Tuesday 22nd November 2016
Under pressure rehearsals for the upcoming performance at Durrington High School this Thursday 24th November. The first video shows myself Luke, Amber and Megan rehearsing the song vocally on our own in the dance studio. We discovered a problem after running the song; we were performing the movement part of the piece end in when in fact we will be performing in traverse style. To fix this problem, we all came together and worked out a new alternative patter of movement, which involved us projecting our voices and body language out to the audiences rather than to one direction. Audience interaction is an important part of any upbeat musical and therefore with our audiences being sat on either side of the stage, we have a fantastic opportunity to really interact with them up close.
The difference between these two rehearsal videos shows that the four of us as an ensemble have worked together to overcome an issue which limited our ability to interact with our audiences. We did this by discussing our options of how the change the movements. We used listening skills to consider each other's opinions, before concluding the discussion b y sensibly coming to the best solution to the issue.
The performance we are putting on at Durrington High School this Thursday is a medley of songs from WWRY, the ones that we thought were most influential to the characters. For example Under Pressure shows Galileo and Scaramouche starting to fall in love, which is a running storyline through out the musical. Jade, Pop and Jordy and Sam, Commander Khashoggi, do not have a duet song to sing in the medley, they don't sing in the two ensemble pieces, Radio Ga Ga and We are the champions. As a substitute to this, we have decided to give them the role of introducing our performance to the students, giving them some background information and context about us as performers, the musical and the songs. Without this introduction, our medley performance would be totally out of context from the study's perspective and would not fully make sense as the songs feature in a non chronological order.
Every member of an ensemble is valid and must contribute towards the end result. Being a part of an ensemble is all about working together. If you were to take one member of the team away, the whole structure would not work in the same way. It was important for Jade, Jordy and Sam to contribute to this process in the same way the rest if the cast did. Doing this in a different form, speaking instead of singing worked perfectly. Without the introduction, the performance wouldn't have made sense and without the performance, the introduction would have been out of context. Therefore I believe we successfully worked as an ensemble here to create a legitimate and understandable whole performance.
Thursday 24th November 2016- Performance day!
This morning we had limited time to learn the dance to Radio GaGa, our finale song in the WWRY medley.
Emily and Talia took on the leadership role in this part of today's rehearsals as they had collaboratively created the dance therefore knew it well. Everyone in the group demonstrated good listening and focus skills whilst Emily and Talia walked us through the movement. As I am a confident dancer I am able to pick up and remember movement quickly and efficiently. However some members of our class are not as strong at dance therefore in this process we had to go over some of the movements a few times before everyone was totally happy and confident with them. Personally I did not need the extra time to go over the movements however as part of a team effort whilst this was going on, I made sure I kept my focus, allowing the dancers who needed to go over the movements, their space to do so. I made sure I kept quiet and went over the movements with too.
Jade was a little behind on learning the movements as she had been preparing her speech whilst we were learning the dance, therefore I helped her catch up with the choreography we had learnt when she was available. Each team member is valid and must help one another; I gave her my knowledge of the dance to get her up to speed and she created the speech which opened the show and gave our performance a sense of context for the students. One with out the other would not have worked, showing why team work is such an important skill whilst working as an ensemble.
After initially performing Radio GaGa to our teacher Kim, she gave us some constructive feedback. This was that now we had fully developed the movement and vocal side to the piece, we all need to work on our facial expressions. Some of us were looking straight out into the distance and some of our faces showed too much concentration. I went away and thought about how I could use my characterisation skills to develop my facial expression in this number. My thought process started with the fact that in this song we are all playing GaGa kids, who are controlled by Planet Mall and act in an artificial and robotic way. This lead me on to think about robotic movement and the fact robots show emotion simplistically. So thinking about this, I applied my knowledge of the idea of robots to how I used my face in this number. Instead of having a concentrating face present, I started smiling in an artificial manor, with a large smile and large eyes. We had a group discussion about how robots act, which really helped everyone understand what sort of expression was expected of us in this number. Olivia came up with the idea of smiling artificially and this idea caught on. When we all tried it out, it seemed fitting to the number; we all interpreted it in a different way. I idea this smile idea when I was not singing. However whilst I was singing, which was the majority of the song, I used warm and soft eyes and smile, which gave the impression to audiences that as a character I was enjoying singing the song and was sincer about the lyrics I was singing. This showed that my character has all is love and dedication to give towards Killer Queen, who controls the GaGa kids.
This is their life and that is what they are singing about in this song therefore showing a positive expression demonstrates the power Killer Queen has over the whole of Planet Mall.
At the very end of our version of Radio GaGa in this medley, we came up with the fitting idea to hold the last note ‘you’ with a harmony before dropping our bodies down and lowering our arms from the side, down with or put bodies. When doing this we held the note and as soon as we dropped down, we held the ‘oo’ sound and lowered the tone and volume of the note, sounded like a malfunctioning robotic noise. This gave the impression that after the GaGa kids finish singing about their ‘happy’ lives, they run out of energy, as if they are programmed by Killer Queen. When we made this decision to add this in to the end of the dance, we realised we were split up in two lines facing away from each other. As a result of this, we had to make sure we were really focused and listened to the ,used as an indication as to when we were supposed to drop down. At this point in the rehearsal we were slightly pushed for time. Despite it being a good idea to add this detail into the piece, it would have been a better situation for us all if we had figured this out before the performance day as we should have had 8.30-11.30 to be refining and constantly running the melody before the performance. Instead we were still blocking out the movement, rehearsing vocals and adding finishing touches to the piece at this point. Upon reflection we should have managed our time better on the Tuesday and had completed all of this by then, leaving us in an ideal position to have just been ironing out any little details that needed attention today. Therefore I conclude from this that time management is something we need to work on as a group as this would allow us to produce a higher quality of work with a lower pressure and stress level.
Being a part of a musical ensemble is all about working together as a team to make sure everyone has something productive to be getting on with at all times. It is also essential to be prepared to help your peers out with any questions they might have about the project in hand. At the beginning of this video you can see some of my class mates showing Izzy how to perform a certain move which is featured in the middle of the Radio GaGa dance. Izzy was asking Emily, who helped choreographed the dance, how to use her eyeliner and focus when performing a hand gesture. To Emily this came naturally as she was a choreographer to the dance however Izzy, much like the rest of us had only just learnt it. Emily was happy to demonstrate they eye line to Izzy, which was following the arm movements with the eye line. Although this was a minor detail, it is also an important one as little finishing touches like this give a dance number that great performance quality, making he movement more professional and polished.
Rehearsing
DURRINGTON PERFORMANCE PART 1
DURRINGTON PERFORMANCE PART 2
WWW?
I feel as though I used my vocal projection well when singing for both my Scaramouche and Chorus roles. I feel as though I sung confidentially when part of the chorus; I knew what I was singing and when to sing it, which showed I was a rehearsed performer in the ensemble. For example, I could hear myself on the video recording of the performance, even when I was not directly in front of/ near the camera which was recording it. This shows that I am good at making sure all of the audience will be able to hear my vocals loud and clear. I also noticed that I pronounced all the vowels and consonants well, enabling all audience members to be able to hear me clearly. This is a positive as with the musical We Will Rock You, a lot of what goes on during the musical, is explained through song therefore it is even more important for audience members to understand what you, as a performer are singing
EBI?
Personally, today I found that the audience were not the easiest to connect with as they were high school students, who perhaps had not seen many musicals before. It was challenging as a performer to get a reaction out of them, e.g. Clapping along to our songs. This made it difficult for me to bring my full potential of enthusiasm and performance quality to this performance, as we had limited energy from the audience to bounce off of.
To think about before the performance…
As today has only been a rehearsal for the actual performance which will be taking place in January, it has prepared me as a performer. By the time we performer, I would have worked on and developed;
• I now feel as though I need to prepare myself for the chance that the audience We perform to, will not be as interactive as we hope. To prepare for this, I will make sure I put 100% energy and enthusiasm to every rehearsal I am involved in from now on, to allow myself to get into the routine of completely putting my all in to every performance, instead of marking it. This will hopefully ensure I make a routine of giving full energy, allowing me to go on stage as a fully confident performer, knowing I have performed the scene/ songs multiple time, allowing myself not to be reliant on audience interaction and response to give me that energy boost that u will already have.
