Session 3 - 23 April 2009

This Wednesday the members of GULP were eager to meet Harry, who is the musical director of “Or Nearest Offer.” It was a great start to the session, beginning with vocal warm ups and ending by learning the round “The Freedom Train” which provided a chance for our many talented singers to shine. It was also a pleasure to meet Fabrice, the designer of the play. Vik then led the physical warm up, designed to heighten our awareness of the way in which we moved and could use our bodies, through use of different tempos and quality of movement, focusing not only on our actions as individuals but of the group as a whole, aiming to maintain equidistance from each other, filling the whole space at all times. Alex, Naomi, Ayesha and Louie proceeded to take on the role of story tellers and narrated various tales using a variety of techniques such as multi-role, direct address, and adopting a different narrative view point altogether. These were very successful and delighted their audience with the vigour and audacity with which they were performed. The most successful stories drew the listener in through use of eye contact, clarity, imagination and energy. During the last part of the rehearsal we had another read through of the play itself, focusing on communicating and story telling rather than merely reading for sense.

As ever, it was an extremely fruitful session and it will be exciting to see what Gulp eventually achieves!

Session 2 - 14 April 2009

On Wednesday the cast of GULP were given the privilege of reading the finalised script written by Tanya. Everyone was eager to read not only their parts but also each others, which really added to group dynamics. I was one of the few who abstained from reading the last page before we came to it, however it was very difficult as the excitement in the room was vast! We were all so pleased to be given our characters on the page, so that we could start to work with them with a solid script. And the script truly was marvellous! Not one face was displeased or apprehensive towards the carefully crafted characters in the script, and I have to thank Tanya again on behalf of YFA LAB 'GULP' crew for her hard work! I look forward to working with the whole Almeida team in putting on a Brecht-esque thought provoking and truly stunning production!

Jessica Collins

Introducing Gulp

It's now time to hand over the writing of the BLOG to the LAB participants - or rather members of the Gulp Company (the Gulpers???) They will guide you through the rehearsals in their own words, but before they do - here is the marketing tag line for the play that Tanya has written:

GULP presents

Or Nearest Offer...

Everything must go: beds, mobiles, dreams, babies. Going, Going, Gone...?
What happens when you're all sold out?

And now it's over to Layla for the first rehearsal diary:

The first lab session back after a long, restful break was a laid back start to what will be a hard working next few months. The main focus of this session was to come up with a new name for our company, one that is catchy, unique and means something about us. We were split into small groups to brainstorm as many ideas as we could. We were then asked to choose five favourites per group that would be with everyone in hope that we would find the perfect name for us!

After some discussion and a vote we managed to narrow it down to 2: “Beyond Upper Street” and “Gulp.” It was quite a hard decision because a lot of the names were very creative but perhaps a little too much. I think “Gulp” will win. I prefer it because of its short catchiness.
We were then asked to write a 20 word description of our play to give us an idea of what might be written for the real thing.

This session was fun. Although I’m not into discussions and like to work and brainstorm by myself I still got a lot out of it.