Shakespeare Week 8

This is our final week of rehearsals, and with the physical theatre piece still being new we began work on that.
With everything covered last week, we decided to change the song. This messed up all of our timings but in a result of the whole piece coming out a lot better. The new song is Joker and the theif, by Wolfmother https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wolfmother+joker+and+the+thief. Again, its definitely not my type of music, but admittedly it really works with the physical piece we've already choreographed. It has a much more punchy opening than the previous song did, and it also has a more modern-music feel to it, which evidently is the style we are aiming for. With that said, we did have to change around some our timings but that was the simple part of today's rehearsals. The main timing change was when Milo (as Borachio) spills his drink over me, as a form of distraction to get me off stage. Originally we had well-planned this around the first musci choice and it then didn't seem to work so smoothly. We re-shuffled around our four movements, which consisted of me reacting to him spilling the drink and then the fourth movement was me leaving the stage; and before the song changed, we had four movements and the fifth was me leaving stage, but it works better now.
Continuing on from last week, we had created an effective way for the ensemble to turn back to the audience and enter the 'wedding scene', so our next step was to locate each 'guest' in the appropriate places. So to begin, we had Luke play the Friar, which I think he enjoyed a little too much but it worked really well seeing as Much Ado About Nothing has a Friar character who ultimately saves the rest of the play (he is definitely an underestimated character ha!)
Here, I think was our biggest hurdle. Myself and Joe at this point, are stood facing one another and we wanted one clear way to represent the rejection of the marriage from Claudio's part. I suggested a trust fall, that we go from holding hands and in 4 lowerings, I am let slip out of Joe's hands and fall into Nathan (he plays Leonato, Hero's father so this visually, works well.) Nathan lowers me to the floor slowly, almost like in slow motion, and its all to represent that I have fainted. As soon as I hit the floor, everything goes back into normal speed, and not that I am aware of what the others on stage do at this point (as I am supposedly unconscious) but the three 'bridesmaid' - Beatrice, Ursula and Margaret (Phoebe, Donna and Frankie) rush to my help and whisk me off stage.

Speaking with a bit of self-confidence, I was really proud of my idea of using the trust fall. I gather I don't always contribute in lessons, which doesn't mean that I am not active in rehearsals or not paying attention, it just means I usually find my ideas not being heard as compared to the rest of my class, I am fairly quiet one. But with that said, my idea here was used and I think it looks really effective so I'm quite pleased with myself. Talking from a more conclusional point of view, I think there were definitely times that I could've expressed my ideas and thoughts aloud but I managed to result back to blogs and used them as a way to express these.

I digress, after practising the trust fall a couple of times we ran the entirety of the physical piece. Which lead us nicely into another full run. As a cast, last year we never rehearsed as much as we have for Much Ado. Yes we rehearsed but we never did full-runs before show week as we were usually still tidying up scenes or just working on small sections that really needed work. The full-run throughs usually landed on the day of our first performances. So by this week and last week, I will admit to saying that it was difficult to try and keep up the energy of my scene every time we rehearsed it. The energy has to be high, and so therefore to make it a good rehearsal myself and Donna had to keep it up each time, and I think we both began to find it hard to keep that up everytime. I think that this will change for next week (performance week) as the atmosphere and energy will be heightened due to the excitement of a performance, but currently I feel as though I'm lacking something that is really key for this scene.
I also think that now we've rehearsed it so much the feedback is a lot less frequent, which I find hard because I am always out looking for something to improve on as I often feel as one of the weakest actors in the class. I went to Luke after this specific run through for feedback, as he is always one to give really helpful notes: he liked how I'd stood as Isabelle. At the time, I had one hand in my pocket, the other holding the beer bottle and one foot crossed over the other. He said this just spoke 'casual and relaxed' which is something that suits the character because hippies are stereotypically meant to be 'chilled.' He also pointed out the way I said the line "Always excepted my dear Claudio." He said he liked the way I said Claudio. Apparently the way I had said it put a lighter tone on the name itself which opened up more of my characters feelings for Claudio and although, he said, it wasn't obvious, if you keep it like that, it will allow me to understand both the meaning of that line and the feelings behind it for Hero herself.

Wednesday consisted of watching the year 1 acting class, they performed scenes from The Cherry Orchard. It was good fun for me because majority of people in that class are good friends of mine so it was nice to see them on stage and see how they did etc. I think the one main thing that I got from watching this is how hard it is to follow the piece when you can't hear all of them. This isnt me knocking them, but it just made me realise how hard it was to enjoy the show when on some occasions I couldn't hear all of them. I also realise I am one to often not be heard on stage so it made me see how hard it is for the audience. So I think it was important that I could see this and hopefully take on board how important it is for me to be heard on stage.

Tech set for each scene changeover

Sally started out our thursdays lesson with the idea of how to introduce each new scene. As you can see in the image to the right, this is what she meant. Each new scene had a slide with arrows and the characters name on. The character would stand under the arrow and then walk off stage again. As the scene would be getting set up, a quote from the relevant scene would be shown on the screen. I didn't think this would be effective as I thought it would be too repetitive seeing as we have a lot of scene changes. But I think it will still work and be useful for the audience to understand the character swaps etc.

This idea, to me, seems quite similar to the show we saw earlier on this term; The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time. Probably the only visual link to the show is the colours, but I think it was the modern take on theatre that made me think The Curious Incident. It wasn't wildly technical like The Curious Incident, but the way each of us had to freeze under our characters names, with the arrows and then the quote would appear afterwards made me think this is something that could be seen in The Curious Incident.

The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night Time.

As well as different slides, each scene change had a different piece of music to go with it. I must say that the music played for each scene change over was brilliant, mainly because it was my style of music, but it really set the scene of a festival and it linked our whole idea of us recreating a similar styled-band like Mumford and Sons perfectly.
The opening song is called The Detecorists, by Johnny Flynn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q58Gm18-IMY
It has a very folk/country sound to it, just as Mumford and Sons do. It works well because as you can see in the above image (of the boys) they are all dressed in the folk/country kind of style. I'm talking a bit in the future, but the boys costume for the show fitted perfectly to the Mumford/country-band style that we set out to fulfil.




Frank, I could see as Marcus Mumford (third from the left.) He is the main singer in the band, and probably has the best dress sense. Frank, in  our case played Don Pedro who is definitely the most liked throughout the play, especially compared to his brother Don John. Frank, also has a very similar costume on as Marcus Mumford does. The waist coat and rolled up shirt-look with jeans. The others have also mastered the Mumford and Sons look, and looking at the two images they look really similar.

Other songs that will be part of our performance are:

Johnny Flynn, Tickle me Pink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrnAdhwIofs

Ray LaMontagne and The Pariah Dogs, Repo Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Aijo6uILk

Fleet Foxes, Sun It Rises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ5B-U6LwaA

Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zero's, Thats Whats Up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj0Ha7Xkw7Y


Whilst listening to these songs at home (because I really do quite like them!) I heard something of an interest to me. In the Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zero's song, there is a lyric that reads: 'You be the words, I'll be the rhyming.' I get that this is meant to be a love song so therefore the lyrics only really relate to love; which makes this line rather sweet. However, upon hearing it, it made me think of Shakespeare. (I was at the time writing about the language in Much Ado) but it was a weird coincidence. After researching into the song lyrics, it had nothing major about this specific line but everything read how much of a love long it is; so I felt the relevance's to including it into our version of Much Ado works. The Detectorists, another song we are to include, is used in a TV series, and from as far as I can read, is about a group of guys who have a really strong love/passion for metal detecting- but it sort of proves than any of us can have passions, no matter what it is.

Feedback that I gave to the others:
On the boys entrance, keep the energy up
Sophie when you turn to Lewis, try not to make it so stylised
Matt better diction when talking through the walkie talkies
Joe happier when you express your love
All sing more enthusiastically
Brandon don't slam the box lid
Milo don't use the drum sticks, instead just use your hands
Remember: dont put shot glasses in a bag
Find a vodka bottle for Donna and I
Frank try not to be too funny
Nathan try different reactions

My costume has stayed quite similar to how I originally wanted to dress Hero, and I am really pleased as to how it appeared: I used the white top from an earlier blog post as well as the denim shorts and wellies that I had decided from a while ago.

But not forgetting Isabelle and her costume! I settled for a really simple costume for her as that way it was easier for me to change into Hero. I wore some flat, white pumps. Pink and flowery baggy trousers and a dream catcher designed vest top that hung low and baggy. I liked this outfit for its simplicity, it looked the hippy/festival part that I wanted to achieve for Isabelle. And there was a good difference in age shown through the two costumes between Hero and Isabelle.