Little Women Rehearsals + Last Resort Rehearsals + Production Role - Unit 8

Little Women Rehearsals

So for the Little Women show the roles I had been given was Ned for cast 1 and the Father for cast 3 due to the films I had at the same time so Kelly gave me a smaller role. I had got told what scene to learn straight away for Ned as for when they were doing the first rehearsal for that character I was filming so Kelly had told me scene 2 was what I had to learnt which I went in did in my own time so that I could stay up to track with everything happening. 

Thursday 11th May

After finishing up Weight of the World this was my first day to crack on with Little Women, when I arrived back in the room with Aiden they were filling us in with what was going on, they were blocking out the ballroom dance scene and the dance scene where Laurie meets Jo. I had to watch Will as he was the other Ned. He filled me in that we go around the party and put our names down on girls dance cards making sure that Sallie Gardner is one of them due to the fact that is who Ned marries. We then start off the dance with Sallie then move backwards to the next person then go backwards a third time for the last person. 

Tuesday 16th May

Today we had a look at scene 10 for Ned, where Kelly took a little group of people from cast 1 who was in that scene to the side and ran through it with us as this was my first run through of an actual scene. In this scene a party is happening at the Moffat's house and I enter holding Sallie Gardner's hand. Walking over to Annie Moffat and Fred Vaughn saying my line directing it to Sallie that Theodore Lawrence is going to be attending tonight. Sallie then starts to talk bad about Meg who enters through he door and me and Fred need to notice it and we do a rich laugh since we are the richest people in the show. 

Thursday 18th May

Today me and Henry started our production role today looking at the props list, we decided to have a look in the costume room and to our luck the higher education students were putting some props away that we could use for the show so we took some the items crossed them off the list. We also had a look at some items on the internet getting photos and asking people if they had any items on the lsit which nobody messaged us back about. We wrote down prices of props and what website they could be found on then we took some newspaper upstairs to get started on making paper boat hats for the club thats sisters make. Henry had to run off to maths so I continued the hats with Charley and Gracie, we made sure to test them on one of the main sisters heads to make sure they would fit. I then had to hand the list back over to Henry as I had to go film for Martins film. 

Week starting 22nd May

For the final week of college Tom had come to help finish up blocking most of the scenes and doing a full cast run through. For Monday 22nd I was filming so I wasn't present. We then started working on all 3 casts finding for the ballroom scene as they wanted to finally polish that scene the most so they could then work on everything else. I had been learning my father lines in the other dance studio with my cast and this was the first time I had a chance to finally rehearse as the father. As I was confident enough with Ned's line it was the fathers lines I was really stressing about since I haven't really had the chance to this point to run through them due to filming. I decided to take it on with stride and we did scene 4 of act 2 where Aunt March comes to tell Amy she is going with her instead of Jo. For this scene I sit on the chair and stand when Aunt March enters and leaves. 

I had also been told by Tom when running through the party scene with Ned that I need to play him more boring, as I bring a little bit of life to him. I took what he said and went away and practice with Will who is Fred and Emily H who is Sallie. I felt I had improved a bit and I finally found how I see Ned. I play the father very differently by making him a lot softer in the voice and more fun to listen to then when I play Ned. I also watched scene 2 where after Ned says his lines he goes and sits down and watched the March sister's do their performance that Jo had written. While watching Jamie do that scene I started by finishing off the tree with the popcorn decorations for my production role. I feel like I could of done more for setting up to Little Women for my production role but I found to do props challenging with all the filming I was doing and not knowing how to retrieve most of the props, it was also hard when no one would reply back to my teams message when I put the props list in the chat. Hopefully, when show nights come around I can do some more of my production role by making sure all props are where they are and all props are on stage when needed to be on stage. 

Tuesday 30th May

Even though it is half term some of cast 3 wanted to go in and I saw this as the best opportunity to finally finish off the rest of the father scenes as I had only done the one. The first father scene I had already knew watching when Taron did, that's the scene the dad enters and greets all his daughters after coming back from the war. I worked on polishing off act 2 scene 4 making sure that I learnt all of my line for it then moved onto the final scenes that I had somewhat learnt I tried going off script with a prompt and managed to know some of it it was just the blocking of the scenes since I had never done them before. 

Monday 5th June

Me and Henry worked on starting a props table and getting together all the props we had and making sure they were allocated to the right people on the table. Then also during show days after or before shows I would make sure everyone that was using a prop knew that there prop would be on the table under their roles name so they wouldn't need to stress about running around and trying to find it. I did this for every night so that everyone could be prepared. 

Last Resort Rehearsals

For last resort I have the role of Damien for the Killyjoy family and the role of Fraser for the surfers after Aiden had dropped out of the role. I found it hard trying to find what both characters were like but I managed to overcome that in the end and I think it brings a new feel to how I was originally playing them. 

Killjoy Family

For the first rehearsal for the Killjoy family Elliott and Geoffrey got us all into the film room and wanted us to run through all the scenes. We decided to do a read through of all the scenes first before moving onto blocking the scenes. We decided to set the scene with some chairs like we were actually in the car and decided to play with it that way. I played Damien as the annoying kid that constantly whines and wants his own way but sometimes doesn't always get it. I make sure to emphasise my lines when he talks about food as he likes to whine about eating a lot. I react towards Zia a lot (who plays Wayne) as a lot of my lines are directed to him int he first scene. For the second scene he seems more proud of himself and cocky since he sees the sign for the car getting stuck in the sand but decided not to say anything till the family get stuck. For the last scene I fake cry and bring the energy up for him since he has been kicked in the head by a horse so I make him extra whiny and improvise a few lines in there to bring the comedy up as I feel a lot of his lines don't make the scene funny unless added on or played well. 

I made sure to add a few actions in there that the directors had told me to do like in the first scene when I'm complaining about the traffic jam and wanting to go home or asking if we are nearly there I kick my dad's chair to show the annoying side to Damien. I add a few groans in there to show hes fed up of this trip and decided to start watching the cars zoom past the window. I tired to make him as kid like as I could without making him seem like Kobi from Old times. 

Surfers

My first real rehearsal for Fraser was when I did the audition for him, getting the accent on point and trying to make him not too much like Henry's surfer was a struggle at first. I also struggled with the walk which now we worked on and made it so much better by adding my own spin to it. We saw Fraser as the energetic but dumb surfer. Matt (played by Henry) was the stoner but somehow aware of himself and smart stoner, so we broke that stereotype of the dumb stoner which we think adds more comedy to it. Then we have Clive (played by Alan) who is the lady's man surfer where when ever he gets the chance he will show off. After the audition we went away and ran through it one more time to get a feel for all of them adding in our own bits of comedy as well.

For today (Friday 3rd June) I had met up with Alan and Henry and gone through the surfers at first we still weren't feeling it I was still a bit too much like Henry's character. That's when I decided to try go off script and give a new feel to Fraser to see how well I knew my lines and if I could just think on the spot how he would say and act without having the anchor of always having to look at the script. After running through it a 2nd time I finally got the feel of the character and we made the people watching laugh as all 3 of us had completely found our character and it made something great come out of it. We have improved a lot from when we had last ran through this and we are pleased to be able to see that improvement, now all that's left to do is know all the lines off by heart and make it ten times better when were all off script.