MAMA OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

We're back from the holidays and we're a full group!

This week (28th Feb - 2nd March) we were left alone for the most part to rehearse our upcoming production of Bloody mIST (I think we could call it this!)

Our Line Up

Action Shot!

This week started all the way back on the Tuesday (28th Feb) where we began with what we already had to give Maria and idea of how we are going to do the line up and entrances. So we then decided to plough on through the chair scene which has been inspired by Bloody Mess' chair scene, Maria putting out the chairs and measuring them perfectly only for Me, Georgia and Spencer to pick them up and run away with them. However we were all kind of scared of doing this since maria had a whip, but we slowly worked on the scene in a mildly chaotic way and finally came up with something we were happy with. Then for the first time with all of us we got through from beginning to end our line up which we seem to have nailed now. By using the line up we have altered it sightly so there's more 'messing around' going on during it rather than a sit down and just say who you are. We've got me falling off a chair, Spencer eating, Maria just babbling on whilst we go play cards and various other bits and bobs. Over the holidays I decided to create a playlist on my iPod for this piece, so I got lodes of music that could fit into our piece and we tested them out to see which worked and which didn't in the end we've got our playlist for our entrances and various other parts of our piece. We went over the entrances and how they would work with the music and timings and that neatly brought us to the end of the lesson. However due to how slowly we were progressing we did decided to take up a Wednesday afternoon to steam on through with it.

Theatre Versus Oppression Logo

Wednesday (29th of February LEAP YEAR!!!!) for the beginning part of the Wednesday school lesson we spoke about a charity that the school have worked with before called Theatre Versus Oppression, we took an hour looking through their website to see how they use theatre to help the refugee camp they work with in Uganda to overcome problems or help tackle things that are frowned upon in the camp (trying to stop violence against the women, getting men to carry other men to safety instead of letting them die ect) and so we went through their website talking about how they are using theatre and where the ideas came from. I feel there were a few reasons behind this, #1 is that we needed reminding and some people like Spencer didn't really know much about this, #2 was to help us as Theatre students to understand how theatre can help and #3 was to get us to do something. So, we talked about holding a fundraiser at the school which we all as Theatre students agreed we should hold one but also overcoming the obstacles that there would be (such as not having the big hall ect). So after some vigorous discussion we cam up with an idea of a Promenade/Talent Show kind of thing where people can walk around the school, go into different rooms and watch people sing/dance/act whatever. So for the next 20 or so minutes we actioned planned how this was going to work out which in the end we came to the conclusion we going to have to work hard and quickly to get this turned around into the upcoming IST's GOT TALENT! Where we decided the date was likely to be the 1st of June and we would perform Bloody mIST!

Moving onto our second lesson on Wednesday we went through our line up quickly just polishing up things here and there and what we would say. Over the course of Tuesday night I had merged our entrances music into one track so it could play with no one at the sound system so we tested it out on the sound system and it seemed to work perfectly, giving us all around 30 seconds to enter thus keeping the time down but giving us enough to enter. It seemed to work really well! From there we begin to try and see what would go next in our piece which didn't go so well and we ended up working on the finale of our piece! Which is Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen but the problem was we didn't know the lyrics so that didn't go to well. The only lyrics we knew were MAMA OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Spencerella

Wednesday afternoon was a blur, we got so much done and it was so exhausting I was glad we filmed it! We began by printing the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody off because we were really bad at it. We dressed Spencer up as a woman which is always going to be interesting! Wednesday afternoon was more of a stop start rehearsal as we needed to think of structure and what was going to be said. So at times we had Spencer and Maria rehearsing their 'Types of Fear' and me and Georgia rehearsing 'Yo Momma' jokes. After about one hour and a half we had a rough draft of each aspect that the would be in the piece so we did a full on run through putting as much as we could into it. The good news was that would had a deformed and mutilated version of what will hopefully one day be a final version of this, the bad news it was 40 minutes give or take.So that was our problem, we rehearsed it again for the second time that day it began to look slightly better, but it was just still as long. But I feel we managed to perfect the 'MAMA OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO'. Since Mr. F could probably hear it down the corridor we knew we were onto a winner.

Friday (2nd March) was a cut down lesson. Due to the length of our piece Mr. F told us we needed to get it cut down which we did! (At what price I do not know yet) but Friday was supposed to be a dress rehearsal but someone forgot their costume...SO WE RAIDED THE COSTUME CUPBOARD INSTEAD! We got Specerella in a dress, scarves and a wig. Unfortunately we don't have the video for Friday yet! But after we got a form of costume of we went through our piece, layering scenes on top of each other to shorten it, shortening parts like the 'Types of Fear'. Now Bohemian Rhapsody went amazingly well, we went from the creation of the IST where I had sweets thrown at me, I was spun around on the swivel chair, I had scarves thrown over. I feel that, for that EXACT moment is the most Bloody Mess we has managed to achieve in ours, it felt so similar. And HEY! We got 29 minutes, so we are slowly cutting it down. Next aim...20 minutes!

Just as a side note from this week I have got to say filming all our rehearsals has proven so useful not only for this blog, but to look back on you yourself and see how you can improve, but also it gives another perspective of the performance, since we are in it we are sometimes oblivious to certain things but the camera picks it up. I feel that we should record EVERY practical rehearsal, not just of bloody mess but of everything!

So, after a few bruises and complete exhaustion we have a VERY rough draft of Bloody mIST. Now it is time for us to make this chaos into Organised Chaos

Richard #1