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.