06.03.2020 - FEST - Mrs Williams

WARM UP

We started by having a little group warm up with the drama group from the year above.  We did some body and voice warm ups.  For the body warm ups we did some stretching.  For the voice warm ups, we did the sing sirens and uh-oh's.

SFX AND LFX CUES

We then started sorting out the lighting and sound cues.  First we had to sort out the script as although we knew what was going on, the script didn't have precisely what we were doing.  If the sound and lighting technicians saw the script, they would be quite confused over what cue goes where.  Once that was sorted out, Louis and I went to go find the music we were using to put on a USB stick.  The music we were previously using was on Spotify so we needed to find versions to download.  We were very lucky in finding all of the songs quite quickly.  We did have to make some alterations with the timings of the audio but it all went smoothly.

VENUE

We then went to the Mierscher Kulturhaus which was the venue we were going to perform at.  We got a little tour of the venue including the backstage and the stage.

SOUND AND TECHNICAL REHEARSAL

We spent an hour doing a sound and tech rehearsal.  This was very helpful to see the size of the stage considering it is a lot bigger than what we've been used to.  There was one issue that arose which was that the lights were bit more forward than we were expecting.  This meant that the staging blocks had to be further forward than we were used to leaving us not a lot of space in the front.  We all acted very professional during this sound and technical rehearsal and we overcame problems together as a group.  Another big type of difference is the fact that we had to project our voices throughout the room.  There are many more seats and the venue is a lot larger so we need to make sure everyone will be able to hear clearly.  We were told that we need to watch out for the floor mics as they are very expensive and we will break them if we stand on them.  We also taped down where our set is going to be in the performance.  We eventually chose a song to play during the bows which was Sweet Caroline as it is very wholesome and will make the audience feel happy hopefully.

REHEARSAL

We then spent some time fixing the middle scenes when Hugo enters as the energy seems to drop.  The beginning and end have high energy but then middle just needs a little boost.  Once that was fixed we decided to do a speed run-through for a bit of fun and to make sure we all knew the lines and our cues. 

PERFORMANCES

Amelie, Silvana and I stayed after this to watch some of the performances in the festival.  The first one we watched was not my favourite, to be honest.  Some of the actors were very quiet which was probably due to nerves and opening the entire festival which reminded us we need to really be louder than we think.  The second show was more to my taste and everyone seemed to be quite excited especially the main character played by a girl named Marta.

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.

02.03.2020 - FEST - Ms Trono

WARM UP 
For our warm up, we played the 1,2,3 game again.  It helped us get our head into a concentrating mode so we could have a good run through.

RUN THROUGH
We did a run through for as long as we had time in the lesson.  We did very well but yet again we need to focus on some of the scenes to improve.  We will focus on these scenes in our after school rehearsal.

01.03.2020 - FEST - Own Rehearsal

WARM UP

In this rehearsal we made sure everyone had learnt their lines before so we could have the smoothest and most effective rehearsal.  We warmed up with a couple games of splat.  We played with high energy to get in the mood and so we were all warmed up.

RUN THROUGH

We spent the whole rehearsal doing run throughs to see which scenes needed working on.  It was quite difficult to do the entire run through as we had a cast member who wasn't able to come.  Some aspects of the plot we thought could be improved were the bar scene.  We think that these movements could be a little more synchronised as it looks a bit muddled up at the minute.  We also need to work on some scenes like the plotting scene between Jane and Dave. 

25.02.2020 - FEST - Ms Trono

WARM UP

We started out by playing a game called Samurai.  This made us really concentrate on the movements that the other group were doing which helped us get in the mood for rehearsals to properly concentrate.

RUN THROUGH

We tried to run through the scenes we had but a lot of us got confused because of the new plot changes and where the scenes were placed.  After clearing up the order of the scenes, we were able to do a second run-through that went much smoother and motivated us again.

SCRIPTING

Amelie then went ahead and scripted the whole piece to make it a lot easier for us all.  She left some scenes in red that she didn't know exactly what happened within them so I tried filling out as many of those as possible.

24.02.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

In today's lesson with Ms Trono, we explained everything we had completed over the holidays in terms of script writing and rehearsals.  Then we all got into our separate groups to complete as much as possible.  I had in mind to fragment Amelie and my monologues but as she wasn't at the start of the lesson, I decided to help Silvana with brainstorming the set and props and Hugo with brainstorming the costumes.  This is the type of idea we came up with for the costumes.
Louis/Harry
Tristan/David
James/Fred
Hugo/Laurent
Seth/Charles
Amelie/Meredith
Emma/Jane
Silvana/Marie

13.02.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

Today's rehearsal was quite short due to the parents evening.  This also meant that there weren't many people available.  I spent this rehearsal helping Silvana and Hugo with their monologues.  For Silvana's, she was talking about how her boyfriend doesn't want to propose to her.  We made it quite comedic with excessive details on her dream dress for example.  Hugo's monologue was about the conflict within himself as he doesn't know if he should tell Amelie that her friends were talking about her behind her back.  We also helped come up with some ideas for Amelie and Louis' break up scene.  I think the easiest way to show the lack of trust would be through a chair duet but we already have quite a lot of those so they decided to try something different like round, by, through.  We all came up with that they both still loved each other but lost that lack of trust, so they attract and then repel.

11.02.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

In today's rehearsal I spent most of the time script writing as we needed some more content.  Silvana and I scripted the scene where Marie confronts Jane about David's plan.  We decided to have the start naturalistic and then go into a physical theatre where it starts with Silvana and then Tristan replaces her.  We took some inspiration from Frantic Assembly's 'Things I Know To Be True' with having a monologue whilst still doing physical theatre.  We took specific inspiration from a scene where the main character is doing a monologue and there are hands touching and holding her.  This was the physical theatre we started to create.
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After that I began to script the scene where David and my character first meet in the bar.

SCRIPT WRITING

Scene where Marie confronts Jane about David's plan

Jane - Hi Marie!
Marie - Hi Jane love.
Jane - How is it living with boys for the first time? Hahaha
Marie - Oh my god it's a lot harder than I thought hahah.
Jane - Trust me it doesn't get any easier!
Marie - Hahaha. *pause* I brought you here because there's something I wanted to bring up.  I've heard a little rumour that you and David we're trying to break up Meredith and Harry?
Jane - I-
Marie - Don't worry, I won't tell anybody.  I think that you're a lot better than that, to be honest.  I know it's not my place to say anything because I haven't known you for too long but you seem a little bit off with David.
Jane - What? No... It's fine.
Marie - Are you sure?  You know you can talk to me about anything.
*Into physical theatre*
*Jane's monologue*
Jane - It started two years ago.  He seemed like the perfect man.

Scene where David and Jane meet

*On way out of pub, David picks up Jane's jacket*
Jane - Excuse me! Hey you!
David - What do you want?!
Jane - You've got my jacket there.
David - No it's my jacket.
Jane - I'm telling you it's mine.
David - Trust me.  I'm not in the mood for this now piss off.
Jane - Seriously check the label.
David - Jesus! Fine!
*Jane waiting with a smug face*
Jane - Hmm?
David - Wow I'm such an idiot.  I'm so sorry, please don't think I'm a burglar.  Let me repay you.
Jane - For what? It was an honest mistake.
David - No please let me do this for you.
Jane - Look I'm with friends right now but I'll be here tomorrow night.
David - Okay see you tomorrow... Um-
Jane - Jane. And you are?..
David - David.
Jane - Nice to meet you David.
David - Have a nice night.
Jane - And you.

06.02.20 - FEST - Own Rehearsal

After school, we did a rehearsal.  We tried to really get some more of the connections between the characters shown through physical theatre.  We worked on the relationship between David, Jane and their siblings.  We started off by having Hugo and I doing a chair duet.  We attempted to show the argument between our characters through this.  For example, in the chair duet, I push Hugo away.  We then proceed to get up and do round, by, through to show the conflict in the character's heads as they want to stay with each other but also don't get along and argue a lot.  Louis had a lot of ideas so he stepped in for Hugo for a bit.
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27.01.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

MAIN REHEARSAL VIDEO
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WARM UP
For our warm-up we spent some time playing Zip Zap Boing to get our bodies moving and to put us in the right mindset.  This gave us a lot of energy and set the tone for the rest of the rehearsal which was good.

OPENING CHOREOGRAPHY
We continued to practice our opening choreography and refresh our memories.  We then performed it and I think it went quite well.

FIRST MONOLOGUE
We decided as a group that it would be best to have James' character to be the first to speak.  He, as the bar tender, is pretty much the middle of all the action so I think having him open it would be most effective.  We also thought that it would be quite interesting to include some physical theatre around him whilst he is talking, which he could also be involved in.  We got this inspiration from DV8 doing Enter Achilles.
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James was having a hard time doing improvisation for this monologue so we hot seated him to help him think of subjects to talk about.  I think this has helped him, and the rest of us, enough to be able to write a monologue for James' character.
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08.01.20 - FEST - Mrs Williams

ART

In the beginning of today's lesson, we tried to improvise a scene from Art and a scene that is spoken of but not included.  We were 2 boys short today so the remaining 3 staged the "waving away cigarette smoke" scene about Marc's wife Paula.  The 3 girls (including me), then tried to improvise Paula waving away the cigarette smoke which is mentioned but not included in the play.  This was all to help create a theme or characters for us to go off of.

DINNER PARTY

We then had an improvised dinner party with contrasting personalities to hopefully give us some more inspiration.  Louis, Hugo and Seth were friends from school, now adults, with their three girlfriends/fiancées/wives.  This exercise was very useful in developing some of these characters.  The improvisation part of it was funny and surprising with some people's ideas.

WARM UP

Later on, we did a warm up when we had a bigger rehearsal space where we could move around.  We started with finding 3 different focus points around the room, then we were just walking to each one.  Then we had to run from no.3 to no.1, slo-mo walk backwards from no.1 to no.2 and then go from no.2 to no.3 with our bodies as close to the floor as possible in creative ways.

CONTACT IMPROVISATION

In this exercise, we got into pairs.  With our pairs we had to find three points of contact on the other's body.  Then we added these together into a sequence and then used the Frantic Assembly Shift, Through, Round to add to the sequence.  After that, we explored eye contact.  This set of movements had so many different meanings just by changing the point of focus.  For example, when both people looked into each other's eyes, it made the bond between the people look very strong, but when someone looks away it could portray a lack of trust.  We collectively decided we liked this a lot and wanted to include it in our piece.

MONOLOGUE

There were 6 different sheets with 2 different columns to write a monologue in.  Each sheet had a sort of relationship between 2 characters and each column was to be from their point of view.  We then had about 2 mins to write whatever we wanted on the sheet and then move onto the next.  I found it quite difficult to start the monologue but after changing sheets, it got easier as there was already something to go off of.  After we went around to all the sheets, we read out the final product.  We got some pretty good monologues, characters and relationships to use for inspiration.  We liked the relationship between a bar tender and a regular customer the most.

19.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

OPEN DRESS REHEARSAL
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Our open dress rehearsal went very well.  I think the fact that there was an audience there made the experience so much better and they all seemed to enjoy it.  I think that I really tried to make every movement exaggerated as the audience was very young.  After performing to them, we received some lovely letters from a Year 3 class.  This boosted our confidence and made the cast a lot less worried for the final performance.

REHEARSAL
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After our open dress rehearsal, we decided that one of the things we needed to work on was our end bows.  We quickly took to this and then had to clean up the set before the performance later that day.

PERFORMANCE
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The final performance went really well and I'm very proud of Split Clarity.  There were some occasional slip ups, however, we improvised our way through it.  For example, Hugo jumped on the earlier music than he was supposed to but when that happened, Louis and I improvised and made it look like we were frightened by the wolf in that piece of music.  I, yet again, tried to really exaggerate my movements and make my through-line objective of wanting to eat the bird or get food from the humans, obvious.

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.

16.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

WARM UP
Today was our first rehearsal from 6-9pm.  This was quite challenging as I'm not used to rehearsing this late but I had quite a fun time.  For our warm up, we were introduced to a workout to a song:
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When the song said "bring Sally up" we had to stand and when it said "bring Sally down" we had to squat.  Mr Lemon made sure we were in the proper form.  This was so difficult for me as I'm not very physically fit.  Ms Trono told me that a part of being an actor is having that physical ability and strength so I will be doing more exercise in order to increase my fitness and stamina.

REHEARSAL
We found out today that Georgia has been in quite a serious accident which means she is unable to do the show so Silvana had to step up to her role.  As Silvana had to take on Georgia's role in a previous rehearsal where Georgia didn't show up, she was already very familiar with the choreography which was helpful.  Silvana really embraced the duck role and accepted the stress, hard work and dedication that came with it.  For this rehearsal, we spent a bit of time helping Silvana with her new role and did our first full run through with costume.  This run through wasn't as smooth as the one yesterday which we were quite upset about as we wanted to prove how hard we worked on Sunday.  After the first run through, our morale was pretty low because we were annoyed with ourselves but we didn't let it stop us.

15.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

WARM UP
For our warm-up, we all followed Amelie and Silvana doing stretches and exercises.  These were very effective and warmed up our bodies.

REHEARSAL
Today, Amelie booked a dance room for the cast to rehearse in so we spent about 3 hours rehearsing.  We did a run through and then decided which parts needed the most amount of work.  We choreographed the hunter and wolf's scene but Seth didn't know what to do as he wasn't in the rehearsal when we choreographed it.  He took on the dance quite well and Georgia and Silvana were helping him.  I was quite distracted in this rehearsal as I wasn't as needed that much.  We also helped to block Tristan correctly and involve him more in the scenes.  This breaks that fourth wall, however, we made it very entertaining for what we believe children would want to watch.

11.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

SHORT CLIP OF REHEARSAL
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REHEARSAL DISCUSSION
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This rehearsal was a very tricky one.  The cast's morale was down as we were expecting the two main characters to be there (as those parts are the ones we need to work on the most).  There was a conflict between the theatre company but things were resolved that night.  We decided to spend our time on the parts where we have interactions with the characters who were available for rehearsal (which ended up being 5 of us).  The part we worked on the most was my interaction with Amelie after the duck dies.

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.

09.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

REHEARSAL
In this rehearsal, we covered the movements from the duck coming out of the pond and then getting eaten by the wolf up until the procession.  There was a bit of confusion as to why the duck was getting out of the pond in the first place, but now Georgia understands her character's motif and it's smoother.  She thought that she was getting out of the pond because she was scared of the wolf, but now her objective is to instinctively fight the wolf, then realises how scary he is and runs away.  I think we need to fix the section after the duck gets eaten as the wolf isn't doing much and it's a bit boring, especially for a young audience.  I think the rehearsal, despite the little working space we had, went quite well as the cast was more lively and energetic today.

Wolf chasing duck

03.12.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

WARM UP

For our warmup, we started with a game of Splat to get our blood pumping and bodies moving.  This helped with our energy later on when rehearsing as we were all ready and warmed up

REHEARSAL

In this rehearsal, we solidified our movement for after Peter lets the rope down for me to put over the Wolf.  This time we had the actual tree we intend to use, however, it was quite difficult as the tree was taller than we expected so throwing the rope over was hard.  We came up with a solution to throw the rope out of one of the holes in the tree.  This seemed to end up working, but then we faced another problem.  When I have to jump out of the tree, I have to make sure I jump more forwards than up like I was doing before as I would hit the tree.  We then carried on to do the procession and just went over our movements.

Peter and the cat with the rope

12.11.19 - Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

REHEARSAL
In this rehearsal, we re-blocked the procession so that it makes more sense with the music and the storyline.
Before, our procession was boring and lifeless but we changed it because that wouldn't be appropriate for our target audience as they want it to be interactive and exciting.
We now have Peter, the wolf and the huntsmen interacting with the audience and walking around whilst the cat and grandfather perform their segment.
Then the cat and grandad come off stage and meet Peter, the wolf and the huntsmen and interact with the children whilst the bird performs.
Then we all go off stage and come back on for the curtain call.
This has been improved greatly and now the cast is more confident in the piece.

Actors interacting with the audience