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
Friday, 5 June 2009
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
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
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
Friday, 22 May 2009
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
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
Thursday, 14 May 2009
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.
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
