Sunday, 14 June 2009

Session 14 - 7 June 2009

After a brief physical warm-up, we played our much-loved ‘Zip Zap Boing’ which Jess and Yasemin tied.

Then we had a vocal warm-up with Harry singing “A ram sa sa, a ram sa sa, a riggy diggy diggy diggy, ram sa sa” (to the vague tune of the ‘Pizza Hut Song’). As we sang ‘sa sa’, we had to pat the knees of the person on our right and then on the ‘riggy diggy’ bit, we had to wave our arms in front of the person on our left which, needless to say, led to much confusion.

We then ran through ‘Mouthwash’ and rehearsed it with staging. We did have a distinct lack of energy which Vik tried to fix by making us sing while running on the spot. This also demonstrated to us the importance of being fit when we’re in a production!

After that, we sang ‘Chasing Cars’ which closes the show and staged it with the dialogue too. It’s starting to look brilliant and I think it will be a moving end to the play whilst also giving a sense of hope.

Towards the end of the rehearsal, we did one last run through of ‘Mouthwash’ which was significantly more energetic than earlier on. It’s looking good and thanks again to Vik, Harry, Jane and Tanya as well as the amazing projects team for giving us such a fantastic opportunity.

Bring on the Summer Festival!

Eliza Shea

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

Session 13 - 3 June 2009

Hi y'all!

Ok, today was another jam packed rehersal! We had to come half an hour early to do some recording, which was really good! We started with a warm-up, led by Naomi, which was fun, but different.... Then, Vik told us to work on our Bollywood dancing. We all seemed enthusiastic about doing it. First, we worked in our groups, re-tracing the moves. After, we decided to dance as a whole group. As Louie and Layla worked along side one another, they came up with a small piece together, then the rest of us joined in. When I was standing aside, I could see that the group is becoming more focused and better. The whole thing flows nicely and you could really see it's turning into a really awesome play! After that, we did the train scene. It was more improved than the last time we did it, also. It felt intense.... Overall, the rehersal was really neat and I really can't wait to perform on stage!YAY!

Catch you later, guys!

Chloe Morgan :) x

Friday, 5 June 2009

Session 12 - 31 May 2009

It’s time to get serious!!! It seems people are really starting to as well with Raz for the first time arriving in jogging bottoms (which he took ages to change into) and having a whole cast here on time and ready for some pain. Sadly that wasn’t on the agenda for today and Vik has decided to make us jump through hoops in small manageable chunks (Yippee).

Eliza and I were chosen to go through Vik’s arsenal of actor building techniques. They were as tiring as they were effective. He certainly knows how to squeeze every shred of potential out of you whether that’s running round with purpose, carrying something over your head or speaking with your tongue hanging out (that was definitely the worst). But you can honestly see the effect it has on your performance and that’s one of the things that makes Vik a great director.

During this everyone was upstairs learning lines and talking with Anne on marketing. I heard they have come up with some great ideas for badges and postcards, possibly t-shirts/ hoodies. Excellent. There will not be a soul alive in Islington that won’t know about our show.

After this there was a great session with Harry where we got through a lot of our favourite warm ups like Arva Maria (sorry if it’s spelt wrong). We went through Chasing cars which is sounding great. Then we went to work on learning Yaz’s song which could possibly be sung as a group. I’m sure everyone will agree with me that the lyrics are excellently written and the singing is beautiful.

Aisha McKenzie

Monday, 1 June 2009

Session 11 - 27 May 2009

After warming up as a company vocally and physically we proceeded to run through the third song in 'Or Nearest Offer' 'Mouthwash'. This song needs particular attention as like most of the songs it involves the whole company and is split into many parts. After this Vik (Director) chose a couple of characters scenes that he personally was going to concentrate on this rehearsal. leaving us the rest of the cast to go through pieces and scenes together or by ourselves, looking at what the scene itself means and what each line is saying about your character and what it is trying to achieve. As well of course as learning the lines themselves. It is important as a company that when the director chooses to focus on something in particular that the rest of the show is not forgotten, there is never a time in ‘Or Nearest Offer’ where there is nothing to be done.





Session 10 - 24 May 2009

We did warming up by stretching with Vik. It took 15 minutes to complete the warm-up. Then we had our very effective lesson with Harry, which was singing. We were singing Chasing Cars and Mouthwash. After we completed our time with Harry, Naomi an I worked on pages 3 to 5 with Vik. We re-edited the lines by cutting and changing some around. We were able to create a new structure. I learnt a lot more about my character - I have realised new points about Raz - about his body languages, vocal awareness and non-verbal communication. It is now clearer to me what Raz's dream is and what he really wants.

Tuesday, 26 May 2009

Session 9 - 20 May 2009

Wednesday night and we know the drill by now. Come in and we’re straight down to our stretches or as the company know them Vik’s torture time… Though I’d like to think that we’re getting better at them each session! Once that was over we went straight in to one of our first big numbers, Kate Nash’s Mouthwash. In the play just before Mouthwash there is going to be this big Bollywood number with the whole cast dancing and all that, something I am very excited about! Because of this Vik wanted the staging of Mouthwash to be quite minimal and a lot of the song is positions and other quite static movements. After a long time making sure we had our turns exact and our walking direct Vik was happy to leave it there for the week. It’s looking really good and our singing is improving all the time! By July we actually will be looking professional, I’ve no doubt!

After our break Vik wanted to meet people individually to go through characterisation, he took off various different people and spent around 20minutes with each of them. I was one of the people taken off and it was a really helpful session. We looked at my monologue and found ways to make my learning of the lines exact; generally it helped us to get in to our characters more through the understanding of the words. While people were taken of individually the rest of the group were up in the greenroom singing along to I pods and drinking proper ‘good’ hot chocolate, sorry, I mean we were all hard at work learning our lines!

I can’t wait to see how the rest of Or Nearest Offer is staged; it’s such an exciting process to be part of. Bring on July!

MK

Session 8 - 17 May 2009

Today we had a long physical warm-up to get ourselves ready for an intensive vocal session and the rest of the day.

10am is an early start for most teenagers so you can kind of guess we were tired. However, the warm-up seemed to have helped. We stretched out and all gathered around the piano to begin our vocal warm-ups. After the warm-ups we sang the script’s song Chasing Cars. Then after that I went over my song.

Yasemin Ergun