This week we had no time during performing arts lessons to rehearse and so we only had our after school or lunch rehearsals to work on things meaning we got less done this week than we would’ve hoped to have done. Nevertheless, we managed to sing through Summer Nights as a full cast and teach the rest of the cast Grease is the Word’ as planned which did help tremendously in terms of confidence of knowing the dance. We also managed to get a very tough run through of all Act 1 scenes just dialogue.
On Tuesday lunchtime we were focussing on singing and so it was vital to do a vocal warm up which I asked our Musical Director ( MD) if I could lead to which she said – I led the cast in 2 types of vocal warm ups so that we were sure not to strain our voices when reaching the top or bottom of our ranges. The first was a simple exercise counting up and down from 1 to 8 with each number increasing in note so that you would cover a wide range and stretch your vocal cords. We did it once starting from the bottom and then once from the top so that we had worked both ends of our range equally. Afterwards we did a vowel exercise where you go up in fifths but each time you change the noise coming out – this is good to warm up the shaping of the mouth too so that our pronunciation is good whilst singing.
When singing Summer Nights, it was apparent that my breathing to reach the high notes towards the end of the song was going to be challenging as I was barely reaching it without even projecting. In terms of the beginning of the song, I found it quite easy as it was relatively in the middle of my range and so I could sing the notes comfortably which allowed me straight away to try and bring character through my singing which was one of my targets : I did this through accent ( American ) and tone ( arrogant) to portray how Danny feels in this song. Because I was struggling with the very last note which was very high and then changes to an even higher note and then even higher again which u hold for 2 counts of 8, my MD said that for now I should just hold the first not to practice holding a high note for that long and then with practice I can start to change note and try to hold it. I will practice this at home of during performing arts lessons so that I will be more prepared the next time we sing it through as a full cast.
In Tuesdays after-school rehearsal we were teaching the rest of the cast the choreography to Grease is the Word’ , this wasn’t challenging for me as I had learnt choreography over a month ago however I did find it useful for confidence that I remembered the choreography and allowed me to experiment even more with my characterisation and interactions with other characters throughout the song. I also found it helpful to sing along to the music when dancing on Friday because it helped me add attitude and even more character to my performance.
Friday night the directors decided to test how far we had come and how we coped under pressure, as well as testing our line learning so far and whether we had been practicing scenes as a cast outside of rehearsals. From the get go it was clear that we had not been putting in enough work, focus was lost with every line slipped and every scene had at least 5-line slip ups – whilst on top this seemed horrendous and we felt awful after the run through, personally this was very helpful to me as I now feel more motivated to up my game and work just as hard outside of rehearsals as I am in rehearsals so that next time we do something similar I don’t feel as embarrassed as we all just did after that run. Hopefully the rest of the cast shares my feelings and goes home and learns every single one of their lines from act 1 as I plan on doing as this will make us feel much more confident and ready to run it next time.
To conclude this week I discovered I needed to work on my ability to reach the high notes but I will work on this at home by using breathing exercises to control my breathes before those notes, but I also learnt that I’m not comfortable with all of my lines and blocking and so I need to go home to practice lines and next week need to meet the cast members and run through several scenes all together.
Monday, 6 January 2020
Week Begining - 7/10/19
This week we focussed almost completely on scenes in rehearsals but for me especially it was learning/ blocking 2 new scenes, act 1 Scene 6 and act 2 scene 3. We were also going to run through act 1 Scene 2 as we haven’t run this for a while and we wanted to see if our characters and interactions have improved. Finally, in performing arts we would try to go through all our choreography so far.
When we started blocking Act 2 scene 3, it became quickly apparent that this scene would only work and give the hard hitting and gritty feel that we were striving for if it looked completely realistic and very uncomfortable. This was hard at first as to physically control someone when they are telling you through their lines that they are being hurt is a hard thing to do – however once we experimented with different ways we could portray this, our trust between characters and confidence grew which allowed us to become more physical and push each other more which gave a greater feeling of threat to the audience. We knew our intention was working as the co-director stated “that was actually quite uncomfortable to watch” meaning it looked realistic and therefore Danny really had come across as a creep that tried to control Sandy. Me and Taylor made this scene look even more realistic by the grabbing of the upper arm and pushing down so I physically dominated her. My feedback for this scene was to make the kiss seem more passionate and eventually forceful – I think this is achievable but only through doing the scene more so that we can build up the trust first.
Act 1 Scene 6 is showing off a slight bit of Danny’s sensitive side whilst still maintaining a slight bit of 'boyish' behaviour. His caring side was shown immediately in the line – “what happened to your ear? ... Look I hope you’re not still bugged about the first day of school” and so these lines I spoke softly withy body language gestured towards Sandy to show my focus is on her, however to show I still maintain some of the 'boyish' behaviour on the line “ me talking to a chick and thinks she puts....” , I will thrust and look out to the audience to show i am no longer truly focussing on Sandy and instead trying to be funny instead which is insensitive. Later in the scene it’s vital that the audience can tell Danny is secretly jealous of the “cute lettermen” and so he needs to be snappy and change my voice to a snide tone instead of being soft. I also decided to come across as really sarcastic and irritating for the line “ha...ha...ha” as this made the audience aware, I was trying to wind Sandy up. To emphasise this winding up sense , on the line “ hey patty when did you say those try-outs were “ I looked Sandy up and down before smirking and turning to Party where I had a very flirty body language to show how I am insensitive here and really trying to get on Sandy's nerves.
Finally, in Performing Arts we tried to cover all of our choreography that we had learnt so far and this was on the whole quite successful as I managed to really add more character into all of my dances as I had worked on my characterisation for weeks now – this was especially noticeable in 'Grease is the Word' as it has lots of opportunities to show specific characterisation for example the tableaux's or something as simple as each time we were just walking in the dance I could embed my own character walk. This brought the dance alive as no longer was it just plain actors getting the choreography right, we could finally see full characters the whole way through.
Next week we are planning to smash through summer nights song – learning all lines and harmonies, we will also be teaching the rest of the cast Grease is the Word’ and may even start to run scenes in Act 1 as we have nearly blocked them all.
When we started blocking Act 2 scene 3, it became quickly apparent that this scene would only work and give the hard hitting and gritty feel that we were striving for if it looked completely realistic and very uncomfortable. This was hard at first as to physically control someone when they are telling you through their lines that they are being hurt is a hard thing to do – however once we experimented with different ways we could portray this, our trust between characters and confidence grew which allowed us to become more physical and push each other more which gave a greater feeling of threat to the audience. We knew our intention was working as the co-director stated “that was actually quite uncomfortable to watch” meaning it looked realistic and therefore Danny really had come across as a creep that tried to control Sandy. Me and Taylor made this scene look even more realistic by the grabbing of the upper arm and pushing down so I physically dominated her. My feedback for this scene was to make the kiss seem more passionate and eventually forceful – I think this is achievable but only through doing the scene more so that we can build up the trust first.
Act 1 Scene 6 is showing off a slight bit of Danny’s sensitive side whilst still maintaining a slight bit of 'boyish' behaviour. His caring side was shown immediately in the line – “what happened to your ear? ... Look I hope you’re not still bugged about the first day of school” and so these lines I spoke softly withy body language gestured towards Sandy to show my focus is on her, however to show I still maintain some of the 'boyish' behaviour on the line “ me talking to a chick and thinks she puts....” , I will thrust and look out to the audience to show i am no longer truly focussing on Sandy and instead trying to be funny instead which is insensitive. Later in the scene it’s vital that the audience can tell Danny is secretly jealous of the “cute lettermen” and so he needs to be snappy and change my voice to a snide tone instead of being soft. I also decided to come across as really sarcastic and irritating for the line “ha...ha...ha” as this made the audience aware, I was trying to wind Sandy up. To emphasise this winding up sense , on the line “ hey patty when did you say those try-outs were “ I looked Sandy up and down before smirking and turning to Party where I had a very flirty body language to show how I am insensitive here and really trying to get on Sandy's nerves.
Finally, in Performing Arts we tried to cover all of our choreography that we had learnt so far and this was on the whole quite successful as I managed to really add more character into all of my dances as I had worked on my characterisation for weeks now – this was especially noticeable in 'Grease is the Word' as it has lots of opportunities to show specific characterisation for example the tableaux's or something as simple as each time we were just walking in the dance I could embed my own character walk. This brought the dance alive as no longer was it just plain actors getting the choreography right, we could finally see full characters the whole way through.
Next week we are planning to smash through summer nights song – learning all lines and harmonies, we will also be teaching the rest of the cast Grease is the Word’ and may even start to run scenes in Act 1 as we have nearly blocked them all.
Week Begining - 30/09/19
This week we learnt Shakin' at the High School Hop and blocked Act 1 Scene 7. Shakin’at the High School Hop is a very fast paced dance with lots of techniques I have already learnt from Hand Jive and so I was excited to learn this to see how quickly I would pick it up. Furthermore, from our read through I remember how in Act 1 Scene 7 Danny shows signs of jealousy and breaks his stereotype of always being cool and uncaring.
In our lessons, we started to learn High School Hop where we actually picked up our choreography extremely quickly and was thoroughly enjoying it and personally, I believe I found it easier than before because I had learnt most of our dance techniques being used in previous week’s. Furthermore, I picked up this choreo much easier once i'd learnt the lyrics to the song as each line of the song directly correlated to the choreography. Because I picked up this choreography rather quickly, I was relied upon to teach it to the other boys and placed in the centre of this dance with my partner. This led to me and a couple of other students needing to teach the rest of the cast on our Friday night rehearsal which further helped me remember the choreography as teaching other people meant I knew the dance better myself which leads to me being able to focus on my characterisation whilst dancing confidently which was one of my targets.
In our Tuesday rehearsal we blocked Act 1 Scene 7 – Danny has few lines in the scene and so I knew that body language and posture would be important to convey how I’m feeling, for example throughout the song ' look at me I’m Sandra Dee' I would sit back and roll my eyes or other gestures along those sort of lines to show how I was fed up of this mocking. However, for my few lines I knew that I needed real attitude to show how I felt : for the line “ oh yeah, then whattya doin hanging around then?” I originally interpreted this as a joke towards the other T Birds as if I was being immature to get their approval however on reflection of feedback from a director, I realised this wasn’t Cong across how it should be and so instead we changed the meaning of this line to be a cruel one.where he wishes to make Sandy feel uncomfortable and so I decided to sit forward and raise my voice but have a smug tone as if I were better than her when I called her out for hanging around with us.
This week went well and was happy with how well I picked up High School Hop however I do feel I need to make sure I go over this choreography next week as otherwise I will forget small details otherwise. Next week we are only focussing on scenes really and so will be blocking Act 2 scene 3 and Act 1 Scene 6 – both of which are big scenes for me and so I will try to have a read through of the scripts this weekend and make notes of any ideas I have about my character for these scenes.
In our lessons, we started to learn High School Hop where we actually picked up our choreography extremely quickly and was thoroughly enjoying it and personally, I believe I found it easier than before because I had learnt most of our dance techniques being used in previous week’s. Furthermore, I picked up this choreo much easier once i'd learnt the lyrics to the song as each line of the song directly correlated to the choreography. Because I picked up this choreography rather quickly, I was relied upon to teach it to the other boys and placed in the centre of this dance with my partner. This led to me and a couple of other students needing to teach the rest of the cast on our Friday night rehearsal which further helped me remember the choreography as teaching other people meant I knew the dance better myself which leads to me being able to focus on my characterisation whilst dancing confidently which was one of my targets.
In our Tuesday rehearsal we blocked Act 1 Scene 7 – Danny has few lines in the scene and so I knew that body language and posture would be important to convey how I’m feeling, for example throughout the song ' look at me I’m Sandra Dee' I would sit back and roll my eyes or other gestures along those sort of lines to show how I was fed up of this mocking. However, for my few lines I knew that I needed real attitude to show how I felt : for the line “ oh yeah, then whattya doin hanging around then?” I originally interpreted this as a joke towards the other T Birds as if I was being immature to get their approval however on reflection of feedback from a director, I realised this wasn’t Cong across how it should be and so instead we changed the meaning of this line to be a cruel one.where he wishes to make Sandy feel uncomfortable and so I decided to sit forward and raise my voice but have a smug tone as if I were better than her when I called her out for hanging around with us.
This week went well and was happy with how well I picked up High School Hop however I do feel I need to make sure I go over this choreography next week as otherwise I will forget small details otherwise. Next week we are only focussing on scenes really and so will be blocking Act 2 scene 3 and Act 1 Scene 6 – both of which are big scenes for me and so I will try to have a read through of the scripts this weekend and make notes of any ideas I have about my character for these scenes.
Week Beginning - 23/09/19
In this week’s lessons we focussed on sharpening and refreshing Born to Hand jive but also started to work on the blocking for Act 2 scene2, and then in after school rehearsals we started to block Act 1 scene 5. I focussed mainly on body posture, character interaction and change of tone to represent different moods or reactions.
In our first lesson of the week we were just going to recap all sections of hand jive and so made sure to do a thorough stretch before hand as we were no longer at the stage where we would keep stopping to learn new choreography, we would now be running the dance sections full out without stopping and would do so multiple times throughout the lesson. This included stretching of the neck, chest, back, abdominals, groins, hamstrings and calves. We ran through once full out still with Miss dancing in front of us just to remind us of any choreography we might have still been sticky on however after one run through, we felt comfortable enough to dance the whole way through independently. By this stage I felt more than ready to perform this dance whilst maintaining facial expressions, confidence and character.
Our next rehearsal was an after-school rehearsal where we were mainly self-led for the entire rehearsal due to the directors being preoccupied with a scene with only the Pink Ladies. Because of this, we decided we should take a look at Act 1 Scene 5 as except for a small section with Rizzo, this scene involved only the T-Birds and was the scene just before the infamous 'Grease Lightning' and therefore we wanted this scene to be slick and perfect so that it set ‘Grease Lightning’ up well. We made the decision that proxemics and use of stage space in this scene would be important to show contrast in status amongst the T-Birds – for example I chose for Danny to enter centre stage and walk down the middle of the stage compared to the other boys running across the stage ending up in corners and also chose for Danny to walk with almost a strut and head held high to show my confidence and also how I’m bragging about how easy stealing things from the car was – this is direct contrast to the other boys who are hunched over panting from running away in fear. During this scene I also made sure to have a relaxed pace and tone of voice to show that Danny is 'cool' in this situation.
Finally, to end the week we started to block Act 2 scene 2 where Danny has to show a different side of his character – not only does he first have to show himself as a track athlete whilst still having his own mannerisms but he also has to show a snap of aggression towards Sonny in this scene. To show how he keeps his mannerisms still as a track athlete I’ll make sure that on entrance to the stage, he will stop running and start to stretch but between stretches he keeps fixing his hair just as Danny does normally. Also, when he walks over to the T Birds, he will still do his iconic walk and his stance will still be relaxed until he starts to get annoyed with the boys for questioning his loyalty to the group. To show his authority hasn't disappeared, when Sonny makes a joke about Sandy, I will quickly walk backwards and grab him by the collar and go onto tip toes to completely dominate him physically whilst raising his voice but lowering his tone to sound more aggressive.
Overall, it was quite a successful week where I now feel extremely comfortable with Hand Jive and we are also starting to make progress with some scenes which was my worry as we hadn’t touched much on acting yet. Next week we are planning to look on blocking Act 1 Scene 7 and starting to learn choreography for High School Hop.
In our first lesson of the week we were just going to recap all sections of hand jive and so made sure to do a thorough stretch before hand as we were no longer at the stage where we would keep stopping to learn new choreography, we would now be running the dance sections full out without stopping and would do so multiple times throughout the lesson. This included stretching of the neck, chest, back, abdominals, groins, hamstrings and calves. We ran through once full out still with Miss dancing in front of us just to remind us of any choreography we might have still been sticky on however after one run through, we felt comfortable enough to dance the whole way through independently. By this stage I felt more than ready to perform this dance whilst maintaining facial expressions, confidence and character.
Our next rehearsal was an after-school rehearsal where we were mainly self-led for the entire rehearsal due to the directors being preoccupied with a scene with only the Pink Ladies. Because of this, we decided we should take a look at Act 1 Scene 5 as except for a small section with Rizzo, this scene involved only the T-Birds and was the scene just before the infamous 'Grease Lightning' and therefore we wanted this scene to be slick and perfect so that it set ‘Grease Lightning’ up well. We made the decision that proxemics and use of stage space in this scene would be important to show contrast in status amongst the T-Birds – for example I chose for Danny to enter centre stage and walk down the middle of the stage compared to the other boys running across the stage ending up in corners and also chose for Danny to walk with almost a strut and head held high to show my confidence and also how I’m bragging about how easy stealing things from the car was – this is direct contrast to the other boys who are hunched over panting from running away in fear. During this scene I also made sure to have a relaxed pace and tone of voice to show that Danny is 'cool' in this situation.
Finally, to end the week we started to block Act 2 scene 2 where Danny has to show a different side of his character – not only does he first have to show himself as a track athlete whilst still having his own mannerisms but he also has to show a snap of aggression towards Sonny in this scene. To show how he keeps his mannerisms still as a track athlete I’ll make sure that on entrance to the stage, he will stop running and start to stretch but between stretches he keeps fixing his hair just as Danny does normally. Also, when he walks over to the T Birds, he will still do his iconic walk and his stance will still be relaxed until he starts to get annoyed with the boys for questioning his loyalty to the group. To show his authority hasn't disappeared, when Sonny makes a joke about Sandy, I will quickly walk backwards and grab him by the collar and go onto tip toes to completely dominate him physically whilst raising his voice but lowering his tone to sound more aggressive.
Overall, it was quite a successful week where I now feel extremely comfortable with Hand Jive and we are also starting to make progress with some scenes which was my worry as we hadn’t touched much on acting yet. Next week we are planning to look on blocking Act 1 Scene 7 and starting to learn choreography for High School Hop.
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