Unit 7 - Theatre in education

Thursday 7^th December

Unfortunately, on Tuesday Danielle realised that she wasn’t able to take part in the show because during the week of the performance she will be in France doing some work experience. Therefore, we now had to find someone else to play the part of Tanzie in our performance. We thought that Alys who works for UCAN productions who came to watch the performance earlier in the week would be very much suited to this role. However, she is on holiday the week of the show. I had an idea for another person to play the part. Lorren, who is a student at college, was on the performing arts course a few years ago. I thought she would be able to play the part really well so I approached her and asked her if she was able to participate. She agreed to being in the show and she was also able to come to the rehearsal this afternoon for half an hour so that we could give her a script, tell her a bit about the show and run through the scenes she will be in. We need to find some time so that the whole cast will be able to rehearse together. This is something that we will sort out to start in the new year. In the meantime, Lorren will be able to learn her lines independently as she now has a copy of the script.

We were starting our session early today because we were finishing the session an hour early due to a dance rehearsal for a dance show later on this evening taking place in the performance studio. For the first half an hour of the session, we went through all the things that we needed to do which involved Lorren. After Lorren had left, we started a full run through of the show where Cara stood in for the part of Tanzie. This run through was quite smooth, although there were a few places where we did need to stop and make a few adjustments to the script.

After a full run through of the show, we spent some time working on the last scene as none of the cast are secure with their lines for this scene at the moment. We need to keep practicing our lines for this scene because the more we practice the lines, the quicker we will be able to remember them.

For the last part of the session, we practiced through all of the songs. This involved working on projection and clarity of the vocals and also making sure that the movements were secure. To ensure that these were all good, when it was our time to sing we stood at the back of the room facing Cara who was playing the tune on the piano. This way she could hear the projection and clarity of the vocals and watch the movement at the same time. We practiced the songs in the order of which they appeared in the show – starting with Nancy Narrator’s song and ending with the finale. There were only a few parts of songs which needed a small bit of work but the rest of the songs are looking and sounding great.