Friday 2nd October (Rent La Vie Boheme And Opening Song Dance Development With Self Assessment)

In this lesson we worked on the opening scene physical theatre to the song 'Rent' and the song 'La Vie Boheme'. To begin with we walked through the Rent song to remind ourselves of what we wanted to work on. I suggested we work with the spacings more and try to bring more energy by having more people on stage. Because we are signing at parts throughout the song it is difficult to do this well and perform high energy  motifs, so we went through it once without singing at all and this proved to have more energy in it. We then did it once more and recorded it, in this run I found it easier to have more energy as I did before when I didn't sing because I knew how to portray the energy and improve my characterisation. Whist watching this recording back we made notes through self assessment-


WWW: Timing and unison with walking, positions and exit. Basic characterisation with posture and use of dynamics


EBI: More facial expressions and knowledge of routines. Ending positions.


Target: Work on second group routine with floor positions.


In the second half of the lesson we worked on La Vie Boheme. In this lesson we started thinking about how we had staged the dance and what characters need to be where when they need to sing. For example when I am playing Mimi I need to be with Max, playing Angel, for our duet section and with Luke, playing Mark for my line with him. I suggested that when we space out into pairs to dance that we spread out and face different directions instead of all to one way, so now there are some pairs facing the front, some to the side and some to the back, to ensure all of the audiences get to see properly. Some of us had to change the way we move and where we go for this but it actually looks better this way as we has some extra time to get to where we need to be which looked awkward, so now we have filled that time with walking in character to the music. We also changed some choreography for some people, for example when I play Mimi I am with Max for our part and not Luke, so I had to learn a new bit of choreography and swap this with Charley when it is the other way around. This was beneficial because I had to teach someone else my choreography which I haven;t had to do many times before, but it really helped me to remember the dance better. It was also really useful to learn new choreography as it was devised in a different part of the space which gave me a lot of choreographic ideas and formations.

WWW: Characterisation, interaction with other characters, exaggeration and high level of energy

EBI: Extension in movements and clearer formations

Target: Look at positioning and work in theatre space