#weeklyevaluation

This was the final rehearsal week before show week and mainly focussed on the technical aspects of the show. We spent the majority of the week looking at the music, sound effects and lighting for the whole show and what may have to be adapted so that these cues make sense in the show. Although this was a long process, I really enjoyed doing this as this was the final element of the show that we needed to add before opening night. The sound and lighting is not completely finished, however, the show is almost complete and this has made me even more excited for opening night.

I feel that this week has been very stressful for our company as we have adapted many scenes and changed some aspects of the show like Sadie Hawkins Day and I feel that it is very important to retain these changes as we only have a limited time to rehearse them. Personally, I feel that I lost some of my physical clarity in the Sadie Hawkins Day Race so I plan to really focus on this in the next rehearsal. I also feel that over the next rehearsal, I should think closely to the order of the race as it has been changed and some sections have been cut, meaning that I am not doing as much as I am before. I do feel, however, that I have found my purpose onstage in the race and I feel that I am making my intentions clearer. I feel that this will help the plot as I am part of Bullmoose’s group trying to catch Abner.

I feel that I also re-explored my Dogpatcher character this week when looking at ‘Matrimonial Stomp’ and the final scene of the play. I really enjoyed looking at this scene as this was the only scene that we had not looked at, so it finally felt as though the show was beginning to come together. I tried to explore my physicality more and thought about my characters thought process in the scene, seeing as she is in on the joke to stop Earthquake and Daisy Mae from getting married. I feel that in order to develop my character in this scene more, I need to re-establish the character relationships that I have made in other scenes as this would make a lot of sense.

Overall, I feel that this week has been very successful and has required a lot of patience, as it takes a long time to add in technical cues to scenes, however, this will all pay off when we do a dress run and also when the show opens next week. I feel that I should hand my scenes over to my characters more this week and be less conscious of what I am doing, while keeping my physical clarity and character intentions clear.

Strengths and Weaknesses

This week I feel that I was very strong in developing and rediscovering my characters intentions and thought processes in scenes and I thought a lot more about both of my characters journeys inside of the piece. I am finding it much easier to develop two different characters now than I was at the start of this piece and I feel this is due to the research and the work I have developed.

I feel that this week at points, myself and the company became very unfocussed due to the length of time we spent waiting during tech rehearsals, however, I do believe that this did improve when it came to performing onstage.

What I would like to achieve by next week

This week was very varied. We began the week by working through the set transitions between different scenes. The company was quite unfocused when doing this, so this was a very slow process and we did not get as much done as we should have. We spent a lot of time looking at the set changes and I do feel that I did benefit from this as I now understand the spacing for each scene and also the reveal for certain scenes such as Bullmoose's office. While looking at the transitions for these scenes, we also had a chance to work on our songs with the band. This was very beneficial and I enjoyed this and I feel that I am becoming much more confident in these songs as I am applying techniques that I have learned, such as breath control and diction, as well as adding accents into these.

We also looked at working two major scenes. Having ran the Sadie Hawkins Day Race in the auditorium, it was clear that the large open space made the whole routine feel much less chaotic and did not build up as much of an atmosphere at it had done previously in smaller spaces. This meant that we had to completely redesign this, using similar initial ideas and creating many more comedic moments using sections that had not yet been implemented into the piece. I really enjoyed doing this as the transitions feel much smoother and I feel much more confident with my cartoon-like movements in this. I also feel that by actually working on the ending as opposed to improvising, it makes much more sense and will make the audience really feel for Daisy Mae and it feels very real. This is probably one of my favourite parts to act in as although the characters are still in a cartoonish land and are all larger than life, this moment feels very real and I feel that this will be touching to the audience.

We also looked at the ballroom scene, although we did not get to finish it. In this scene we tried many different ideas on how the Dogpatchers can infiltrate Washington. We had already thought of some ideas and it was nice to try them out. For me this scene is mainly about using my instincts when reacting and I feel that I am really doing this in this scene. We also tried out different ways of cartoon fighting using over exaggerated, slapstick actions. This is very reflective of the cartoon nature of the piece. This scene is still not completely finished but I do feel that there is a strong beginning structure that is already in place.

Strengths and Weaknesses

At the beginning of this week I felt that our focus was very weak as a company, however, I feel that our focus definitely improved as the week went on. When we were focuses I feel that we were very strong when coming up with ideas and I feel that this was because we were prepared and could think more creatively about our movements and use of voice within our scenes.

What I Would Like To Achieve By Next Week

I feel that this week was very successful and I feel that we really developed scenes in act one, and progressed with scenes in act two. I really enjoyed working on the ballroom scene in act two as I really like how the dynamic of the scene changes from the elegance of the dance to the slight tension when Bullmoose enters as we all know of his plans to the chaos of when the Dogpatchers take over. We did not get to finish working on this scene but I have many ideas of how I can develop my character within this and what we can do to create this comedic scene. I think that by working with other actors, we can create a really dramatic contrast between the Washington characters and the Dogpatch characters and I feel that this will add to the comedy of the Dogpatch characters trying to fit in, but failing miserably. I feel like this scene is like a smaller scale parallel to Sadie Hawkins day in the slapstick, comedic sense and I feel that we could play on that a little bit and remember some of the techniques we used in that in order to develop this scene.

Throughout this week, I have become very confident in the Jubilation T Cornpone dance. We worked closely on scene 4 and have run Jubilation T Cornpone multiple times in warm ups and rehearsals and I feel that through this I have become much more confident with the moves. I feel that through tightening the dance, I was able to improve the clarity of my movements and I was also able to add more character and reactions on top of this.  I feel that through tightening this dance, the whole company feels more confident with it. I also hope that we can continue to keep up this work on all of the dances so that our timing is perfect.

I would also like to do the dances and songs with the band more as we started to do this, this week, however this was never finished. It was interesting to work with the band as it showed where our timings were different to theirs and where the song keys had been changed. It was good to do this as it allows us to see what we need to focus on. I think that we need to look at how the songs change from the track and work on this so that w can match our melodies to the key that the band’s key.

Overall, I think that this week was very successful and I feel that we have really developed the piece.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I feel that our focus and energy was much better this week and I feel that we all achieved a lot. When we are focused, we come up with ideas much better and we are all able to develop ideas much easier. I also feel that this week we improved our characterisation skills as a company but also as an individual and I feel that we all showed these more. I feel that at some points our energy dropped during scenes this week and although this was not a major weakness, it is something that we need to pick up on as we go into the final few weeks.

What I would like to achieve by next week

This week was a shorter week than normal, however I feel that we did make some progress on the opening and Sadie Hawkins Day, that we can continue to build upon after half term.  And

I feel that we got off to a very slow start when it came to piecing together Sadie Hawkins Day. This was mainly down to a lack of focus in the company. However, we addressed this and after doing so, I found that the piece progressed much quicker.  I feel that this proved to us how important focus is on the rehearsal floor.  I also feel that the more focussed we were, the more creative our ideas were as we were thinking about different techniques to show different actions and emotion.  I personally feel that it was much easier to work on the clarity of my movements when I was focussed, and I felt that I could think about my character more.

As a company, when we were focussed we worked a lot better and achieved much more that we had been when we were unfocussed. Although we did not finish the Sadie Hawkins Race structure, we made a very strong start with it to create a very physical and comedic section in the performance. I am excited to continue working on this as I can now see the progress that it is making. I also feel that through working on the Sadie Hawkins Day race, I am beginning to understand how to use slapstick comedy and how this is seen from an audience point of view. I think that this will help me when creating more work as I can explore the physically inside of this.

I think that I began to develop my physicality and emotions inside both of my characters this week but mainly my secretary character as I focussed on her more. As an ensemble, we looked at how we could show Bullmoose’s authority through moment rather than just speech. We look at different ways such as having complete contrast in the attitudes of Bullmoose and the secretaries (e.g. having Bullmoose be calm and collected while the secretaries look nervous) and having contrasts in the speed that different characters moved. This was an interesting way to show the hierarchy and I think that we can continue to develop this further.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I think that my characterisation was very strong this week when looking at both of my characters and I feel that I am beginning to develop initial ideas that I had about them. I also feel that I was strong this week when coming up with ideas that fit the slapstick style of the piece, and that I am understanding this much more than I was originally.

I feel that at the beginning of this week we struggled a lot with our focus but I feel that after addressing that this was a problem, we have begun to fix this. I hope that in the final few weeks of this process, we will be able to keep this up in order to continue working productively on the show.

This week we have mainly focussed on working on the dance numbers in the piece and also some of the scenes in Act 2.

I have really enjoyed the dances this week and I feel that I am constantly improving my skills and also my speed at which I am picking up the dances. I really enjoyed working on the dances this week as I feel that we are all beginning to add character to the dances and they are beginning to feel more like part of the scenes than they did previously. I have been exploring how to add character into the dances and I have started by thinking about my characters emotions in the dance and how this affects the way in which I move and also my facial expressions. An example of this is by smiling and being very bouncy with fluid moves to show that my character is happy. I feel that in the dances, most of the emotion is shown through the face so it is very important that I focus on what my facial expressions are as well as focussing on the moves themselves. At some points during the week, learning the dances was very slow and we did not get through a lot of choreography. This was due to a lack of focus from our company. This is something that we need to work on, especially when working as the whole company as it restricts the amount of work we do.

Something else that I enjoyed working on was the small scenes that I am in. I feel that through doing these scenes I was able to discuss my ideas about my character with the other secretaries and also look at what we can do as an ensemble in the scenes. I think that as an ensemble we work very well together as we have lots of ideas and enjoy trying out new ideas. This really helps us in our scenes as we can combine all of our ideas and discuss what we think is right for the scene. I would like to continue to work on these scenes and improve the clarity of my movements within them in order to make my intentions and emotions clearer

Strengths and Weaknesses

I think that this week I was quite strong in our dance workshops and I feel that this skill has really been improved this week. I feel that this was shown to me when I was cast in the first section of the ‘Rag Offen the Bush’ dance. This has helped me to feel more confident in what I am doing and I also feel that through more rehearsals, the dance will come across as being more natural.

I think I have not shown my characterisation work as much as I have been doing in the past few weeks as I would like to improve on this and show this more in my scenes. I also feel that the company’s focus has not been the best it could have been again this week and that we need to pick this up as soon as possible so that we do not waste valuable rehearsal time.

 What I want to achieve by next week

This week was mainly focussed on looking at and running through the remainder of act one that we hadn’t looked at before. I feel that the process really progressed this week as we have now done all of act one. This is very exciting as it feels as though we are working quite fast.  I hope that this continues so that we have the most possible time to tighten scenes and run things as a whole.

Something I think I was very successful with this week was developing my characters.  I did this through a range of scene. I felt that I really began to develop my Dogpatch character through working on the pre-set as I thought of my characters intentions and their inner though. This gave my character a purpose for the movements that I was doing and I was working based on feeling rather than acting. I also looked at my characters physicality and pace when doing the ‘Jubilation T Cornpone’ dance. I explored how my character would get in position for the dance and also how my character would dance. My character is very young so I feel that they would be quite bouncy in the dance with fluid movements. I think that by doing this in other scenes I can look at more things and explore my character further.

I also looked at my secretary character when we worked on the scenes with Bullmoose. I found that I was really able to develop my character when working with the others in my ensemble because we find parts of scenes where we all move in sync, almost Greek chorus-like and we also find other parts of scenes where we show a hierarchy or all act differently in a comical moment. I feel that through working in this ensemble we have been able to create characters that are similar but not 100% the same. I also feel that through working on the scenes with the others we have discussed our group intentions and feelings through the scene but developed our own thought processes.

I also think that I succeeded when picking up choreography this week as thinking about how my character would do this choreography also helped me to remember the moves much easier, however I feel that I should focus more on the timing of the movements in relation to the lyrics of the song as this will make it easier to remember the lyrics and the dance at the same time. I hope that by doing this I can make singing, dancing and acting more naturally happen together and be able to work on specific things within this.

I struggled a little bit when learning the harmonies in ‘What’s Good for General Bullmoose’ and I could sing these with a piano, however, when rehearsing unaccompanied it was difficult to find the harmonies. I also felt that I struggled because I am the only one singing that harmony, and I am not very confident in finding this when we are singing as a group. However, I think that with more rehearsals on my own to get this correct and then adding this to the other parts, this song can be sung with more confidence. I also hope that this will help to add more confidence in the scene that this is in as I will feel much more comfortable with what I am doing.

I also really enjoyed working on scenes this week as some of the scenes that we worked on surround major ensemble songs and this gave more context to the songs that we were singing. I feel that this week was really successful in piecing together different things that we had already done and also beginning to develop new scenes for act one.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I think that this week I was particularly strong when coming up with and developing ideas with the other secretaries in our scenes as we came up with many ideas that we tried out. I would like to continue to develop these ideas as I feel that we can add more Greek chorus-like movements to show that we are a group that moves as one, with the same tactics and intentions.

This week I feel that, as a company, our focus was not as good as it has been previously. This meant that we could not get as much work done as we could have when we were in the large ensemble scenes. It is important to be focussed in our rehearsals, especially in the big ensemble scenes as a lot happens within them so we will all have a lot to do. It is also important to be focused so that you can think about, try out and develop ideas for your character.

 What I want to achieve by next week

I feel that this was another successful week for our company in this process. We began the week by finding out our parts and that meant that for the rest of the week we were able to begin to explore them while doing other activities. I think that I have begun to do this and I will continue to do this to develop my characters in my scenes.

I feel that both of the dances that we had previously learned (‘Jubilation T Cornpone’ and ‘Rag Offen The Bush’) were developed this week in different ways and although they had varying degrees of success, I really enjoyed doing both as I feel that we now have something that is more developed that we can practice in our warm ups. I really enjoyed adding singing to the Jubilation T Cornpone dance as this was the first time we had done this for any song in the piece. Although this was far from finished I think it gave everyone a better understanding of how hard musical theatre is and showed us all where we were stronger in the dance and could just focus on the singing, and where we needed more practice. I struggled to find the harmonies when we put the singing with the dance as I was no longer in the group of sopranos as many of them were set on the other side of the dance. I think that by working on the singing more, I will be able to feel more confident in this and be able to do this with more success.

I feel that I really managed to succeed when looking at the different parts and learning new parts of the ‘Rag Offen the Bush’ dance and I was really happy about how quickly I picked up the new choreography.  I really enjoyed learning new chorography as it was a change from just drilling the original dance. I also liked this new choreography as it was similar but was not a partner dance which I found slightly easier. Another thing that I found I was successful in was learning the reaction choreography as while this was still choreographed I felt that I had much more freedom in this to show my character. I was very excited to put all of these dances together and it was a big success when we did. I felt that this scene finally felt like a celebration scene rather than just a dance as it had done before and I think that many of my company members felt the same. I am excited to work on this scene further as it already seems to be beginning to come together and it a nice ensemble scene.

Something that I feel I struggled with this week was my American accent. We all took part in a vocal workshop that focussed on pronunciation and I did really enjoy this as I feel that I learn a lot about how to build up an accent though looking at all of the individual sounds. I feel that I benefitted greatly from this as it has given me a lot to think about when working on my accent. When we were going through the sounds I learned that in order to build on an accent you must focus on lots of little things that help you create it, such as tongue position and where in the mouth the consonant sounds are made. I hope that by working on this I can create a believable accent that I can sustain throughout the performance and that I will be able to sing in this accent as this will make it more believable if I do not drop my accent too much when I sing.

I also enjoyed working on ideas for the pre-set of the show this week. This is not a set scene from the script which means that we have complete creative freedom within this. My group looked at the idea of what games children would play in Dogpatch as we felt that this could immediately set the fun, cartoonish mood of the piece. I feel that we work very well together and came up with lots of ideas that we were eager to try out. This allowed us to see what worked and what didn’t and refine our best ideas. I feel that we could use more time to make our movements and ideas clearer and also try more ideas out.

Strengths and Weaknesses

This week I think that I was very strong in my group work and came up with many ideas. This allowed my group to develop this and create strong physical ideas that we performed to the rest of our company. I think that I could improve upon putting the signing in the show with dancing as this is something that I struggled with and I would like to continue to practice this in order to make this more natural for me, allowing me to bring more character, without worrying about what I am doing.

What I want to achieve by next week

I think that this has been a very successful week for company bonding and further exploring characters and I feel that I have really enjoyed and benefitted from the things I have done this week.

I especially enjoyed the dance sessions that we had this week as I feel that I am really improving on my dance skills and my ability to pick up things quickly. I would like to develop this more and use this when taking on directors notes in the future. I also loved being able to add character to the dance even though we had a set choreography. This made the dance more enjoyable as I could play around with my facial expressions while doing the dance.  I also feel that doing the dances help our company bond as we can all rehearse these when we are warming up or have some spare time.

Another thing I enjoyed this week was some of the script work we have done.  In the seconds script read the of the week, I was given the scientists scene at the beginning of act two.  I was very familiar with this scene as I had worked on it earlier in the week, when looking at character and the rhythm of the lines.  This meant that I was able to share what I had discovered about this particular scene before we started to work on it, the second time round. I also enjoyed looking at different characters in the scene as I had not looked at in the characters, and that I played, before.  This allowed me to play around with different statuses and characterisation, as the first time I worked on this scene, I played Dr. Smithborn who has the lowest status in this scene, but the second time I played Cedric Softwicke, a government man who has a much higher status.

I really enjoyed the second time we did the script read through as I felt it had so much more energy than the first time.  After the first script read, I was not looking forward to the rest of the script read as it did seem to drag a little bit.  However, by doing the script read by actually showing the scenes, there was much more energy and people were taking more risks and exploring and developing their characterisation.  I personally found that by doing the script read in this way, I felt more engaged and I understood the story further.  I think that this was because we were encouraged to ‘jump into’ scenes where there is a need for ensemble.  As a company, we also clapped along to songs and reacted to the moment onstage.  I feel that this encouraged our fellow company members and gave everyone a better idea of how the audience may react.

Something I felt that I improved upon this week was my characterisation.  I experimented with this early on in the week, when we were doing character improvisations.  In my improvisation, I was one of the wives, however, I feel that I could have defined my characterisation more in order for it to be clearer and to express my characters personality more.  We then worked on the characterisation of Evil Eye Fleagle.  I found this really interesting, as I had not looked at this character at all before.  This allowed me to explore what I knew about Fleagle, and also make some character decisions of my own.  Although, I did not really want to play Fleagle, I found this activity very useful for developing characters.

Overall, I think that this week was very successful in developing characters and also continuing to bond with my company while working with them, however, I feel that this can still be developed further in the following weeks. 

Strengths and Weaknesses

This week I feel that I really improved on my characterisation skills and I feel that this will help me later in the process when I am developing my own character. I also feel that I improved on my ability to adapt quickly to situations and problems that occurred as when it came to re-performing our shortened versions of ‘Li’l Abner’ one person in my group was not in. This meant that I had to take their place and quickly rework the scenes that they were in, with me. I feel that my group handled this very well and that we fixed this very quickly.

 What I want to achieve by next week