03.03.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

WARM UP

We started this rehearsal with a quick game of splat.  We made sure to keep it quick as we wanted to have as much time to go through our piece as possible.

RUN THROUGH

We then did a full run through.  I think this is our main focus to get a load of run throughs done by Saturday so we are as smooth as possible.  This one went pretty well but it's just still not as smooth and flowing as we were hoping for.  We changed a few things about the physical theatre in the prologue and epilogue by making them all a little bit longer.  By making them longer, it makes the movements look more emotional and showing more of a relationship between the characters.  Before we changed this, it looked a bit too choreographed and it looked like there wasn't a good enough relationship between them.

SOUND CUE

Louis and I spent some time making the sound cue for our performance.  We struggled a bit with finding out how to explain when the sound cue is and when the sound should stop or fade out.  We eventually got it done.

22.02.20 - FEST - Mrs Williams

WARM UP

For our warm up we did some sprints from one side of the room to the other.  After a few sprints, we added in a jump in the middle of the room.  We had to run to the middle, jump, run to the end of the room, run back to the middle, jump again and then run back.  After a few times of that, we had to jump up then touch the floor and run.  Finally, after a few times of that, we did a few runs with touching the floor, then jumping, then touching the floor again.  This made us all warm and ready to work.

MIRRORED CHAIR DUET

We first started off by doing the mirrored chair duet between Louis and Amelie, and Tristan and I.  We've already learnt the choreography for this chair duet but I think Tristan and I need to practice this a lot.  We aren't confident enough yet so this really needs to be improved so that Amelie, Louis, Tristan and I are all in sync.

RUN THROUGH

After the mirrored chair duets, we did a run through of everything we had done from start to as far as we got.  This went quite well but we needed to sort out the order of the plot and our fluency from one scene to another.

PLOT CHANGES AND ORDER

We've changed the plot a bit to make the ending make more sense.  Before, we didn't have a complete understanding of what happens to our characters and it was all a bit vague.  This is the new scene order:

• Prologue
• Fred's monologue
• Bar movement involving everyone
• 3 boys fragmented monologue
• Mirrored chair duet
• Jane and Meredith's fragmented monologues
• 3 boys argument
• David and Jane plotting
• Jane planting seeds inside Harry's mind
• Swindon 5 train station 
• Meredith asking Laurent to walk her down the aisle
• Charles explaining why he doesn't want to marry Marie
• Swindon 5 train station
• Laurent, Charles and Marie talk
• Awkward bar scene - David ranting, Laurent there, Fred splits it up
• 3 boys singing Sweet Caroline - David tells Harry that Meredith is cheating
• Harry and Meredith get into fight
• See Charles and Meredith's past relationship as Charles comforts her
• David's reveal of lies about cheating - Jane breaks up with David
• Harry and Meredith happy
• Charles and Marie argue but then propose
• Laurent and Jane happy

ENDING

We finished off our rehearsal with figuring out the ending to our piece.  First, we had a scene in the bar where David needs to get through all of the people he's hurt.  We used physical theatre with round, by, through to show this.  Then once he passes Jane, Meredith and Harry, he gets to Fred at the bar and downs a pint as Jane, Meredith and Harry give him a hateful stare.  He gets another pint and sits at the edge of the stage, centre stage.  Jane, Meredith and Harry walk up to him until he's enclosed and then walk away.  After this, Fred has a monologue describing what all the characters are going through.  Then the prologue we have at the start is done again, but as an epilogue.  We are also with different characters depending on our new relationships with people.  Then, in this physical theatre movement with lifts and round, by, through, we find a good position to freeze in to show the relationship between the characters.  After that, we all come together to do a bow.

12.02.20 - FEST - Mrs Williams

MOVEMENT SEQUENCE AND CHAIR DUET

We created a movement sequence for the opening bar scene.  We got into pairs which would work the most realistically.  I went with James because even though I start dating Tristan, we hadn't met at this point and that is what happens in this scene.  The other pairs were Louis and Tristan, Amelie and Silvana and Hugo and Seth.  Within the pairs, we had to create a set of movements to a count of 8 so that we could put it in a loop.  For example, with James and I, my counts were, grab the beer glass, take a glug, cheer, slam it down and slide it to James.  James had the same amount of beats as I did but he was being a bar tender so cleaning the glasses and filling them up with beer.  James and I slid the glasses at the same time so the other person caught it.  I also had to play drunk as I drink more and more.  I came into the scene first, then Louis and Tristan, then Amelie and Silvana and finally Hugo and Seth.  Every time the pairs went up to the bar, I had to interact with the partners.  When the boys came, I had to try flirt with them and when the girls came, I tried to dance with them.  After the 3 pairs came up to the bar, Tristan came back up and I did a chair duet with him.  This was to show how we met.  We wanted to make the chair duet look as fresh as possible with a real connection.  One way we showed this was through having our faces extremely close together.  It was quite difficult to make this chair duet as we weren't on staging blocks.
...

...
For this scene, we used the song Friday I'm In Love by The Cure as a stimulus.  We liked the fun atmosphere it brought out of the characters and the scene.
...

...
...

...
After this scene it goes straight into a scene between Tristan, Louis and James where they have an argument.

PROLOGUE

We decided that it would be best to change the characters around a bit so Tristan was now playing David instead of Hugo and now Hugo was playing Jeff (now changed to Laurent), Meredith's sister.  The prologue we started with now didn't work with the new story line so we had to change some things round a bit.  I stayed the same but now had to teach Tristan the choreography that Hugo had previously.  After that, we went into the bar scene we created this morning and fragmented monologues between Tristan, Louis and Harry.

SWINDON 5

Then we created a Swindon 5 piece to portray the train station when Laurent goes to see Meredith in London.  It started off very choreographed so everyone was evenly spaced apart and we didn't have specific characters, it was more neutral.  Then after testing the waters we gave ourselves specific characters.  I was an old lady so I also walked very slowly and people overtook me.  We also added the specific places so it didn't look as if we were walking around aimlessly.  We had a cafe downstage left, the departure board downstage right and the platform upstage left.

FULL RUN THROUGH

At the end we had a full run through of the material we had so far and it worked out really well.  We also timed it to see how much content we had and it came to around 15 minutes.  This was a lot better than what we were expecting.  I think we're all a lot more motivated and excited.