18.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

WARM UP
In the warm up, we played a focus game called Samurai.  There are two groups of people with one leader from both and the leader has to do a specific action to which the other team will do the corresponding movement.  If the leader claps, the other team has to spin around.  If the leader puts both arms up, the other team has to do a squat.  If the leader kicks, the other team has to jump.  If the leader puts their arm in a direction, the other team has to follow that direction.  I found this game very fun and interesting and I did quite well in it but I struggled to keep a straight face throughout.

REHEARSALS
Today, rehearsals went a lot smoother.  My character didn't look like as big of a role as the rest of them so we did an improvisation game where my main objective was to get a burger that my class mates had.  I struggled with this exercise in the beginning but after a while it really helped me form my through-line objective the day before the show.  With this new objective, I made some drastic differences to my choreography which is a lot better than what I have been rehearsing for months.  I'm glad I've now changed it and I'm prepared for the performance.  The rehearsals with the orchestra went a lot better as now all of the musicians were there and we were a bit more used to the instruments and timing.

17.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

REHEARSALS
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WARM UP
For the warm up we did the same Sally song as yesterday and two other songs.  For the Sally song, we did lunges for the first part of the song and squats for the second half.  My legs were already aching from all of the squats we did the day before so I really struggled.  Mr Lemon told the cast that your mind quits before your body, so I really wanted to keep going to prove to myself that I could do it even when my mind quit.  By the end of the song, I ended up crying because I was in so much pain, but I felt stronger and happier afterwards.
We did Love The Way You Lie by Rihanna and Eminem:
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Every time Rihanna sang, we held a crunch position and every time Eminem rapped, we did sit ups.  This was a lot easier than the Sally song we did in my opinion as I have stronger ab muscles than leg muscles.
We also did Thunderstruck by ACDC:
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In this song, every time the word "thunder" was said even in the word "thunderstruck", we had to do a burpee.  By this time we were all absolutely worn out so we struggled to carry on.

REHEARSAL
For the rehearsal, we had a bit of a tough time, especially Tristan, the narrator, to adapt to the orchestra as this was our first rehearsal with them.  One of the musicians wasn't able to make the rehearsal which was even more difficult and stressful.  Some of the music was faster and some was slower than the recording that we had previously been rehearsing to.  For example, my music when Tristan says, "In a twinkling, the cat climbed up the tree" was significantly faster than the recording.  Despite all of this, we still managed to make things work.  Our first run through was even worse than the day before, so all of us got down hearted for a bit but then we pulled ourselves together and did a much better second rehearsal.

12.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

REHEARSAL
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In this rehearsal, the wolf character came back from time off so we spent most of the lesson helping him with his blocking, choreography and making his movements larger and more exciting.  As our play is directed at young children, we need the characters to have over-the-top and large movements to keep them excited and interested.  We helped Hugo with this and made his body language more extreme.  It looked much better by the end of it.  We also decided to play with the music a bit and have Hugo move in time with it.  Most of his music is slow and eerie but there is one part in this section where his music becomes quite a fast beat.  We made Hugo walk in time to the music to make it more interesting for the audience.  The cast was quite distracted and out of it today, however, Hugo carried on throughout.

10.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

DISCUSSION IN REHEARSAL
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REHEARSAL
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We believe that the beginning and end is quite smooth so we decided to work on the fighting scenes with the wolf.  Our lack of characters made it quite difficult to rehearse the parts we wanted to.  Georgia, as the duck, is in the first half and Hugo, the wolf is in the second half, so without either of them it was very difficult to find things to be able to rehearse.  Our space was also quite inconvenient as it is a lot smaller than the auditorium where we will be performing.  We also wanted to focus on linking all of the scenes as we've worked on each scene separately.  We also need to work on the procession with the amount of space provided in the auditorium.
We decided to rehearse in costume as we needed to get used to the tutus and leotards etc. We did a full run through at the beginning to see what needed the most work on.  Louis and Amelie spent a bit of time cleaning up their interaction with each other.  Silvana and Amelie helped Georgia with her entrance. We then spent a bit of time on Silvana and Seth's hunter's scene.  Then we helped Louis and Amelie with their interaction with the hunters.  I liked the idea of having Louis help Amelie down off the tree so we tried it a few times and decided to keep it.  We made the overall interaction with the hunters a bit more choreographed and into a routine.  At the end, we spent some time choreographing my movements for when I climb up the tree.  This is so much better now than how it was before.
I'm very happy with the way this rehearsal went.  The entire cast was dedicated and motivated and it really shows as to how much work we got done.  We were all sharing ideas and helping each other succeed.

Bullying Piece full run through - Mrs Williams

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Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

WOODWIND QUINTET

• Flute
• Obo - double reed
• Clarinet - single reed
• Horn 
• Bassoon - double reed

SWOT

S-strengths

W-weaknesses

O-opportunities

T-threats

S

• Talented actors
• Artists to create costumes and set
• Similar amount of boys to girls
• Small group
• Close friends

W

• movements
• budget
• little time with musicians
• needing to make set and costume
• not many dancers
• time constraint

O

• primary school to help inspire
• international tour
• auditorium as performance space
• Luxembourg quintet professionals 
• big audience

T

• people coming because of Christmas holidays
• Christmas shows going on
• people living in different countries
• overtaken by bigger companies

CHARACTERS

• narrator
• hunters
• wolf
• Peter
• grandfather
• cat
• duck
• bird

Pool (no water) by Mark Ravenhill - Mrs Williams

SCRIPT DETAILS

From what we read, I didn't understand much of the context, being that there is group of so-called 'friends' who go to one of their friends (Sallys) pool.  Sally gets in an accident which results in her getting in a coma.  There are no specific characters so this text is very abstract and could be performed in a vast variety of ways.

WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE TEXT

Our group took the first half of the first page and divided the lines between us to create characters that would make sense.  We had 5 characters, 1 of which we gave lines to to make them appear to be slightly crazy and also very attracted to money.  The character I played took more of a malicious role where they thought that Sally would be better dead so that they could make their fortune off of her. The other 3 characters were more sympathetic and were trying to make the other two understand why killing her would be an awful thing.

WHY DID YOU MAKE THOSE CHOICES

The lines, supported by body language, facial expression and tone of voice, made more sense by splitting the lines in this way in our opinion.  It was very challenging to do so but we persevered.

WHAT WAS THE IMPACT

We made the characters intentions clear to the audience but also still left that mystery and suspense, leaving them guessing what happens next yet giving them just enough context for that half of a page.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO NEXT WITH THIS PIECE OF WORK

Hot seating each character would be a good way to portray these roles more effectively.  I would like to expand it a bit more and experiment with choral speaking, setting and proxemics.

SETTING

We set our piece in and by and empty pool with our audience in the round.

The setting we agreed on for our piece