For this years Christmas show were doing Peter Pan: The British Musical. This was going to be an added challenge for me as I didn't think I would be coming here to sing on stage. I know we did some singing last year but that was a 15 minute performance, whereas this is a full musical and learning the songs aren't going to be easy and its going to be a lot to learn with lines and songs, an also added challenges is that some of the songs have the characters just speaking through it as well then it breaks back into the song.
Tuesday 12th September
For preparation getting ready for the show the 2nd years have the option to come in early to practice the songs with Tom. We started off with voice warm-ups, to help stretch our vocals to reduce the risk of tension, damage and voice loss. We use it for singing to help smooth out our vocal breaks and improve our range.
Tom started off by going through the songs and telling us which characters would sing them songs, also showed us which songs each character would audition with as well and if certain songs would be auditioned with in them groups. We had a listen to 'The Darling family's ' songs, Peter's first song, Wendy's first solo song and then Captain Hook's song. We got told these are the songs we would have to audition with depending on the role we wanted to go for. We officially started working on one of the ensemble songs to get a feel of what the songs would be like. The song was called 'We're going home' and it's a song the lost boys sing with Wendy and her brothers, this is where we found out that there is sometimes lyrics spoken then it starts off singing again. Some of the voices are high as well which is another added challenge as I am comfortable with singing I just don't think I can hit the high notes. While going through the song a couple of us started marching as it fit in with the beat and tempo of the song, so we are already thinking on the spot when it comes to ideas.
Tuesday 19th September
We started off with voice warm-ups again and then got split into 3 groups. One group was high the other was middle and the last was low. I put myself in the middle as I feel I can't reach all the high notes but I can reach the low notes just not too low. After we had went through "the darlings" song in these 3 groups we were asked to stand for what character we were going for in the show to stand up and sing their song. I decided to stand for Peter and Hook, at first I was a bit wary for Hook or not when just listening to his song, but I got persuaded to go up and just give it a go.
I feel like Hook will be more of an added challenge for me than Peter, even though both characters sing and I haven't sung on a stage before. I just feel like Hook will push me more as he's a character out of my comfort zone as he needs to be very over the top, it would also be a diverse challenge for me to go for Hook as well as he is a villain and I haven't played a character like that yet. Peter would be a challenge for the singing as his voice is very angelic and high and I can't really get my voice that high. I feel like I've already played a couple of child characters as well so it wouldn't really be much of a stretch in diversity.
Thursday 21st September
We received the script on that day and a few of us stayed behind do a run through and go through some of the songs as well, we kept switching people out and switching people in to sort of run our own chemistry run throughs to sort of get the director side of things flowing as well. Some of us also came in on Friday 22nd to do another run through where we tried practicing the songs with backing tracks which was a challenge, we also experimented around with the lines on how we think they would be read.
I experimented around the most with my Hook voice as I feel like I have something in mind its just about if I can execute it to a good enough standing that I like and feel comfortable playing around with and finding new ways to expand on it.
Tuesday 26th September
Today I learnt stage combat for Peter Pan as there is going to be alot of it so we have to make sure we are safe when performing it. We learnt how to throw basic punches and make it seem like we hit the person when we didn't. After learning basic stage combat we got tasked with putting a scenario together and showing it to everyone, only 1 group did it perfect with the way they were stood with their back to the audience so that you can't tell that they aren't actually punching them. Eye contact was always key since we didn't want to hurt anyone by flinging our arms around. So we made sure we made eye contact before throwing a punch so that the other person knew it was coming. After that Tom put a piece together for Peter Pan, here are some videos and photos of what we learnt.
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Tuesday 17th October
Today we started off with our normal voice warm ups then Tom and Kelly spoke to us about when auditions would be fore Peter Pan and how the auditions would work. The auditions will run over the course of 3 days, the first day being dialogue auditions where we will need to learn a scene and act it out. The 2nd day will be song auditions where we are given an extract from each song we sing up to, this day will have callbacks since some songs have more than one person singing. Then the last day will be a movement audition where they will be looking at how we move when songs are playing. I wrote down Peters and Hooks audition songs since im still conflicted who to go for out of the 2 since I know both of their first songs. For Peters song we sing "what it's like to grow up" and we sing up to the first part of the song, For Hooks song we sing "Rich damp cake" and sing up to the part where he mentions the lost boys taking a bit and ending up dead.
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