Task Two Learners Log for Unit 15 - Devising my Act for the Variety Show in May

In Update to my Variety Report i spoke about how i was doing the song from 'Singing in the Rain' as my act. I will now be performing the song 'Mr Celophane' from Chicago. This still relates to the traditional act of performing a Character Song.

Mr Cellophane is a musical performance from the musical Chicago, It tells the story of Amos Hart's feeling of being shy and how he is unoticed by everyone. This song is in a negative tone, yet lets him get his anger out. When I first listened to this song, I could come up with lots of ways to interpret it and make it different from others. I took this as a sign to do it as my performance.

These are the lyrics to my song, and I have added in some of the basic script annotations that I first did.

If someone stood up in a crowd
And raised their voice up way out loud
And waved their arm and shook his leg
You'd notice him  (Spoken)

If someone in the movie show
Yelled, "Fire", in the second row
This whole place is a powder keg (Screamed towards audience)
You'd notice him (Spoken)

And even without clucking like a hen
Everyone gets noticed, now and then
Unless of course, that personage should be
Invisible, inconsequential me

Cellophane, Mr. Cellophane shoulda been my name
Mr. Cellophane 'cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me and never know I'm there

I tell ya Cellophane, Mr. Cellophane shoulda been my name
Mr. Cellophane 'cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me and never know I'm there

Suppose you was a little cat
Residin' in a person's flat
Who fed you fish and scratched your ears?
You'd notice him

Suppose you was a woman, wed
And sleepin' in a double bed
Beside one man, for seven years
You'd notice him

A human being's made of more than air
With all that bulk, you're bound to see him there
Unless that human bein' next to you
Is unimpressive, undistinguished you know who

Cellophane, Mr. Cellophane shoulda been my name
Mr. Cellophane 'cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me and never know I'm there

I tell ya Cellophane, Mr. Cellophane shoulda been my name
Mr. Cellophane 'cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me and never know I'm there
Never even know(Break down into tear at the end of note)  I'm there

Hope I didn't take up too much of your time (Walking off stage)

 

Before starting to block out my solo properly I did some research into past performances of the song and some different versions out there. One of the main versions that I have been looking at is the one from the film adaption of Chicago. This version is very different to some of the others where the actor, speaks a lot of the lyrics instead of singing some of the verses. I thought that this sounded good, but I thought that I will use this style of the song, if ever I felt that I was loosing the melody in the song, or the timing went to fast or solo. This also gives me the opportunity to add some more emotion to the lyrics, without having to focus on the notes and being in tune

'Mr Cellophane' from Chicago the Musical film 2006

 

 

 The second version of the song that I listened to was the one from the Broadway version of the musical. I could automatically see differences between the two versions, as the one from the production, the whole thing is sung along to the melody. I felt this hard to sing as I am so familiar with the movie version that it didn't come naturally to me. How ever I liked the movement in this song. I thought that the subtle hand movements and the animated facial expressions made the song come to life and I could see my self interacting with the audience while doing these movements, and it reminded me a bit of a clown.

 

'Mr Cellophane' from Chicago the stage production.

 

 

27th April 2015 

 

This was my first rehearsal where I began to sing the song properly, rather than just doing it half hearted and blocking it out. I had a session with the singing teacher Kim, which I arranged to make sure that I was singing the song in tune and to give me some technique on the projection of certain sections.  One note that I was given was to really push the whole song, and give it full energy or the pace and feel of the song drops. I felt that I was holding back some of the song, and I was pushing some bits, but was keeping most of it in, as I didn't want to go to far with it, and lose my intonation and pitching. However I ran the song a couple of times on this day and felt that if I pushed my notes further and gave the song a lot of energy it came to life and I got in the roll of it and it seemed to all work out.

 

Kim said that with the song as a whole the majority of the song was in tune and that I had control of the song and was getting most the notes right and had good tone. There is one line in the song that I wasn't sure about, going into the rehearsal. This is the last line of the song "Never Even Know" This gets very high, and I think it helped a lot having someone else there that I could pitch my notes against and then I could tell that I was hitting it. This note is fairly high, and I wouldn't say that it is in my comfortable range, but I was able to hit it a couple of times in the song. 

 

I left this first rehearsal with the target to keep singing the song along with the vocals on the videos, then I could pitch my note against him and try to memorise what it is like to hit these notes and how I have to prepare myself. 

 

 

1st May 2015

 

I had some spare time in the day I spent this in the theatre, going over my song with my self, mainly focusing on that last note at the end of the song that I had been struggling with. I had been hitting this note on a more regular basis, but still couldn't find something in my preparation that I felt made me do it. The two words before the high note, go down a note half way through the word. I then started to visualise myself using these two words as a ladder, and I was pulling my self up the notes on these two words, then giving I big final push up on the last word with the high note. This really is helping me to hit that note and now it  is not becoming a problem in this song.

 

2nd/3rd May 2015

 

Over the weekend I sat down and started to think about my act, and how I can really make it really different to any other performances of this song. I went through different ways that I could change the themes of the song and add a different story behind it. One theme that stood out for me was clowns. so I came up with a background story about a clown that is a bit of a failure and nobody finds him funny or entertaining. I think that worked well with the lyrics of the song, about how no one knows he is even there, and there is no point of him being there, I could see a lot of possibility's in this, trying to get sympathy from the audience yet having the comedy element of the clown that I really over animated.

 

4th May 2015

 

In this lesson we got the chance to do some independent rehearsals, I took this as I chance to go through my choreography, I think that by keeping it very simple and just doing most of it on the spot and doing what ever comes natural with make the emotion of anger and depression come across. where as I feel that the a tight movement would restrict what I do and my character journey. During the act I really work the audience and get very close and personal with them. this make it very close and really real for them. I think this sticks to the clowning theme, as clowns break the fourth wall between a audience and the performer. I do this by direct lines and eye contact.

 

 

12th May 2015

 

In this lesson we were planning to do a run of everyone in the classes acts, I felt really confident about doing this as I felt that I already had a strong and confident act to show, that showed clearly what I wanted to show and my character. At the start of lesson we went through technical elements and were told what was available to us in the theatre. I went into this, with a understanding of what was available and what I wanted in my act.

 

I tried to keep my act to a small amount of lighting ques, as I didn't want there to be too much happening and become a distraction. My first que is a spot light at the back of the stage that will light me sitting at the table, applying my clown makeup and that is where I will do my dialogue. This is a fairly big spot at the back, so it wont restrict my movements to much at the start. I will also be using a radio mic, so I can do what movements I want.

 

My second que is the lighting state to go up to a general wash at the front of the stage, this will go up as the start of the singing section, this gives me lots of room on the stage to move around and work the audience. I then have a sharp blackout at the end of the song when I exit. I think that this is a good amount of ques and its doesn't have some much that It is constantly changing but there is some change to differentiate between the two areas and styles. If I was aloud any lighting I would have a follow spot for the whole show, I think that this would look like I was performing to a audience that wasn't there if I was the only one lit.

 

 

At the end of this lesson we showed our acts to the class. My performance went really well I thought. I do however feel that I held back some of the comedy elements as I wanted to leave these to the last performance, as they may not have the same effect over and over again. but I got some really positive feedback, about how my audience interaction worked and I really drew the audience into the characters story and made them feel sorry for me, yet still in positive way. I lost some of the timings in the song during some of the verses, so my target over the next week before the show is to go over the song a lot to get the timing down and link some of my movements to the timings of the song.

 

 

 

14th May 2015

 

We were given another independent rehearsal lesson, and now that I am really confident with the song and my notes and I have a good range of movements to put the performance, I wanted to come up with some dialogue to go with my performance at the start. The backing track that I am using has I bit of overture at the start that I can put some convocation on, I wanted to really set the scene of my character and how he feels about his life. The monologue that I came up with was:

 

A clown, What a joke, what's the point in being a clown if nobody notices you

NOBODY

That's the story of my life, nobody ever notices me, never

Not even my parents, one day I went to work

and when I came home......they had moved

 

 

This is simple but tells the audience about my character and his background and how he is treated. Now that I have the full act ready I will just spend the rest my rehearsal days, running my act a few times a day to get the flow of it going and having that security of knowing it back to front.

 

 

 

Costume and Make-up Designs

 

I have tried to stay away from some of the typical clown costumes, I have looked at some of the traditional clowns and comedy actors, like Charlie Chaplin. I liked his basic makeup and his costume how it was simple and looked a bit scruffy.

 

 

 

 

 

This is the design for my costume. I have got a tail coat, and I will sew patches onto my trousers to make me look a bit worse for wear and bit disappointing. I think that the splash of colour with the red tie and flower make him seem that he is making an effort but it just doesn't look right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is makeup design. I have looked into Charlie Chaplin, and how he used simple makeup to show an emotion. I think that the black under my eyes will give a negative feel to my eyes and make them seem sad and big.

 

 

 

The Venue

 

I will be performing my act in the Sealight Theatre, and the audience will be sat end on to the stage. This works really well for my act as they will be right in front of me, so I can interact with them and direct all of my feeling towards them and pin point some of the lines to the audience. If I could have picked any venue I think this one would have been one of the best for my acts. As it doesn't seat to many and I can keep it very intimate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13/03/15 Singing with Kim

In this lesson, we started to work on the song for our performance, we are singing the song 'Everything that you didnt do' by Jamie Cullum. We will be exploring three part harmonies.

At the start of the lesson we had to demonstrate our vocal warm ups. I had to do mine to the class, the vocal technique at i focused on was Articulation, this is how the sounds within the he word. How you articulate your words can go two ways, the sounds can be short, stabby sounds which is called Stacarto. A warm up that i choose to demonstrate this was saying the alphabet with a fast pace, and not having to take a breathe between each letter. This meant that notes came out fast and on a sharp beat, that made us pronounce every letter with every sound. The break between each sound of the letter and makes you moves your lips around the sounds. Articulating works better when ou exaggerate every movement of your mouth.

The opposite to Stacarto is Lagarto, this is where the notes flow into one sound. The warm up that i choose for this was saying a sentence, for example 'Dont you dare dive in the droll' This needs really tight movement of the lips to make an audinece able to understand this line. In preperation for next lesson where we have to perform and demonstrate our warm ups, im going to research some more warm ups for articulation that are different to everyone elses, yet effective and fun to do.

For the main part of the lesson we focused on our song 'Everything that you didnt do', the orginal song is very high in key, so Kim brought it down a minor third. This made it easier for me as it fit well into range well, but some people felt that the song fit them better when it was in the original key. However there is still a bit in the chorus where it goes high. I had to use my head voice, to get this high. I found it easier to sing this song when standing next to Henry, as we have a very simular range, and it cant link what im doing. 

my Target for next lesson is to research some more vocal warm ups. As i think that a different warm up would be effective as people could get more into something new.

13/03/15 Dance Lesson Cats Rehearsal.

In this lesson we carryed on with the dance for Cats to the song, 'The Peaks and the Pollicles', we went on with the dance and added new bits as we went, 

First we revised what we had done, and we delt with some of the timing issues that it had from last week, one of the timing problems was the stairs and into the lift between Jess and I. We had to pick a time in the song, where Jess started to climb on people backs then onto my shoulders. We felt that this worked quite well on the Barks, this worked well as this section has a clear beat, we had a moment when we dropped jess down, ready to go into our routine. 

We then went into a new section of the song which we our doing in pairs, i am with Jess, this section has very different dynamics to the first section as everything is slow and flowing movements, Where as in the first section, where each tabloo moves along in a punchy beat, where there are no gaps between the moves. The last bit of the dance that we did today was the face off between the two characters, this bit is very simple, and we just do some basic tabloos and moves and link to the lyrics. 

In preperation for next lesson im going to work on my balance, as in this dance there is alot of change in levels, from being on the floor on one leg, too being up on our toes. However in this lesson i think i did quite well with focusing and having imput on what i thought would work well in the dance, that would explore lots of different level and dynamic changes.

10th March 2015, Britney scene further work.

In this lesson we did some further work on the Britney scene, as a class we felt that this scene was in need of the most of the work, there is a section in this scene where the customers need to distract Lisa from asking about her hour, we all run around the stage with a fast pace, this raised the tension in the room, as us a customers getting closer to LIsa we could feel her panic as she gets into a state and starts a break down of hers.

I felt that this rehearsal was a real step up from thursdays lesson as most people were more furmiluar with their lines, which picked up the pace and alould us to work on more comical, distracting moments. One moment that we added was uring us singing "Happy Burnday" to Biffer we would as skip around in a frantic manor, and then we when we were finished we sat straight back down in our seats, in the same positions that we were in before. This made it look like it was so planned and rehearsed, and that sudden change back to how it was before, as if we had everything planned and once it was over we didnt know what else to do as we started to panic. This really fits my character as the change back to how it was makes the characters seem really panicy as they dot know what to do. I could then link this to my characters traits of feeling uncomfotable and feeling on edge. I showed this by making my body language smaller and really fiddling with my clothes. 

My favourite bit that stuck out for me in this scene was the end of the scene where I come down the stairs as Vince and reach out for Lisa. This really shows the relationship between Vince and Lisa, by how paniced she is and how she feels towards. I have interpreted my character as being the 'Black Dog King' who is the character in the play, that everyone is fearful of. I think that this is because every character that i play is linked to something negative, like the Goat being abusive to her, the negative way that Passanger 2 talks about others, and Inhibitions awkwardness and imbarrisment.  

3rd February lesson analysis. Focus on the Britney scene

In this lesson we began work on the Britney scene, in this scene I play the part of Inhibitions, we looked into this character as Lisa's trait of always being on edge and not knowing what is wrong and right. In the scene before this scene Lisa has had a very violent argument with Vince, this really gets her illness on edge and makes her not know what to do next, this then causes her imagination of the next scene, into mad chaos. This scene is all revolved around Britney's fast food stall. In modern day we would link fast food to being: Easy, timeless and a easy option to life. It is also seen as a treat, something that you can feel relaxed with and not have to worry about. This is something that Lisa can feel safe with after she has got her back up afterVince shouted at her. This is her way of calming her self down and not letting him get to her, even though she doesn't want to stand up to him about what he is doing to her.

My character in this scene always has something going on, whether that would be hiding his own embarrassment or shouting at everyone else to hide his own problems. I see this character as representing everything that Lisa sees wrong with her self and how she really wants to act towards people, about telling people how she feels and what they are doing wrong. I would place my character at the tension level of 6/7 as he is always on edge and doing something.

5th March 2015 Detailed Run of Britney Scene

In this lesson we went through he ending of the Britney scene. We mainly revolved around the decisions about where we stand and when we move in closer to Lisa. We did some choreography for when we sing our songs and when we say the lines in unison. I really enjoyed doing some the the moves for the unison lines as they did not have to make sense to what we were saying, as this whole scene is fast paced and random. There is one bit in the scene, when everything is getting to the tipping  point for Lisa, where we all stand up and swap places very fast. This is very sudden and really raises the tension in the scene, just before Lisa has a break down. My characterisation really came in handy for this scene, as it think i really showed well how my character is on edge and how it is so random and he cant keep up with what he is doing. This is one of my strongest scenes when it comes to knowing my lines, this meant that i could help keep up the pace within the rehearsal and make it easier to see the comical timings.

3rd March 2015, Blocking the Britney Scene

At the start of the lesson Holly (Lisa) and the two people playing Jane did some character development, and through this they made some choices about my character of Vince, he is 28 and s not very happy with Lisa, ever since they got together Lisa has not seen much of her family and it is clear to her family, the negative effect that Vince is having on her. Lisa suffers from mental illnesses, and her family point the finger on Vince for this as it always seems to be worse when he is around. Wealso believe   that Lisa sees this too but is to afraid of Vince to say anything to her.

We started off the lesson by thinking about our characters in this scene and what status we would give them. My character is Inhibitions, if feel that he is quite a low status within the group, as he tends to imbariss himself and doesnt really say much of his own mind, other than backing other people up. We did some basic blocking of this scene, along side Lisa and Janes scene in the theatre, we had made some basic ideas about what we wanted to do in this scene, Such as all of the customers sitting around on the set on the outside rather than being on tables in the middle, we thought that then this would not be to in your face to Lisa and she can choose how much she wanted us to effect how she behaves in this scene. In this scene, the people playing the customers of Ticket, Argument, Laughter and Inhibitions had not made many decisions about our character yet so we used most of this time thinking about character and what the mean to Lisa. It really helped having this support and big input from everyone in the scene as they all see the characters from a different light, what they mean to their character and what they mean to Lisa.

Half Term Homework Task

How does the use of pace effect comical timing, and the performance as a whole?

When performing a play like 'The Wonderful World of Dissocia' that is fast pace anyway, as it follows her around her world in her mind, where something new is always happening to her. 

In a production, if the pace is not put in at the right speed, the energy in the piece is lost and itstarts to   drag for an audience. When a play is done in a fast pace, it brings the whole thing to life and makes an audience intrigded as somemany things are happening in a short amount of time for them to watch.

Pace also plays a big part in this play as it is filled with comidey moments that need to be kept on their feet, but this needs to planned well, so that the audience can see the difference between the fast scenes, that have huge amounts of comical moments, and the slower scenes and momens that play a big bit in Lisa's development  how she is effected by different things. One example of a fast paced scene for me is the Britney scene where i play 'Inhabitions' this needs to be fast so that the audience can understand how bizzare this scene is and how everything is just happening infront of her, where if it was slow and started to have unessasary pauses, it would give off the impression that it was just badly put togehter. In contrast to this scene, a slower paced scene that im in woud be the scenes between Vince and Lisa. These work having a slower pace in it, and can have pauses as it highlights how there is tension between them too and how un-natural they feel together.

A great comedian uses fast pace, is Tim Vine, he performs his script with great speed, which gives him an edge, as people have to keep up with him and sometimes do really understand what he is doing. Comedy does not always have to be performed at a fast pace, a contrasting comedian to Tim Vine would be Milton Jones, he uses a very slow pace, which bring a big tension to the stage, and makes the audience feel awkward around him. This gives the audience another reason to laugh. 

Pace needs to planned and thought through well in order to get a good audience reaction. Pace can be played around with in different ways, in order to get a comedy moment, this dosent need to be fast paced, it can be slower, yet has to be done in the right way.

24th February 2015 Lesson Analysis, Goat Scene.

In this lesson we began blocking the Goat scene, this rehearsal was very ruffly done, and was mainly to work out how we would work out how was would show to violent scenes, in a respectful way. It starts off with my character pushing Lisa onto her knees and then straight onto the floor, yet my character is interupted by Jane coming in.

I had to seak guidence in my characters mood change when he turns nasty towards Lisa. At this point of the rehearsal process it came very useful in having a parallel cast, as it helped me by watching Henry rehearse the scene, and i tried to pick up on where he changed his body language and facial exspression, to show the change in the character, that the audience first saw at the start of the scene. 

I choose that the split second that my character pushes Lisa down, at this point i change me body language and make my facial exspression a lot more harsh, this sudden change keeps up with my characters trait of suprise and being very sudden. At this point i was given direction to maybe make all of my movements a bit less animated, and more belivable to an audience, I took this on board and made everything more agressive and natural movements, this makes it look like my character had been putting up a front, and he is now letting his guard down.  When facing a serious theme of rape like this, i tried to be serious about it and really thing about what the two people in the scene would be feeling like, how vunrable Lisa would be feeling, and how shocked she would be as this is the first bad thing to have happened to her since she came to Dissocia. And i also thought about how my character would be feeling, as i wanted to perform it with the right sort of anger, but still wanted him to seem caring and forgiveful to Lisa.

12th February 2015 Lesson Analysis of Lift scene + More Goat develpopment

As the cast work through the play in chronological order, me and the parallel goat went off to explore some more traits of our character. We felt that there was more to come out of the way that he moves and that it was too simple to have him doing the same thing for the whole scene. As i read through the script, a part to the character that stuck up to me was the element of suprise. I wanted to show this through his movement. We had already made the decision that he should move slow and low, to make him seem mysterous, but i felt that a sudden out burst into fast movement, added the characters suprise, and the character of Lisa could use this to build up the tension, and he fear of my character. For one example that i made was that on the line "Isnt it obvious?" i will jump down to the stage level, from the higher point that i start on. This make a loud noise as i hit the floor and really shocks Lisa as i burst into her space, and i have changed my body language to very big and open. This helps flip the status of the scene, as i started off very low at around a 3, as my character is pleading with Lisa for her help, and is dependant of her to make the scene carry through. This sudden flip in the status ake my character feel very big, as he comes down to Lisa's level.

When it came to my first scene in the play, which is the lift scene. This is the part where Lisa is on her way into Dissocia. My character is 'Passanger 2', I had already thought about my character in this scene, as it was my first scene of the play. My character is very blunt and abnoxious, i had really changed my tone of my natural voice, a almost 'Lad' like voice, where i put emphasis on everyline, and and spoke at a louder volume that would seem natural in this environment. I gave my character a high status as he feels like he is in charge of the lift as he seems to be the only talking, and he feels relaxed as he has very big, open body language. I think by myself and my parallel cast member having that extra time to start our character development, as we had to wait a bit for our first scene, had a postitive effect on the rest of the cast in this scene, as it raised the energy in the scene, and everyone could then bounce off of each other. I went into this scene, having already thought about it, and what i wanted my characer to be like, and how i wanted everyone to react to him, i feel that this was my main contribution to the play as a whole at the moment, as it meant that we could get straight on with the scene and try out different chreographys, with the turnings.

10th February 2015, Staging design and Goat Movement.

This lesson began with the whole cast setting up the staging, and making the chosses of how high we want sectons to be. Our set is very minimalistic, this makes it very easy to swap from scene to scene, like Lisa's brain has lots of things going on at once. The set is based around turrets, and follows aroud the sides of the stage and around the back. The hieghts differ some knee height to over the head. 

Here is a panorama of the set:

    Photo was taken by Henry Marshall.

The front of the set will be covered with board, which will be painted with black board paint, we will use this by writing words on that have links to the scenes, for example in the Britney scene we will write 'Hotdogs for Sale'. We will also use these boards to write down some of Lisa's emotion, that carry over with her as the play goes on. As my first character of the goat I made the desistion that i will start off my scene sitting in the dark on the top of the turret in the left of the picture. I will be here from quite early on in the play, this shows the audience Lisas connection with my character as he sits there watching what she does. 

By having the set as this one open area for the first act, it really changes Lisa's journey in the play, by her remaining in one location and all of the characters coming to her. For the second act we are getting rid of the set completly, and getting rid of the seating and just having the stage in a black area, with Lisa's hospital bed in the middle, The auidence will be mostly standing for this scene, this is make them feel uncomfortable and on edge, this would then link to Lisa's uncomfort with herself and her surroundings.

For the second half of the lesson, me and Henry (Parallel Cast) went into the dance studio and together started to play around with some characterisation ideas for the Goat. Both of us had come up with some inital ideas for the character and the main difference between both of our interpretations is my character was a lot more animated than Henrys, he played everything very subtle, which gave a mysterous edge to the character and made him seem very scary to Lisa. Whereas my interpretation of the Goat is very animated, and i had the use of big, bold facial exspression to show my characters feelings. This also gave the Goat a scary, dangerous nature as an audience would be note sure if the Goat is trust worthy towards Lisa from my interpretation.  When it came to the Goats vocals, we both had the same ideas, thathe should speak in a lower register, and keep very lower, which gives him a very suspicious, we felt that this was a very creative interpretation of this character, as the scene starts off by the Goat sounding like this whinny, child-like boy that just wants his own way, but by adding this voice to the character it really contrasts how he starts off. 

We also began to do a bit of work on movement, we tried to play around with pace and levels, in the way that he walks. We felt that walk fast and up-right made the character seem too open, as if he didnt have much to hide, but once we tried some of the scene, using very low posture, and walking quite slow it made him seem very mysterious.  

27th February 2015 Beginning of Cats Dance.

In this lesson we began with going through our improvment phrases, this was the first week where we did them. My main focus is still flexability and making it better in-order to improve my co-odernation and strength. 

For the main focus of the lesson we started our section in the year 13's musical 'Cats', we are doing the song The battle of the peles and the pollicles. In the orginal show we would be playing the part of the dogs, but in this version we are playing the 'Photographers and Journalists' Im playing a journalist, we were taught a short phrase that fit to the start of the music, this incorporated lots of levels, kicks, exstention and roles. We were then given the task in our two groups to play around we the phrase and change and add bits, using the focus of repitition, retrograde and canon. I had an intatal idea the we added in some canon, in the section we were step forward and reach up with our note books, i suggested that we added ome canon, in a random order, I thought that this looked like we were all rushing in for the best story and really told the story of all of the reporters wanting the best story. Once we had started to come up with some inital idea for the phrase, we had to come up with some two beat tabloos, we still stuck to the theme of each of us wanted to get the first story, we entered the stage using our tabloos, we started to play around with some people rolling in, some running in and some people jumping over others. As we did not have a full group we could not yet try out some lifts, but we had some ideas with them, of a scrum of some people jumping over each other. With what we had already tried our and the lifts, it will have lots of levels, and people coming in from different entrances, i think it will look quite effective, especially if we stick to the past pace moves. 

27th February 2015, Singing Presentations.

In this lesson we were given the task of presenting a small presentation in groups of five about the voice. We had to include some information about the 'Larynx', 'Dyaphgm', 'Lungs' and warms ups that can help your singing. We started off our presentation with a diagram which identifys the different parts of the body that are involved in singing and speach. 

This is the diagram that we made:

We had a powerpoint prepared that went into detail about all of the parts. Such as that the Larynx is oftern known as the voice box and is involved in prosesses like breathing, sounds from the mouth. The Larynx is placed there mainly to stop food and liquid as you swallow, from going into the lungs, as you breahte in it opens up to let air in. The Diafragm is a sheet of muscle under the lungs, and contracts and exspands as you breathe, to let more air into the lungs, in order to let you hold longer, bigger notes when singing. To make our presentation interactive we did a demonstration of a vocal exercise to help breathe control, we made everyone hold a note, on a short breathe, then repeated this but with a deep breathe at the start, we evaluated the difference in length that we could hold the notes by havong a deeper breahte. 

6th March 2015 Cats dance rehearsal with Kat + Emily

We began the lesson today by going through our improvement routines, this really is helping flexabilty, balance and strength. by going through this i think that it will improve my flexabilty, by focusing on mainy stretching and the pulling of the muscles. 

For the main part of the lesson we focused onour dance sequences for Cats. Today we had more of our group to work with, by having everyone back we worked on adding in some lifts to the dance. I had the idea of having a lift that represents a scrum of reporters, all pilling on top of everyone to get the to best report about what was happening on the stage. We started of with the idea of Jess climbing up everyone else like stairs and then ending up on my shoulers, when she gets up there this is the point where we sing the 'Barks'. I then slide her down my side, onto the rest of the dancers and is lying across them, we then put her down on the floor ready for the motiff. We had the idea of everyone having a different travelling outine to the positions ready for the main chunk of the dance, we will set this in the next lesson. 

In this lesson we also began to play around with exstaggeration, pace,repetition, and playing around with reversed and canon.

6th March 2015 Singing Lesson with Kim.

In this lesson we watched back the video of our counter-melody performances, from this I feel that it became easier for myself if i really projected my lines over the other song, this helped me not get confused about which song i was singing. As a group we all worked really well in complimenting each other, by not singing to loud and drowning out the other song. 

In the later part of the lesson we looked into all of the different types of singing techniques and warm ups, we all picked a vocal technique and in small groups we had to write a describtion of the vocal technique and some ideas of excercises. My technique was Articulation, i found it hard  think of some unique excirses that would be different, yet would really help with articulation. once we had thought of our exercises we had a secion were we shared some of our exercises and warm-ups. We started off with one that improved our range. We had to start at our mind range and slide down to our lowest register then slide all the way up to our highest note and then back down to our middle notes. When we went up to the highest notes, i felt a strain, but if i keep using this exercise in my practice routine, i will stretch my vocals to be able to hit the high notes. The next exercise that we tried helped our Breathe Control, he had to make a 'HA' sound, while taking a breathe between each note, this made our lungs contract and exspand at a faster pace then usual. I really felt by sharing these excirses helped me as I was in need of new ways to improve my vocals within my practice routine.

This is my Vocal warm-up sheet that i did in the lesson, which is revolved around Articulation.

Dance Evaluation

I will Evaluate my Grease Dance, and look into my two strengths and two weaknesses, and look into these in order to set myself two targets to improve.

For my grease dance evaluation if feel that one of my physical strengths is my posture and balance. During the dance i picked up that i knew which move i was doing next and what was coming up. This improved my balance, particuarly in in the leg kicks during 'Handjive'. My second strength is a interpretive skill. I feel that i have good musicality, this means that i keep in time with the music and my whole body is in movement with the music. 

However  feel that my flexabilty and co-ordination let me down within the performance. When it came to my lexability i felt that this restricted my abilty to pull off the movements, i feel that if i worked on my flexability i would be able to make my performance smoother. During the song 'Hand-jive' there is a section where we kind are legs in, twise in front that twise behind. This took me time to get it in the right pattern, as my co-orderination was out and this did not feel natural to me. My weekness when it comes to my interpretation skills is my facial exspression and characterisation. This is normally one of my main skills when im performing but when im dancing im focusing so much on what im doing that i forget to add in characterisation.

My two target that i will work on in reflection to the Grease dance are:

1- I will work on my flexablilty mainly in my legs and hip joints, as I want be able able to have more Exstention and raise my leg higher, i will do this by practicing my stretching routine, focusing on my leg stretches at the start of the routine. this will help to improve my muscles and hopefully over time will improve my flexability. I hope to be able to raise and widen my legs by at lest 5cm more in the next month.

2- My second target is to improve my characterisation, mainly my facial exspression as they tend to drift off to a dull exspression when I'm performing. this came up as a big fault in my performance, i hope that as i become better at all of the other skills, and do not need to focus on them during a performance i can spend more time on thinking of charactter traits and feelings during that dance. I will do this by starting to link so characteristics to the moves, I want this to be excellent by the time of the next dance performance.

This is my evaluation table, i will rate my performance skills from needs improvment to excellent:

Posture and Alignment: Good

Flexability: Satisfactory

Stregnth: Satisfactory

Balance:Good

Co-ordernation: Good

Use of Exstention:Very Good

Ability to responce to movement:Very Good

Working with the music:Good

Use of facial exspression:Needs Improvement

Projection (Eyeline): Good 

 Ability to apply a range of dynamics: Good