Working on the dress run was another milestone that we knew would need a lot of planning and preparation. This is why, we had been working on and thinking about costumes since the very beginning of the rehearsals. Starting off, we knew our biggest problem was going to be the quick changes Elle Woods does, for example, the very first scene Elle was in with the changing one dress to another in under 10 seconds. We did this by putting magnets on the bag of the overdress and have the final dress tucked underneath so it could be removed easily. In the dress rehearsal, this went really well because we had figured out a technique of who was going to pull what at what time. This is why we had rehearsed all the technical things beforehand so we could have a smooth run-through. Unfortunately, after finishing the act 1 of the dress run we had all admitted that the energy that we had produced was not the amount we should be and this wasn't something that we wanted to put on stage.
After a quick lunch break, and a pep talk to the whole cast about how we were going to be performing this show in the next week and how the energy we are will be giving for the shows should also be the energy we are using for all of our full runs so everybody can get the feel of how the real thing was going to feel so we could lower the amount of performance anxiety for everybody, we started Act 2. From the very first scene, we could tell that the energy had immediately been picked up and everyone was really putting their all in. For me personally, i felt like for the Act 1 dress run i hadn't fully embodied Elle yet because i hadn't put myself in the right mindset, so, before we started Act 2 i did some warm ups and character work with the other characters i would be working with in the different scenes, working over the dynamics of the relationships and how she would react to the different big moments in the scenes. i feel like this helped me get into character easier because i had the support from my fellow actors and i knew that they were all feeling a little bit of stress and disappointment from the run of Act 1.
Starting the Act 2 run, with the energy-full run of "whipped into shape" really made everybody on stage and in the wings hyped up for the rest of the act, the issue we had had in the past was that we didn't want it to look like we had the huge amount of energy for whipped into shape and then the rest of the act would fall off with the energy because it was less energetic of scenes than the first one. However, working through Act 2 this time, we could tell that that was not going to happen. In Take it like a man, we had all the younger cast members acting as rails, initially i didn't know how we were going to be able to do it but watching it back the choreography looks amazing. Overall, the vocals of take it like a man could definitely improve so to improve me and my co-actor for Emmett practiced the vocals working with the musicians after the run.
Bend and snap,after the struggle in rehearsals, we actually improved a lot, with everybody acting on the feedback of moving forwards towards the audience and making sure everybody was opening their mouth and singing whilst also doing the choreography. Overall, the sound, harmonies and movement looked really put together and clean. Personally, i believe that i managed to learn and perform the choreography well in the dress run but i definitely needed to improve before the proper performance. My movement and choreo was there but it lacked the cleaness, and sharpness.
One of the scenes, that i think had personally looked clean from the beginning of rehearsing it, was "There Right There". In our BTEC class, one of our tasks was to choreograph this scene so it was not too dancy (because we didn't have a lot of space for a lot of movement) and make sure it wasn't just sat there saying lines (because we didn't want it to fall flat). I really enjoyed choreographing and running the rehearsals on this scene and i feel like everybody who was in this scene always gave full energy and there was so much exctiting energy when this was being performed. In the dress run, everything went well, everybody knew what they were doing and it hit right off.
Legally Blonde was the next scene, the callahan hitting on Elle could definitely be improved but overall was not bad. The singing, i felt was good and i had good dynamics and a range of emotions. The hardest part of this scene in the dress run was definetly the part with emmett, i think getting the dynamics and movement just right when there was the door between us really stumped us a bit, because we are so used to being able to see each other, i especially found it a little bit difficult to find that connection with him through the set. So, i knew that after we had run me and the actor playing emmett would need to sit down and work on the dynamics between us, the different emotions, and the different actions we would need to be doing.
Act 2 Scene 7, despite having the set change in the middle of the scene i think it went decently well in the dress run, the thing that defiently brought us down though was the timings on singing, mostly the "omigod" line where different groups sang at different times. And, the timings going into the second verse after brooke had sang, this let us down a lot proving to be more difficult than we had originally anticipated.
Find my way, we struggled a little bit at the beginning with the timings of getting everybody off stage then the people who needed to back on but i think my singing in this part was really colourful and i managed to use different tones and dynamics whilst singing with warner. A part i struggled with particularly with this scene was the freezing, because i was the only one facing the audience the whole time my professionalism and character had to be at 100% the whole time, however i think i did very well.
We also worked on bows which went so much better than last year despite having a huge increase in numbers, everybody worked together and paid attention the whole time.
Overall, the run was better than expected with a few things that we needed to work on before the final performances.
No comments:
Post a Comment