The Resposibility, the Job Role, and the Routine
11th Feburary 2014
Today we all took on a responsibility within an important job role, and learnt a new dance routine, to all fit in our 'Shakespeare House Party'. Yesterdays lesson had us volenteering for a job role for our production coming soon. The tasks were back stage organisations, unlike the 'Jack and the Beanstalk' pantomime, where we work in the backstage departments, but the job roles we had with this assignment was to arrange yet not deliver. Our responsibility was to take on the role and create the backstage arrangements and hand it to technician/back stage crew, for them to bring to life for the main production.
The job role I volenteered for was the lighting cue manager. My task, along with my partner, is to create a list of lighting cues and check with the other actors to see if they agree with the decisions or disagree and suggest another way we could arrange the lighting. Then once it is all confirmed with the actors and we have created a list of lighting cues we then hand it to the technician so he knows what the lighting cues need to look like and when they need to be projected on stage in the performance. In today's lesson we had our first production meeting; this was good starting point. This allowed us to understand the priorities we had to acomplish during each meeting in order to create a lighting cue list. The priorities listed from having regular meetings and making a 'To-Do' list in order to make a decent cue list for the technicians.
The ideas I have for the production is to give various amounts of different lighting, with different colours to present the mood and atmosphere. In our 'Scaramouche Jones' production, the lighting didn't have much to go on with, as there was a single positioning of the lights as well as adding slightly different colours to change the mood. There wasn't much reliablity with lighting in that production as it was more of a matter of the actors performing with vocal presentation and very little stage changes. Whereas is our uncoming production 'Shakespeare's House Party' there is a vast amount of movement and vocal performing on stage, alongside a certain amount of set changes. So I thought it would be better if we were to add more lighting. To present the atmosphere of all the different scene, as their from different Shakepsearean comedies it would be better to show how different and unique they are from one another. Therefore I would like to create a lighting cue list that offers different amounts of lights to project the different worlds with different characters, to make each scene stand out to keep the audiences eyes forcused on the production.
After a short break we returned to start rehearsing what would be an esential part of our production, the dance routine. Our teachers vision was to open with a traditional Shakespearean prologue, then to give a montage to show all the characters, and present them as friends as well as keeping the importance that this project/production is set in the modern day times, with the theme of a house party. So the idea was to open with a Puck speech from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' then have a dance routine and begin the performance's by opening with the actor's scene from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.
Our first session in rehearsing the routine was difficult yet interesting. Difficult in the way of us having to give dance movement we hadn't come accross before, so it was more difficult to perform first time. But that's, what I thought, made it interesting because we were learning new techniques in performing strategies for this assignment. Plus it would also make the performance more fun, not only for us actors but for the audience. Another contributing port of learning the dance routine was having to present our character through the dance. The purpose of this was to give an introduction to the actors and for us to present our characterisation to the audience. So because my character 'Valentine' is madly in love throughout my scene, I had to perform the dance routine showing how dreamy my character is constantly thinking about 'Silvia' (the woman he loves). To begin with I thought it was making the routine more difficult, as we'd have to focus on the dance movement and focus on presenting our characterisation. But with time to rehearse I think we might be able to give a decent dance routine to open the production.
As the lesson came to an end, my input was presenting my ideas for the lighting cues in the production. Along with aiming to focus in making the dance routine more convincing and entertaining for the main performance. More news on the production process as it develops, for our production 'Shakespeare's House Party' showing on the 5th and 6th March.
The ideas I have for the production is to give various amounts of different lighting, with different colours to present the mood and atmosphere. In our 'Scaramouche Jones' production, the lighting didn't have much to go on with, as there was a single positioning of the lights as well as adding slightly different colours to change the mood. There wasn't much reliablity with lighting in that production as it was more of a matter of the actors performing with vocal presentation and very little stage changes. Whereas is our uncoming production 'Shakespeare's House Party' there is a vast amount of movement and vocal performing on stage, alongside a certain amount of set changes. So I thought it would be better if we were to add more lighting. To present the atmosphere of all the different scene, as their from different Shakepsearean comedies it would be better to show how different and unique they are from one another. Therefore I would like to create a lighting cue list that offers different amounts of lights to project the different worlds with different characters, to make each scene stand out to keep the audiences eyes forcused on the production.
After a short break we returned to start rehearsing what would be an esential part of our production, the dance routine. Our teachers vision was to open with a traditional Shakespearean prologue, then to give a montage to show all the characters, and present them as friends as well as keeping the importance that this project/production is set in the modern day times, with the theme of a house party. So the idea was to open with a Puck speech from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' then have a dance routine and begin the performance's by opening with the actor's scene from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.
Our first session in rehearsing the routine was difficult yet interesting. Difficult in the way of us having to give dance movement we hadn't come accross before, so it was more difficult to perform first time. But that's, what I thought, made it interesting because we were learning new techniques in performing strategies for this assignment. Plus it would also make the performance more fun, not only for us actors but for the audience. Another contributing port of learning the dance routine was having to present our character through the dance. The purpose of this was to give an introduction to the actors and for us to present our characterisation to the audience. So because my character 'Valentine' is madly in love throughout my scene, I had to perform the dance routine showing how dreamy my character is constantly thinking about 'Silvia' (the woman he loves). To begin with I thought it was making the routine more difficult, as we'd have to focus on the dance movement and focus on presenting our characterisation. But with time to rehearse I think we might be able to give a decent dance routine to open the production.
As the lesson came to an end, my input was presenting my ideas for the lighting cues in the production. Along with aiming to focus in making the dance routine more convincing and entertaining for the main performance. More news on the production process as it develops, for our production 'Shakespeare's House Party' showing on the 5th and 6th March.
Good work again Frank. You are detailed in your blogs and becoming more and more analytical of your work, well done.
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