Session 7 - 13 May 2009

Wednesday’s lab was full excitement and a lot of learning. We started off by going though ‘Kate Nash’s’ ‘Mouthwash’ which was of course extremely interesting to watch, bubbling with fun and topped off with a great sound from the company as a whole. We worked on our staging with Vik. Under Vik’s expertise our fantastic director we were able to produce a brilliant sound boldly supported by strong threatening heal popping movement’s right in your face.


The experience then turned even more exciting as we were sent upstairs to the green room to learn our scripts under the conscientious eyes of Jane our assistant director. We were sent down one by one to work separately with Vik on our characters in some parts of our scripts. Meanwhile upstairs we were bustling with enthusiasm as Chloe and I played spin the bottle to ascertain who was to be tested next with lines. I was loosing so I thought it’s the bottle so we borrowed Ayesha’s bottle without noticing that it looked exactly the same as the one we already had which was Layla’s. Then came the challenge of telling which was which before she returned. We were slow, she returned, and there was a selection of only two words we could say - sorry or oops.

We then got on with it until we heard some foot steps. It was no one else but Naomi and Eliza doing their thing on the dance floor. It was wonderful, more than you can imagine.
This week personally was by far the most exciting because it was really nice to see our performance coming together. FANTASTIC.

Pius Abitegeka

Session 6 - 10 May 2009

Sunday’s Lab was full of excitement. We had visitors - one of which was a gorgeous
little girl named Charlotte - I must say we did get a bit distracted but we were soon put into working gear with Harry our vocal coach. Harry was there with Vik and the rest of the team. We managed to put a nice first gloss over the last few pages of the play. In addition we worked on the middle of the play where we have other musical pieces. Let’s just say that everything is slowly but surely falling into place. To accompany the songs we worked on our staging with Vik. It was fun to position ourselves as if we were on the stage. This show is going to be brilliant.

Desara Bosnja

Session 5 - 6 May 2009

It's all about the music!! Today we focused on the singing aspect of our performance and it was soooo much fun! Our musical director Harry (who we were introduced to two sessions before) started us of with some very catchy warm up songs like, "Ave Maria," "Pa Pa had a head like a ping pong ball," and, "This old freedom train," my personal favourite. Once we had warmed up our voices we began our singing session which challenged our concentration and memory skills. Our three main songs being some of the well known pop songs of our time, such as Kate Nash’s "Mouthwash," "Chasing Cars," by Snow Patrol, and "Home town Glory," by Adele. Our basic aim for this session was to catch our bearings with each of these songs and learn to sing as a group instead of individually, because although most of us knew the songs we had never sung them together in front of a paying audience (which is slightly different from singing in front of the mirror with your hair brush!) It was doubly important to make sure people were singing the right notes to make our cast sound and look professional and confident. Apart from having some difficulty with Kate Nash (there’s always one *tut tut) we became quite confident with the songs and Harry helped us introduce yet another group skill to our cast which will be shared with the our audience come July!

Thanks Harry! ... and the LAB of course.

lol

CHEERIO!

Naomi Ackie

Session 4 - 29 April 2009

This session, we split off into three groups to develop our roles in Our Nearest Offer. First, we went to the green room with Anne to work on vocals. This was basically lying down and humming. Then we went to work on our characters. We made timelines, mapping out the key moments in our characters' lives.

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.