There are three main parts to successfully putting together an ensemble performance; planning, rehearsing and performing. Each step involves different elements of working together which are all vital in ensuring each step is honoured, giving the ensemble performance the best chance of success.
Planning- this includes contributing ideas, researching the content of your performance and exploring the subject in depth, making compromises, availability of cast and team and listening to opera house other’s ideas. Ensuring you have a set idea of how you want the performance to look when it comes to the show day is essential as the rehearsal process will fit around this end image. Commitment to the process is also a vital to making the performance work. Each team member must be committed and passionate about their part in the performance. Having team members who are passionate about what they are participating to the process, will take the work to the highest standard possible.
Rehearsing- this includes putting together a rehearsal schedule, tolerance, patience, focus, flexibility and self discipline. This is the step where everyone's works starts coming together. Being patient is vital as this step is also the part of the process where everyone need to put in loads of hard work, ensuring everything about the performance has been covered and polished, ensuring it is ready to be performed. Focus is also important as there is always going to be a certain amount of time the work needs to the completed by therefore a lose of focus is a lose of time which you cannot get back. In conclusion this part of the process must be completed with care and commitment to make the performance the best it can be.
Performing- your group image/ costumes, choosing your audience, enthusiasm, peer analysis, supporting one another and energy. This is the final step to the process and is where the hard work and commitment all pays off. Energy and enthusiasm are two essential traits all of the team member must have when performing. Watching people do something they enjoy and are passionate about is always pleasing for audiences. Appearing unenthusiastic and bored when performing not only looks unprofessional, it also brings The mood and atmosphere down to a low point which becomes unenjoyable for audiences and performers.
‘I like the flowers’ is a warm up sung in the round. We split into three groups of roughly 4 people to sing this today. We performed the warm up song twice. Firstly we sung it with no prompt however before we sung it for a second time, we had a class discussion about how we could use performing skills (listed above as the third section) to improve the piece. Relating to the idea of performing, enthusiasm was the first element we needed to improve on. The first time lacked enthusiasm and charisma as we were all too focused on signing the lyrics correctly and ensuring we sung with our groups; keeping in time with the round as a whole. However after mentioning we needed more enthusiasm, the second time round definitely improved. I noticed in myself and when looking at others in my class that we used our facial expressions to demonstrate passion and that fact we were having a great time on stage, performing the song. I also noticed a difference in body language, we all let our vocals and the melody lead our movements, such as swaying from side to side and performing the simple hand actions which go with the song. This looked like it came naturally to us the second time round as we weren't over thinking the technical details as we had these perfected at this point. Eye contact between the whole group and each of the three individual groups helped us support one another. This connection allowed us to be clear on when to start singing and end the singing. This also helped make the transitions smooth between verses. Being aware and ‘awake’ whilst singing, also made sure each group kept to their timing in the round. If an individual in the class was confused about where to pitch their line or the timing, making eye contact with a outer group member made it so much easier to get them back on track. This is a positive way of non verbally communicating when performing.
A counter melody is the idea that two songs can be sung together by two different vocals, accompanied by one of the song’s backing music. The songs however cannot be chosen at random, they have the musically fit together to ensure the two match and sound correct. We sung two sets of counter melodies today; 1- Adele, Someone like you with Journey’s Don't stop believing. 2- Pink’s Just give me a reason and James Blunt’s You're beautiful. The most difficult part of singing in a counter melody is keeping to your song in your group. Whilst singing two songs at the same time, it is easy to become distracted by the other song’s lyrics. This is where patience and focus comes in during the rehearsal process; you must help others understand how the overlapping of the songs works out and ensure all your attention is committed towards the task otherwise unnecessary mistakes will inevitably occur, wasting time for the whole cast. When performing, we had to bring strong energy to our performances as individual. As a result, this increased the whole volume of the group, making the songs sound brilliant together; you are able to hear the songs counteracting against each other, sounding stronger and more professional as a whole.
Myself, Luke Emily and Jaydee were put into a group and given the song ‘Crazy little thing’ to choreograph and sing, with the end goal to perform to the rest of the class. We spent the least amount of time on the planning section as we only had 40 minutes to complete all three. Our planning consisted of a small amount of research into the song, listening to it and understanding the pitch and tone. This set us up in a strong position for starting the next step, rehearsing. We spent the majority of our time today on this step as for this quick task, preparing our material was the most important stage. We all listened to one another's ideas and put our heads down, getting on with the task in hand. For example there was one stage where we all had different ideas for s certain part of movement. Instead of debating over whose idea should be used, we civilly decided on which idea to use and made a compromise, to use the other movement ideas in the dance however in another section. This cut down the procrastination which could have potentially taken away some of our time we had rehearsing. Patience also came into play when rehearsing today; we were singing some difficult melody lines between a female and male vocal which took us some time to work out where we were meant to pitch the notes and following on from this, making them sound strong and perfecting them.
When performing, some of the movements and vocals didn't look or sound as we had initial expected them to in rehearsals for two reasons. Firstly we didn't have a huge amount of time to create the choreography and therefore it wasn't refined as well as we would have been aiming for. Secondly due to the time period assigned for this again, none of us in my group were confident on the lyrics for the song, therefore we didn't sound fully confident. However sometimes these things happen when performing and pitching ideas to the rest of the cast therefore you have to apply other performing skills in the moment, the demonstrate a glimpse of what you have created could look like I'm the future. We apply end the idea of enthusiasm by making the movement we remembered over exaggerated, almost in an appropriate comedic way. This brought a new concept to the piece, as the audiences did enjoy us bringing in an element of humour, even if it was by mistake. Finally, peer analysis came in to play here when getting feed back from them after. As I mentioned, they enjoyed the comedic moments, such as making the movements over exaggerated and turning to the side and leaning on each other whilst singing and performing a crazy motor bike action. This has uncovered a new idea of bringing comedy to the piece as it really worked, which is a positive new idea which came from a mistake. This shows that as an ensemble if things go wrong, you must interact with each other and react to one another's energy; and this could actually bring new ideas to the table.
My target for the following lesson is to continue thinking about the three stages of putting on an ensemble performance as they have really helped me think about why and how we do each step as a group, working together.
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