future, I think I need to work on my body language and my movement in da doo.

Little shop of horrors: day 1

Today we began to set the dance for Skid Row. To remind ourselves of how we learnt the song we stood in our harmony groups and sang the song through. After that our choreographer began to direct us and set the dance we wanted. One of the main features of the dance is that he allowed us a lot of freedom to allow the different personalities of the characters to come through. We began with a freeze frame, whilst trying to make our position as big and over the top as possible. As Seymour, one of my main efforts was to try and hide myself in the ensemble piece and try not to draw attention to myself to show him as being a very shy and nervous person. Another thing I found difficult was the beginning I my solo piece. Naturally I move around and jolt a lot, moving my arms and dancing around when singing. However as Seymour. I really had to think about how he would stand. What his body language would be like, how he would stand, how would he use his arms, what faces would he pull. I tried very hard to think about that and decided to stand feet together and playing with my hands to show his nervous and geeky character. In addition, one target I would set myself would be to learn the dance set, as dancing is my weak point and I feel very conscious about messing up, so by learning it as much as I can, I will eliminate all mistakes and feel confident in the dance when we come to perform it in rehearsal. I also need to look at theast part of the song as I don't know all of it and forgot my second to last line in one of the practices.

Vaudeville evaluation.

Today we performed our scenes from The 39 Steps. I believe it went very well. I worked well with my partner and we exchanged ideas well, listening to each other and working out how we could turn a normal script into a quirky and funny piece by working out our tone and body language.

I think this was hard at times as making our body language funny could be quite difficult and look rough and not funny in places. There was a fine line of exaggerating the piece and going too over the top. Which was difficult to contain. In addition, getting the tone right was hard as well. Most of the humour came from the way we delivered our lines, so making sure our tone was correct allowed for maximum humour of our lines, but did take some practice to get hold of.

If we were to do this piece again, the one thing I would change is the pace at which our piece moved. Too many times did we slow the pace of the scene, which wasn't representative of the vaudeville style. It's meant to be fast paced and move quickly from line to line to add to the humour and impact of the punch lines. I think if we had more time to work on our scenes and had time to learn our lines more thoroughly, then this would be achieved with success.

Vaudeville 1881 1920

Before the American civil war America was dominated by burlesque acts and risqué performances. Theatre was not only a place to be entertained, it was for men to have a drink and predominantly aimed at men.

In 1881 a pioneer, Tony Pastor decided theatre shouldn't just be for men, that the shows were missing a whole audience. He wanted to make shows cleaner as a variety to appeal to a wider audience. The style was similar to that of a Cabernet or Britains Got Talent and was called Vaudeville. This was aimed at the middle class not just the rich. He then went on to removed risqué and crude performances. Also, he banned drinking in the theatre as he wanted to make it a family orientated activity.

He found that they could make a huge amount of money from performances such as the ones they were doing. And as the years went on the variety shows increased in diversity. Eg: mimes, riverboats were introduced. However there were still some risqué performances to cater for the rich with the burlesque taste.

The purpose of these performances wasn't to get emotionally attached to a scene. the sole purpose was to entertain.

Over the years from the 1880-1920 easiest way to entertain people was to make them laugh. Which was why an increasing number of performances contained comedy sketches and slapstick comedy.

The Demise of Vaudeville

Vaudeville became much more popular as the years went on as it appealed to many audiences featuring Irish and black people. However, these performances were designed to be racist, with people laughing at them whilst watching stereotypical racial performances.

However technology also become Vaudevilles competition as silent movies had started to come out and the cinema was much cheaper. Theatre was more expensive.

Consequently. Vaudevilles became less common as they could not support themselves as much as they once could leading to many theatres shutting down.

As we have progressed Vaudeville has been reborn into something called New Vaudeville, examples of which are BGT or the Royal Variety Show. However comedy sketches have been kept that were brought to life by Vaudeville by presenters such as Morcambe and Wise, Laurel and Hardy and Ant and Dec.


39 Steps is a spoof of Vaudeville performances.

What makes it New Vaudeville.

• Overtop physicality
• Comedy
• No character relationship
• Overtop voices
• Acknowledge audiences presence

Today, we were split into small groups of two or three and given separate scenes from 39 Steps. I took the role of Hannay whilst my partner, the Milkman. One of our main focuses early on was making sure our body language was over the top and exaggerated, as that would be a huge part in the comedy aspect. In addition, we noted that our voices needed to be distinctive and over the top, again, to engage the audience and make it funny. We included slapstick elements to our piece, such as when Hannay bumps into the Milkman, he runs round to catch him before he falls, as it would be a funny and unusual sight to see. In addition, we worked on a very slick coat change where we switch in a matter of seconds. These little things are just as important as dialogue in engaging our audience and making them laugh.

Afterwards, we performed short pieces of our scene in mime. The purpose of this was to see how good we were at portraying the situation and our characters personality and emotions purely through body language. This helped us understand just how important body language is in Vaudeville performances and that it tells a huge story on its own.

Acting Styles: Evaluation

Today, we performed our scenes from A Midsummer Nights Dream. Our group decided that it was best for me to take over the role of Oberon as the Shakespearian dialogue was proving difficult for the original person we cast. This meant I had little time to get used to the character. We researched the context of the scene and I knew what my character was saying and how, which is annotated on my script below. I knew what tone to use and knew that I needed to show a flirtatious relationship with Titania, but at the same time a degree of tension and a bit of dislike, even though they are attracted to each other, without letting each other know.

I thought, considering the time constraints we had to prepare, which was one double lesson, we done well. The difficulty we had was trying to make the performance interesting and exciting, without any modern techniques. Shakespearian theatre had no movement or projections. It was very basic and we had to try and adopt this acting style as we'll as we could. We used our space and staged carefully so the set appeared more interesting.  Another feature was that we had to exaggerate our lines and body language to enge the audience more which I think we done with moderate success. But I think if we had more time we could have learnt out lines to an extent where we could have relaxed and acted without having to refer to our scripts constantly, then our acting would have been more over the top and thespian like. I found  this task very difficult as there was very little we could add and it was hard to understand.

Naturalism

Afterwards, we moved onto the style of naturalism. We were split into new groups and were given one lesson to create a naturalistic piece that focused solely on acting, with no visual aids. I came up with the idea of a funeral at which people bad mouthed the deceased only to realise that he wasn't dead and was standing outside. It worked very well as a dark comedy, but for the piece we were trying to create it did not. We decided to scrap the idea and devise one in twenty minutes, where people turned up to a funeral pretending to be the deceased best friends, as people are at their most popular when dead. I played the husband who became angry at the fact that everybody was claiming they knew his dead wife so well, even though he had just heard them bad mouthing her. Again, this task was difficult as there was little we could do, we just had to make sure our acting was very good, which we did.

Acting Styles: Shakespeare

The Elizabethan and Jacobean period.

In 1576 James Burbage, father of  actor, Richard Burbage, purchased a lease and permission to build The-Theatre in London.

The Lord Chamberlains men, a theatre company led by Richard. Performed Shakespeare plays and were the company in residence from 1594 to 96.

Writers began by presenting their ideas for a plot. The actors and managers then decided whether they liked it or not and  offer a down payment for it's completion.

Writers created their characters with certain actors in mind. For example knowing that Richard burbage was the Chamberlains leading man and  that he had a good memory for long scripts. Shakespeare created the parts of Richard 3. And hamlet for him. And as he grew older. Shakespeare made his characters more mature

Each player or actor received their own role. A long sheet of parchment with lines written on. This meant that they would not see who else was going to be on stage until they actually rehearsed the scene

Rehearsals were used to sort out the details not specified in the script. Entrances costumes and songs were all filled in by the actors

1593. London theatres had to close due to outbreak of bubonic plague.

1596-97 the city of London authorities banned public performances of plays within the city limits

1597. Dispute over the lease of the theatre. The Puritan owner. Giles Allen. Disapproved of the theatre and the acting troupe. Burbage opened negotiations to renew lease of the theatre
Shakespeare's company of actors moved to the Curtain Theatre after failed negotiations to re new lease for the theatre.

1598. Timber from TheTheatre taken to use for the building of a new venue. Called the Globe Theatre

1599. The globe theatre is opened on bankside. Southwark. London.

1603. Bubonic plague re-emerged  and killed over 33000 people.

1608 the theatre closed.

1613 June 29. Fire at the globe theatre during a performance of Henry VIII..

1614. Globe theatre is rebuilt on it's original foundations. This time the roof of the globe is tiled. Not thatched.

Two years before Shakespeare's death.

Not all theatres were outside. Until 1609 the indoor theatres were used by boy companies. These grew out of choir schools that performed privately. They usually played just once a week rather than almost every day. As the adult companies.

The audience was thought to be more educated and richer than an outdoor one. Indoor plays had more music more sparkly pros sucks as pearls and more speeches than action

Indoor theatres grew into existing theatres. They were open to a public and charged an entry fee. First permenant indoor theatre St. Paul's opened in 1575. Held 500 people.
Tickets more expensive. Lit by candles.

Quen Elizabeth died in 1603. King James took throne. Jacobean era ran until 1625.

Jacobean theatre was dark and disturbing. Grotesquely violent and often shockingly obscene.

Sexuality was very prevalent in Jacobean performances. Along with a heightened sense of violence and general immoralities.

As the economy declined. So did the delicacy of the theatre performances moved from outdoor to indoor because of the changeable weather.

Jacobean drama.

Revenge plays
Obscene and violent

Tragicomedies were more grotesque with dark humour and very sexual in nature.

 The two most producers of Jacobean revenge plays were John Webster. The Duchess of Malfi. And the White Devil. Ben Johnson and Shakespeare were also performed a lot at this time including Othello, Macbeth and King Lear.

1642. The English civil war role out between the parliamentarians puritans and the royalists. Parliaments suppress plays that didn't for their religion. And the globe was pulled down. Houses were built in place

1648 the puritans orders all playhouses to be pulled down. All actors were arrested and anyone caught attending was fiend. It took 12 years before theatres re opened

1649. The civil war finally leads to the terrible execution of King Charles 1 by parliament

1653 Oliver Cromwell becomes lord protector of England

Theatre stops it will take 7 years before the restoration begins.

Our task

We were split into new groups and handed scripts a section of A Midsummer Nights Dream. Our main challenge was trying not to slip into the reading the lines in a typical Shakespeare style, we had to read into the context of our scene as we didn't understand what it meant. We found that the Fairies and Puck are actually mocking each other, whilst Titania and Oberon argue, but flirt at the same time. This helped us alter our tone and body language as a result.

Our next task was to stage our scene. We knew that Shakespeare plays staged two sides on separate sides of the stage and stuck to this, however, we wanted to allow our characters to move round to appear more interesting and exciting, but were wary of how we blocked the scene and made sure not too much movement was happening. With Oberon and Titania, we wanted to show them coming close to the boundaries of the two sides to show their flirtatiousness and the fact that they aren't true enemies, just hiding a love for each other. As Shakespearian Theatre limits us to what we can do in terms of techniques, we really have to exaggerate our lines and body language to engage the audience, whilst improvising in places such as they would back then. I think this style has been the hardest so far, simply because it is hard to understand.

Physical Theatre: Evaluation

Overall, I think our piece was performed relatively well. I think we used a range of techniques and carried them off to a good standard, especially in the time we had to construct the piece. I also like the message we wanted to show, as we felt it had a deep meaning and a real sense of sophistication about it. I think we displayed creative movements and showed, in terms of staging and dialogue, how well thought out our piece was, I think we had really nice elements of showing repression. Also, I think the way our piece flowed and how quickly we came up with it was down to our group working productively and professionally to achieve what we all wanted.

However, after feedback we realised that, perhaps, our piece wasn't clear enough in terms of the message we wanted to get across. Perhaps we should have added some pictures or projections to aid our idea of repression and how religion shapes people. Another thing that was a problem is that we only had two lessons to come up with a piece, which is a very short amount of time. Ideally, we would have liked to spend a couple of weeks on conducting workshops to experiment different styles of physical theatre, like DV8 or Frantic Assembly, to gain a wider knowledge of styles and a greater knowledge of what movements we could use. I thought the time and lack of knowledge of styles limited us, as we had to work quickly to get a piece done. If we did have longer, I think the piece would have been longer, more creative and more polished as a result, but in the time we had  think we showed we have creative minds, can work efficiently as a team to get things done and that we grasp an understanding of Physical Theatre.

Physical Theatre

Our task, after research, was to devise our own Physical Theatre piece based on a political stimulus. In our group we spent a while coming up with a motive. We decided that we should go for a piece that highlights the issue of repression and how, from a young age, people are moulded into what religion wants them to be, that being individual and different is unacceptable. Our stimulus was the school girl Malala Yussuf, who was attacked as she was a girl going to school. We wanted to show that religion has a strong control on peoples lives, not necessarily for a good reason.

With this decided, we decided that we should choose music first to build around it, which happened to be Kanye West, "I am a God" ironically. We set our beginning in which people mould our main actor into shapes they want him to be in, before they surround him and he breaks out. Whilst this occurs some of us are on the floor slamming the ground at intervals. Our main focus of the piece was to show repression, to show the conflict religion causes, the expectation that everyone should be the same, that no ideas are challenged and those that do challenge society are unable to break out in the corrupt world of religion.

A lot of work went into devising this piece, as well as careful thought. This time, we cut back on the techniques and made sure we only used what worked. In our piece we have used motif, contact improvisation, movement, status  and proximity. Our main use of status was to show the power between people, and that those who are fixed in their beliefs have more power over those speaking out for change. Once the movement was set, we decided that we needed to add some dialogue in, but didn't want to add something in without meaning, so we researched the rosary in Latin, to which we found the line In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. This was very useful and we implemented this into our start and all say Amen in unison. The prayer, we decided, would be good to play also, so we managed to combine the song with the prayer, which created a really quirky sound.

Acting Styles: Physical Theatre

Physical theatre, in essence, is theatre that puts emphasis on movement rather than dialogue. In other words, anything that puts the human body at the centre of the storytelling, therefore, it is often very abstract and unique in style, using movement in a stylised and representational way.

One famous drama company who specialise in Physical Theatre are DV8. They use Physical Theatre as a full art form and focus on looking at the dramatic potential that can be unlocked from movement. They describe their work as combining the crossroads, where dance and drama meet. They use Physical Theatre to explore complex aspects of human life, issues and relationships.

In their production of "Can we Talk About This?" the performers used Physical Theatre to express extremely complicated and delicate social and political issues surrounding Islam.

Another company called Frantic Assembly combine dialogue with movement, and worked with the National Theatre for the production of the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night.

The companies production of "Lovesong" by Abi Morgan, demonstrates a different way of performing Physical Theatre. They use more dialogue, but most of the impact comes from movement, to show relationships and changes over a couple of years.

Stylised Movement: Normally, in Shakespearian plays, actions are described. For example, the battle scene before the beginning of Macbeth was described, however in his production of Macbeth, Kenneth Branagh was hailed for the physicality of the piece. Movement can make a play much more exciting.

Physical Theatre can also be used in the way of the director. Steven Berkoff used it in "The Trial" to provide scene, whether it is furniture for a room or a busy street, he always used people, allowing for great impact. The stage for his production was a cast, simple frames and a rope, in order to allow the actors to create the staging and show off their versatility and talents.

Combining Art Forms: Physical Theatre has a focus on movement, but at the same time can be separate from the spoken word, or combined with it. It can be devised or contain elements of improvisation beyond the script. These elements may include music, dance or media.

Commedia: Commedia dell'arte is recognised as the starting point for Physical Theatre. It began in Italy in the 16th century and was a popular form of street theatre in which actors carried out improvised scenes with stock characters. The main focus on this type of theatre was that the actors wore masks, so facial expressions couldn't be seen, so emotions must have been obvious through their body language.

Techniques

• Proximity
• Gesture
• Harshness and Tenderness
• Stance
• Mask work
• Contact Improvisation
• Mime
• Status
• Dance work
• Not moving
• Movement
• Motif

Contact Improvisation: Was developed from improvisation and is usually performed by two people. When there is contact between the two people, there is a response, for example if someone was to go up and push another actor the actor would respond in one of three ways. Absorb the impulse, to resist or to respond with the motion.

Bertolt Brecht: Part 3

Today we performed our piece to the rest of the class. Unfortunately, two of our cast members were missing today, so we had to borrow someone in the other group who had missed both of the last two lessons to fill in for Yussup and another old woman. Which wasn't ideal as he only had about half an hour to get familiar with the piece. Thankfully the girl who played Grusha in the other group agreed to play the part in our piece too, which made things a lot easier.

Putting the setbacks aside, I think we done well. We implemented a lot of techniques that Brecht used in his time and I think we were organised in how we set about our piece and it flowed very smoothly. One thing we struggled with was trying to come up with ways in which we could make the piece quirky and interesting. We all found the piece boring and one thing we should have done was to discuss how we could add flair and excitement to the piece, we didn't do this, and as a result I found the piece a bit flat. We needed to add some quirkiness to the piece, give it some character, we all seemed to be very restricted in what we did, this impacted on our performance, which seemed basic. In future, I think we should express our ideas as a group to show off our creative talents.

Bertolt Brecht: Part 2

In today's lesson we were developing our piece of a Caucasian Chalk Circle. We rehearsed the performance again with the same accents as before, however we decided that the accents made the piece seem silly and immature. By reading a book on Brecht's philosophies we gained knowledge that the piece was deliberately made to be ordinary and reasonably dull in order to allow the audience to think about the action unfolding, so we adapted our accents to be more serious and play the piece more flat, after having a readthrough to see if we could understand the scene a little better. Once we had established this I decided to take charge and work out how we wanted to stage things and when we wanted to. I read through the piece making sure people knew when to come in, when to  mime actions, how to stand and where. We managed to do this relatively well, and the piece flowed a lot better afterwards, as well as looking a lot better. Hopefully, our work today will stand us in good stead to perform a good piece on Monday, if we can remember what we set, I'm sure we can.

Acting Styles: Bertolt Brecht

Background 

Bertolt Brecht was born in Germany, 1898. In his early 30's he worked as a medic in WW1, appalled by war, he decided to move to Berlin to work in theatre. However, when the Nazis came into power, he fled the country, resulting in his citizenship being removed.

After setting up in the USA, he gained citizenship in 1941. He was a strong communist and was not afraid of expressing his views, hence, was a target of the House of Unamerican Activities, who were very much anti communist.

In 1947, he moved back to Germany where he founded the Berliner Ensemble. He was vastly influenced, having lived through two world wars he was very political and expressed his strong views through the medium of theatre.

Work

Brecht's main contribution to the theatrical world was the creation of epic theatre. He was strongly against Cathartic theatre and thought that naturalistic theatre mirrored society. He wanted to change things, to use theatre to get the audience thinking. One famous quote of his " Hang up their brains with their hats in the cloakroom." emphasised his desire to engage the audience. However, whilst he wanted to engage the audience he didn't want them to become attached or emotionally involved in characters or the piece itself, as he believed this made the audience lose their ability to judge and think. He wanted them to be distant from emotions, after all they were watching a presentation of life, not life itself.

Verfremdungseffect

This term is also known as the alienation effect, however, Brecht only wanted his audience to feel distanced, of course he wanted them to be engaged and excited but not emotionally involved and this always involved breaking the forth wall.

He used a range of  techniques in his performances. They included...

• Narration
• Coming out of role
• Speaking stage directions
• Directly addressing audience
• Using placards
• Multi rolling
• Minimal props
• Symbolic props
• Symbolic lighting
• Song and dance
• Montage
• Spass (fun)
• Gestus
• Non linear narrative
• Tableau

Today, we were split into groups and asked to come up with our interpretation of A Caucasian Chalk Circle. 

We began by listing the large number of characters in the 5 pages given to us. Obviously, there were more characters than actors, so we had to use multi rolling. In addition I decided to take the role of  a narrator and speak the stage directions, as this was a technique used by Brecht, ad I thought it looked rather quirky too. We added some accents for spass! and decided to label props in the style as he did too. For example, we labelled a piece of paper with Child, or guitar, to show that we were trying to think and adopt Brechts own techniques into our interpretation. 

Devising: Evaluation of Performance

Overall, I think our final performance went very well. Our scenes ran smoothly with minimal mistakes, any mistakes that were made, we simply carried on as if nothing happened, which showed great focus and composure. Our scene changes ran smoothly and I believe that, throughout the duration of the performance, we successfully conveyed a range of skills and techniques that were carried of to a high standard.

Idea Process

Our stimulus, back at the start of the task, was the single “Chasing Pavements” by Adele. As a group, we sat down and thought hard about what the song meant to us. We brainstormed various ideas that all shared a similar theme. Such as depression, heartbreak, injury so on. We then began to look at ideas for a story. One of which being the idea that a group of soldiers crash land in the middle of a desert and we would learn about why they joined the army, all sharing the common factor that they were chasing a better life. Which was the most important message we got out of the song. We toyed with another idea of someone getting seriously injured in a car accident, and losing the ability to do what they could do form a day to day basis. However, finding characters to fit into the piece was extremely difficult. The soldiers idea, was liked throughout the group, but we conceded that it just wouldn’t work in the stage environment and that it would better suit the film screen. Therefore, we decided to go for the 1930’s gang idea that just so happened to be our first idea. One thing that we could have done better was to have spent more time in developing and work shopping our ideas, it felt like we picked an idea and had our hearts set on it, without thinking and trying to create more ideas, albeit our original gang idea was, hands down, the best idea we had, and I think the whole group would agree with that. However, if we had spent a little longer on developing some ideas, we may have come up with some better ideas. Although, in honesty, I didn’t think we would come up with any better ideas and as a group, we struggled to conjure up a range of ideas. In addition, I think we were a little worried about the time period we had to work in, hence, rushed the ideas process so we had maximum time on working on our piece as possible.

Rehearsal Process

I think a majority of a rehearsals were extremely productive. The first week of rehearsals was taken up by trying to think abut the direction of the piece. We had the basis of a simple gang idea, but we wanted something else, something more. We thought about puppets, and this was the idea that lead to us thinking about the author controlling the gang. We worked very well together and I think this was key in how successful our piece was. When thinking of scenes, we always thought about what techniques we wanted to use, therefore, almost fitted our scenes around a particular technique, whether that be a movement, freeze frames, split screens or slow motion. However, the techniques used had to work and look effective, one thing we did nit want to do was to just throw in some techniques just for the sake of it and because the mark scheme said to. All together, it took about 4 and a half weeks to complete our piece. I think one thing we did do well was that we divided jobs up between us to save time instead of us all working on the same piece. This improved our efficiency as a group. For example. Tom and Theo would work on their monologues, whilst Ellie and myself worked on ideas for our scene, whilst Dan Mckay would write his author script or begin work on the lighting as he wasn’t in the scenes that the gang were part of and Dan Smith would be up in the drum room, devising a piece for the attack scene at the end. This saved us a lot of time in the end. Throughout rehearsal, I would say that a majority of the group were very focused and were determined to get the performance looking as good as it possibly could, we experimented with a lot of techniques and ways to stage things and conceded that some parts wouldn’t work, and had enough courage to scrap some ideas and start again. An example of this would be that we decided to scrap the rape scene, as it would be too hard to convey such a horrific act in a stylistic and sophisticated way. So we decided to switch it to an attack scene, which, after gauging audience reaction, decided that it was very successful. I think getting the rest of the group to focus was hard as, looking back, they may not have had a big a part in the performance as the rest of the group. If we were to do this performance again, I think developing the characters of Frank and Stan would be imperative. They didn’t have the biggest parts and feedback we received stated that the two characters just seemed to be there to fill the space almost. So one thing we could have done would be to develop the two characters a little more.

In terms of research for our idea, I think we all done very well. We split topics between the group to research. I researched the dust bowl and set design, while others would research costumes or stage combat. This helped us incorporate this research into our play, helping the piece look more historically accurate and more realistic. Our costumes and hair styles aided the 1930’s time period as did our music. There was a little bit of deliberation over whether we used modern music our music from the 1930’s to stay in the time period. We spent a lot of time trying to choose music, we looked at soundtracks from the Great Gatsby and on Youtube, searched popular 1930’s jazz, to which we found “Sentimental Mood” which was the song used for the dance between Tess and Finn. We also decided to use two Lana Del Ray songs in our piece. They were mainly instrumental, but worked very well for our piece, even though they were modern songs, they had a sense of antiquity about them, that worked very well. With our fight scene, I though that i had the perfect piece inspired by one of my favourite bands. We used the upbeat “There’s a Good Reason These Tables are Numbered Honey.” as it resembled that of a 1930’s piece but added to the irony of the fight scene as it completely juxtaposed the harsh brutality of the events on stage. 

Throughout the rehearsal process, I thought we behaved reasonably professionally. There were arguments in our group, but as we all took the piece very seriously, it was inevitable that some clashes of opinion would occur, as they would in any piece. However, we dealt with it professionally and didn’t let it effect our performance. We simply progressed with rehearsing as we were all striving for the same end result. One problem we encountered just before the show was that one of the dust sheets we had to hang across the performance space was not long enough. So we had to look for another dust sheet to cover the gap. We managed to do this but a few hours before the performance, we realised that the silhouette we wanted to use for the authors death didn't work. The shadow didn't fit on the dust sheet and we were able to see through. So we scrapped it and edited in a fade and a gun shot death in blackout. It wasn't ideal, as we thought the silhouette was a very valuable technique, but it simply did not work and for the sake of the performance we had to scrap it.

Finally, looking back on the rehearsal process, I think we can all agree that we should have blocked the scenes a lot quicker, as we had to extend the performance date by a week, Had we blocked quicker, we would have had a greater amount of time to polish our scenes. 

Performance Feedback

After the performance, we received a lot of feedback. One of the strengths of our performance was our stage combat. The scene in which the gang fight Finn was a great success. Audience members said the stage combat looked very effective and aided with music and lighting, the transitions into slow motion enhanced the effect of some of the hits. Another strength in our performance was the attack scene. Instead of using recorded music we used live drumming which allowed us to tailor the attack scene to the beat of the drum and do whatever we wanted without having to fit our piece around a recorded piece. I think the red lighting used was very effective and the drumming made the scene very powerful. Our use of techniques was a huge part of our piece and I believe that they were used effectively and very appropriately. 

One problem I encountered personally was the fact that I couldn’t change quick enough when off stage. I had a very short time in which to change my shirt and do the buttons up before I had to go back on. This meant that those on stage had to fill time by improvising until I came on. They done this very well and to an audience I think that nothing would have appeared to have gone wrong. Perhaps we should have practised costume changes in a dress rehearsal as we didn’t do this and were lucky to have got away with only a small change error. Another problem we were made aware of is that the fake blood on Ellie’s face, looked very fake, as it was smeared everywhere. Perhaps we should have practised with the fake blood before to know exactly what looked believable. Another detail we were made aware of is that the movement piece involving myself, Dan and Theo. The beginning and endings of the piece were very strong, however, getting into the middle part we lost the stylistic aspect of it and went more naturalistic, looking back, we perhaps should have focused on that scene a little more than we did. One audience member said that the changes in time period from the author to the gang were a little unclear and that our storyline of going back in time to certain points was a little confusing. We agreed with that statement. Looking back, it would have been a good idea to project the date on the screen at the point where the time changes, so it would be clear to the audience that we kept coming back to the same date.

The main piece of feedback we received was the fact that it was very hard to try and fit everything we needed to in the thirty minutes we had to fill. If we had a longer period of time then we could have done so much more, namely, developing characters more so the audience would feel so attached. The difficulty was trying to allow the audience to get attached to the characters in such a short period of time. However, I think we did the best job we could and we can be proud of our efforts.

Individual Thoughts

Individually, I am very pleased with myself. I feel that I have contributed a great deal to the devising process and thoroughly enjoyed working in the group I was part of. I think the research tasks I was asked to do were carried out properly and I incorporated my knowledge to the group. I carried out a lot of individual work to help the performance, such as thinking about ideas, or looking at set, hairstyles, possible scenes and remained level headed at all times. I tried to remain open minded and was willing to listen to all group members ideas and tried not to engage in any conflicts that arose, merely tried to extinguish them.

One thing I think I should have done better was to voice my ideas better, I don’t think I articulated my thoughts as well as I could have done and feared them being knocked back. I find devising very hard and coming up with ideas is very difficult for me without being in a group where ideas can bounce off each other. So I would definitely say that I should have shown more courage when proposing ideas. Also my Oklahoma accent wasn’t the best it could have been. Whilst I successfully carried off a traditional American accent, I should have looked more at a Southern accent to make it more accurate.

In conclusion, I think we done a remarkable job. The amount of hours and effort we put in was evident in our performance and our togetherness and strength as a group was obvious in how smoothly the performance ran. I thoroughly enjoyed working in this group and would love to have another chance with them. We can be proud of our performance and take many positives from it, as well as gaining a great deal of experience that will undoubtedly benefit us for the remainder of the course.