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.
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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.
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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.

04.02.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

WARM UP

For the warm up we did the same game as yesterday with the numbers and actions in groups.  There were a lot more people in todays lesson so at the end we joined into one big group which made it easier to think about what comes next but the flow isn't as good.  We also did some stretching to get our bodies moving.

MOVEMENT

Our movement at the end of the yoga scene is quite good but we thought it should be a little bit longer.  We decided to add the Swindon 5 by Frantic Assembly at the end.  Once Louis gets into the position to propose to Amelie, the rest of us do a Swindon 5 through them with the objective to not let them hold hands.  We also wanted to add another layer to this, so every time Hugo and I walk past each other, we hold the eye contact to portray the relationship.

IMPROVISATION

Then to come up with more ideas, we improvised the scene where David and Jane meet for the first time at the bar.  We gave each character objectives to portray in the scene.  Silvana's objective was to stick with me because she doesn't like being alone in big crowds, my objective was to speak to Hugo (played by Louis in this scene as Hugo wasn't there) and Hugo's objective was to just dance and have a good time.  There were a few good points in this scene but we think that this was more of a character development instead of an actual scene to use.

20.01.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

In this lesson, we spent a bit of time going over everything we had previously done.  We then rehearsed the loyalty choreography we made from last lesson and performed it to the group.  After that, we discussed the points of which group we liked.

Seth and Hugo

• They made the storyline very clear
• Their clamp lift was smooth

Louis and James

• Their round, by, through was really smooth and effective
• They incorporated the chair duets and lift well

Amelie, Silvana and Emma

• Our hip lift looked very effortless
• The chair duet showed the theme of loyalty

15.01.20 - FEST - Mrs Williams

BRAINSTORM

Loyalty

• standing by someone at all times
• cheating on s/o
• compromising beliefs to defend people you're loyal to
• brand loyalty
• biological family vs the people who actually raised you

IMPROVISATION

Tristan and Emma

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• Silent entrance - showing the desperation
• Narrative enigma
• Shift of emotions from angry to wanting help and advise

Louis, Amelie, James and Hugo

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• Amelie entering 
• Amelie being very controlling - parental controls on phone etc.
• Bar tender character knowing everything
• Relationship between Louis and Amelie's character
• Conflict in Louis - whether to stay in bar or go with Amelie - apparent in walk
• Wedding in the air but it never quite happen
• Possibly the morning of the wedding but doesn't go right.

Seth, Silvana and Hugo

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• Betrayal of trust 
• People finding out
• Misunderstanding - Hugo not knowing and then calming down once understood - shift
• Introduction of Hugo's character

5 POINT PLOT IDEAS

1. Bar scene with Amelie, James, Hugo and Louis
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. All together at house party - find out all know each other

WARM UP

We did some warming up after lunch which we had planned in the previous lesson.  In our pairs we lead a warm up.  It was important to get our bodies warm and moving around as we were doing Frantic Assembly.

Seth and I lead some stretches and also used the song Roxanne by The Police.  Every time it said "Roxanne", the girls had to do a push up and every time it said "red light", the boys had to do a pushup.

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Amelie and Silvana also lead some stretches.

Hugo and Tristan made the group do push ups for 1 minute as well as sit ups for 2 minutes.

Louis and James used the song Love The Way You Lie by Rihanna and Eminem.  When Eminem was rapping, we had to hold a plank position and when Rihanna sang, we would break.

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At the end, we played a hand game where everyone lies on their stomach in a circle facing the middle with their hands in front of them.  Then everyone put their right hand over the left hand of the person to their right.  Then we would go round in a circle and everyone would tap the floor in order of the hands.  It gets very difficult because you think that your hand is next when it isn't.  Whenever someone messed up, they would have to get up and run around the circle before everyone has slapped around the circle.  If they didn't get there in time, they would have to do 10 push ups.

SWINDON 5

We tried a Frantic method from Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  We started by having all of us walking around in a big figure of 8, trying to weave us together.  Then we added in points where we would change from walking forwards to walking backwards.  We then had Tristan in the middle who's objective was to get our attention but we didn't give it to him.  His next objective was to pick up a book from the ground but the rest of us had the objective of not letting Tristan pick it up.  This could be used in a panicky scene where the person in the centre feels like they can't get a hold of something or they're frustrated.  We also thought that this would be good in a train station, a school hallway and a busy hospital.

LIFTS

We moved on to lifts by Frantic Assembly.  The first lift we looked at was the hip lift.  One person had to have their arm around the other's waist and squat down to get their hip below the other persons.  Then they would take a step and then, with pressure applied to the hip area, would lift the other person up.

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The second lift we looked at was the clipboard lift.  One person had to squat to get their hips lower than the other persons and then the other person would put their arm over their shoulder and clamp it together.

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The last lift we looked at was the one rock lift.  There were two people standing opposite each other and one was squatted down.  Then the other would go up to them and press down on their shoulders and lift one leg up.  Everyone else would then lift the person from underneath.  The person in the air could then let go of the first person's shoulders.

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LOYALTY CHOREOGRAPHY

Using this music as a stimulus, we then had the task to create a piece about loyalty using Frantic Assembly's methods.  We could use the ones from last week as well, such as chair duets and round, by, through.
This is what we've created so far.
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