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Sunday was fun, Jane and I had booked a place at a workshop run by TipTop Productions (based at the sadly due to be demolished Forum theatre in Chester), which was being led by a professional MD and actor from Les Miserables who had been in the show for a year recently.
The aim was to put on a half-decent version of 2 of the ensemble pieces - "At The End of the Day" and "Do You Hear the People Sing?". There were around 30-35 people there, and it looked like everyone there had some kind of familiarity with the show and musicals, I guess obviously but you never know. The space was possibly a bit small but it was good to get close with total strangers if needed, however not knowing the words was a fairly major disadvantage :)
We went through the process of "getting into character", varying how the characters would feel at varying points and trying to express that through movement, stance and expression. We went through some breathing exercises and vocal warm-ups which were useful on their own! We don't do anything like that at OMTC, we really don't have the time to spend on it.
The end result I thought sounded and looked pretty good. I did a couple of solo lines - though struggled with the line I was doing in "At the end of the day" because I just couldn't get the line into the notes right every time, d'oh. Anyhow... I think we both learnt a lot, Jane has nicked some of the things from there wholesale and is using them in Jekyll & Hyde.
Speaking of which, we started blocking on Monday, Façade and a bit of the prologue. It's going to really hard work I think. Lots and lots of movement, lots of fitting in with other people doing different, sometimes opposing things. I suspect it will end up looking effective but it will take time and probably lots of shouting.
I am, of course, nervous as anything about doing the role of John Utterson. I mean c'mon it's been HOW long since I did anything like this? It's ever so slightly scary.
Ach well, all's basically well.
The aim was to put on a half-decent version of 2 of the ensemble pieces - "At The End of the Day" and "Do You Hear the People Sing?". There were around 30-35 people there, and it looked like everyone there had some kind of familiarity with the show and musicals, I guess obviously but you never know. The space was possibly a bit small but it was good to get close with total strangers if needed, however not knowing the words was a fairly major disadvantage :)
We went through the process of "getting into character", varying how the characters would feel at varying points and trying to express that through movement, stance and expression. We went through some breathing exercises and vocal warm-ups which were useful on their own! We don't do anything like that at OMTC, we really don't have the time to spend on it.
The end result I thought sounded and looked pretty good. I did a couple of solo lines - though struggled with the line I was doing in "At the end of the day" because I just couldn't get the line into the notes right every time, d'oh. Anyhow... I think we both learnt a lot, Jane has nicked some of the things from there wholesale and is using them in Jekyll & Hyde.
Speaking of which, we started blocking on Monday, Façade and a bit of the prologue. It's going to really hard work I think. Lots and lots of movement, lots of fitting in with other people doing different, sometimes opposing things. I suspect it will end up looking effective but it will take time and probably lots of shouting.
I am, of course, nervous as anything about doing the role of John Utterson. I mean c'mon it's been HOW long since I did anything like this? It's ever so slightly scary.
Ach well, all's basically well.