In this lesson we Looked at Happy New Year B, we disucussed the change in atmosphere from Happy New Year A, and how our characters change. We looked at spacing and the way we want to stage it with the scaffolding.
In terms of singing, we ran it through and realised we needed harmonies, this was difficult at first as we werent sure of the timing so repeating the line was confusing and took some time. The pace of the song is quite tricky, it is very fast and has to be perfectly in time. To help us we used the Broadway recording of the show on youtube, and Kim played with it. This kept us all in time so we could sijng correctly. I found this really helpful, but I didn't want to get used to singing with someone else. As we rehearsed it became easier to do, I was quite familiar with the song before the rehearsal but for those of us who werent it helped them to know it better. Charley, also playing Mimi didn't know it well, so I helped her with explaining the narrative of the song and also the tune and rhythm of the song.
We then did a speed run, this helped me to understand the narrative better. I like the second act because you get to see a different side to Mimi's character, she is seen as confident and also very low and weak in the first act, but she becomes very angry and strong during the second act during conflicts with Benny and Roger.
The second act is also much more compact, it is shorter than the first but this is because the story is coming to an end and there is less dialogue between songs.
This point links with things being established in the first act, and developing in the second, this was clear during our speed run because we have been looking at act 1 a lot, and this run showed us how the story develops.
Although she is at the beginning, Mimi as a character is considerably less positive during the second act, her health goes down hill and her relationship with Roger becomes very complex.
This juxtaposition of characteristics is apparent for all the characters.
The song Seasons Of Love has a big impact on the audience, it shows the cast together as one ensemble and it connects with each characters individually, the main group and highlights each different relationship. The composer opened the second act with Seasons Of Love because it foreshadows what is going to happen, ie angels death for example. It is used as a time device to skip ahead to New Years and sets a solemn yet humble tone for the second act.
Next week we plan to start filming for Marks documentary, it will be played at the end of the production during the song Finale B. This will take up both of our lessons next week and therefore no rehearsals will take place. I will use this time when I am not in scenes being filmed to go over any songs or dialogue I'm not sure of.
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