Thursday 24th: 10am-5pm

Friday 25th: 2pm (TECH) …Continue rehearsing after tech

Saturday 26th: No rehearsal  – Work on Blog/Characterisation

Sunday 27th: Evening rehearsal in LPAC?

Monday 28th: Assessments for other module

Tuesday 1st: Assessments for other module

Wednesday 2nd: 6pm – onwards

Thursday 3rd: 10am? (us Radio Drama people might be needed to record our assessment piece? But we have the whole day and aren’t performing untill late evening, so we can split the day and perhaps rehearse later in the afternoon.)

7.45pm -PERFORMANCE!!

*Learn lines for Thursdays (24th) rehearsal! =)

Hope this is cool with every? Thanks, Amie.

So this week we have started rehearsing in earnest!!  With only a couple of weeks till the assessment we need to really kick on and get some work done.

Monday – We read through the scenes in the order that they are to be performed in.  This gave us a good feel for how the scenes ran one after another and gave us chance to brainstorm some ideas on how to make scene transitions feel smoother therefore not leaving the whole performance feeling somewhat dis-jointed.  We also had a chance to go down into the corridor on the first floor of the LPAC building to try and block the fight scene and the parade scene.  At this early stage we didn’t encounter any problems as such but we will have to take into account that audience will create something of an obstacle when it comes round to the performance.

Tuesday – We decided as a group to go on a bit of tour of the LPAC building to work out where exactly the scenes are going to be performed throughout the building.  Since we were out and about in the building we ran through the scenes in the locations we had in mind.  On the whole it worked out well but the noise of other people being around made it difficult to concentrate but on the positive side it became apparent that we would need to try and perform in the evening when there are fewer people around in general.

In Tuesday’s session we had a discussion with Darren (our genius tech guy) who helped us make sense of our ideas for staging the performance.  In terms of technical requirements we don’t need anything to fantastic as we are not staying in one location.  As a group we came up with some nice ideas for the Doctor/Students scene which will take place in Studio 2.  We want to use the lights to create an unnerving atmosphere for various parts of the scene.  Darren suggested that we could use curtains to block out parts of the studio to create a more confined and intense space, to do this we would want to use white curtains if possible to give the scene a more clinical feel.

At the end of the session we had an opportunity to show the other groups a part of our performance.  We decided to show the fight scene out in the corridor because we wanted to see how the scene might work with an audience to fight past.  It was helpful in that there was more bodies for Aaron to fight his way through but not helpful because everyone just moved out the way and there was only a hand-full of people in the audience.  I don’t think it’s going to cause to much of a problem but it is something we need to be aware of – it depends on how big an audience we get.

Thursday –  Today we rehearsed each scene in its location.  Amie and Kirsty were busy choreographing some movement pieces that will happen as Sally takes the audience up the stairs.  These characters are intended to represent circus freaks so Amie and Kirsty will be wearing masks that are quite distorted and a bit grotesque to fit in with our idea of Woyzeck being the only naturalistic character in a world that is going mad around him.  We spent a lot of time rehearsing the Doctor/Students scene and the Woyzeck/Marie scene (where he confronts her about her affair with the Drum Major) in Studio 2 during this session since we have not had chance to spend time in the Studio outside timetabled lessons.  Unfortunately we were unable to get Jimmy into his hatch above the studio because there was a show on in the LPAC theatre so it was a case of access denied!  In the Doctor/Student scene there is potential for some subtly comic moments and opportunities to play on certain lines, which will help to lighten the mood of a piece that is otherwise quite dark and scary.  We experimented with various Meyerhold inspired movements throughout the scene that will add to the strangeness of the world around Woyzeck.    Again at the end of the session we performed a five minute section of our work in progress, this time we performed the two scenes we had been rehearsing in the studio.  Without the lighting effects the scene looked a bit odd when the masked characters start touching Woyzeck feeling for his pulse.  It looked as though they were just randomly feeling him, but when the light effects are included then it will make much more sense.  The scene between Marie and Woyzeck already has a terrific sense of tension between the two of them which gives the ending of this particular piece some suspense.

Overall I felt the rehearsals went well this week.  We have managed to make sense of all the ideas we had as a group and put them into practice and see what works and what doesn’t.  We know have a clear idea on what we need to work on more and what we can just polish up as we get near to assessment day.

Bye for now

Rach x 🙂

We have come up with a temporary order for the scenes as we wish to perform them. We felt that chronologically this order would tell the story best.
We have also been playing with ideas about how we will bring the audience into the performance space. We wanted it to reflect how the character Woyzeck is feeling.
Soon we will be starting to action the text and get the whole thing on it’s feet. Hopefully we will get some pictures of that up soon!
Jimmy.