Everybody's got the right to some (beat) sunshine

Today went very well - we rehearsed like crazy from 1pm to 7:15pm (you see why they call it the intensive workshop?) and we improved a lot.

We also didn't get the customary you-all-suck-and-you-haven't-even-learned-your-lines speech from the director, which was VERY nice *grin*. I think this was partly because most of us had actually put a lot of effort into learning the material, and also the director was being very sensitive to the fact that most of us were either also handling a full-time job, or were new to musical theatre, or both. Nice!

The performance went very well, with no really bad flubs, and it just flashed by! Sometimes a performance feels like it's dragging and at the end you think "I thought that would never end!" but in this case the thought was "What? Is it over already? What a shame!".

Both Denise Mulholland (as drama teacher and director) and Edward Mercieca (as organiser) had said to us that the important thing for our workshop was not that we pull off the performance (which was more of a showcase work-in-progress), but rather that we come away able to say "I learned something this week".

So here's some of the things I learned, many of them are tips and tricks that Denise passed on to us:

Character

• Staying in character all the way through a performance is very hard but incredibly effective.
• Even in an ensemble/chorus, each person should have a distinct character, and this makes things interesting for the audience.
• To help with staying in character, find a couple of defining adjectives for your character, and a transitive verb for each scene/section, with the object of the transitive verb being the person/object that is the focus of the scene; then keep these words constantly in mind as you perform.
• A good tool to have is an actions thesaurus, because it provides alternatives to what you may have thought of regarding your character, and some of these might be what you were looking for.
• Basing a character on a stereotype is dangerous, because once you go too far, your character is no longer believable.
• When playing an animal character, it is better to play a believable human with the animal's qualities than to play an un-believable animal.
• If what you think about a character is at odds with your script, then you're wrong!
• Some ways to build a character: remember a time when you felt the emotions your character feels; read up on the character you are playing (works well if you're playing a historical figure); think about your character's desires and fears; think about your character's physicality, and use rehearsal time to explore different ways of moving/blocking; think about your character's relationship with other characters.

Stagecraft

• If you have a difficult pick-up during a song and can't be facing where you can see the musical director, find an excuse to casually turn to face her so that you can get help on it, then casually turn back to where you need to face.
• In a theatre-in-the-round, if you are blocked to be facing across the space to the far side and therefore constantly give your back to the audience along one side, a good way to cheat is present your side to the audience rather than your back, and find reasons to occasionally face them, e.g. look at an actor behind you, or turn as if are looking around for someone or something.
• When getting off a stage in total blackout with a lot of other people, keep a hand on the person in front of you to guide you.

Performing Musical Theatre

• Take the time to run through all the scene changes in sequence so that you can change blocking if necessary to facilitate the logistics of getting around to different entrances/exits, to prepare props in the appropriate places, and to decide who is going to set and strike them.
• In rehearsal, if you make a mistake, try to improvise around it - don't ask for a line, apologise or otherwise stop the run unless you really have to.
• In musical theatre, you have so much to deal with simultaneously (blocking, singing, dancing, acting, keeping track of other actors, etc) that it's important to know your lines very well so that you can focus more on performing rather than on also trying to remember what comes next.
• A good actor can pick up over another person's missed cue so smoothly that even the rest of the cast doesn't notice.
• A help for such situations is to memorise several lines before your cue rather than just the one preceeding, so that if your cue is missed you are already prepared to go into your line.
• One of the functions of a Greek chorus is to represent the audience's thoughts (as a sort of "voice of reason"), and this helps to make unsympathetic subject matter more accessible to the people watching.
• Switching between learning with live accompaniment to performing with a backing track (or vice versa) is hard because there will invariably be differences in melody, rhythm and tempi - trust the musical director and follow her!
• Stephen Sondheim is a genius (OK, I knew that one already!)

Comments

[Claire]

What a detailed list! Very informative, it's like a summary of all the things we learnt this week; great for referencing, hehe :)
And yeees, Sondheim IS a genius, but thank God for Rosetta guiding us in Another National Anthem.. I thoroughly disliked that backing track!
Can't wait to work together again, hehehe :) (arghhh I cannot get Another National Anthem out of my head!)

[MaltaGirl]

And it didn't mean a nickel... ;-)