Panto Rehearsals

Earlier in the week we had to perform Act 1 of our pantomime to the 2nd years. At first I was quite nervous considering we had only recently just blocked it. But then I thought bring it on! After the prologue us villagers went straight into the opening song: Live While We're Young by One Direction. I thought it went ok but I did forget some of the choreography, and after the song when we are in the market and are interacting with Aladdin for a bit, I made the foolish mistake of going off stage and into the wings when we wasn't suppose to. I did this because as I was absent on the first day of blocking some of the opening scenes from Act 1, I thought that is when us villagers had to exit the stage. I immediately regretted that decision as it threw the actor playing Aladdin as well as the other villagers.  I obviously knew straight away that if I am absent on a day of college, I need to make up for it and ask someone what I missed so they could go through it with me so I don't make errors like that again.


Later on in the performance us villagers had to go on and sing the Oompa Loompa song but we ended up missing the cue to go on. This also happened a second time when we forgot to come on to Jessie J's Do It Like a Dude.


In the end we all got feedback and it was said that it wasn't a very good performance but we was all fully aware of that anyway. I for one did feel that I let the group down a little as I forgot the choreography to the opening song and did mess up a few times later on. The whole performance in front of an audience giving us feedback did shake me up a little because it meant we all as a company had a lot of work to do.


Later in the week we started to practise singing a long to Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind and Fire in our weekly singing lessons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=god7hAPv8f0 It is quite a good song as it is both funky and catchy. As we started singing a long to it I kept coming in at the wrong time to 'you dance and shake the hurt'. This is because there is a long pause between 'you dance' and 'shake the hurt'. We also sang all of the other songs that we will be doing. I know most of the songs apart from Happy by Pharrell Williams, the Oompa Loompa song and Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. During half term I will need to learn all of them as well as knowing all the cues for which I need to come in to, the stage directions and try to be more familiar with the choreography.


As a villager I am finding it extremely hard to know what exactly to do on stage. For example when Bamboo and Typhoo call in witnesses in Act 2, a few villagers run on and stand behind them. But then I'm not too sure what I need to do next. Despite us all creating a character profile which is meant to help us develop our characters a bit further which I did find particularly useful at first, I then find it difficult to put what I wrote in writing on to the stage to help me create my character. Over the course of the half term I need to seriously think about where I am going with this character and I need to come back stronger and more mentally and physically engaged with this project.