Year 1 Half term 5 - Week 4

9/05/23 - Little women rehearsals, Scene 1.

Today we started off Little Women rehearsals.

Today we played change, this is an improvisation game, you give the people in a scene a scenario and when someone shouts change you have to change what you are saying or doing to move the scene forward.

After this we did Scene 1 which is the start of the play and introduces all of the sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. We first started with going through the lines in our casts and then blocking the scene. During this scene Amy is sulking about needing to decorate their Christmas tree and loathing about the fact that they are too poor to have presents. This scene important because it shows straight away that Amy is the youngest and acts like it too. She is very child like and self absorbed in the first half of the play.

I enjoyed todays lesson because its the start of learning the script after finding out our parts and already I can see the play start to come together and I'm very excited and grateful to be able to perform this. 

However I did find that I struggle to get into Amy's head and fully be her as a character as I'm still not fully in the moment, I know once I'm off script I will be able to work more on my emotions so my goal for this weeks rehearsals is to get off script as much as I can. 

10/05/23 - Little Women rehearsals, scenes 2,3 and 4.

Today we started off the lesson with Stand up, Sit down, Lay down. This is a warm up game where 3 people perform a scene and each person is either sat down, stood up or laid down. Throughout the scene you can change what you were doing and the other people need to adjust so in the scene someone is always sat, stood or laid down. For example if you were laid down and stood up the person who was stood up would now have to either sit or lay down and it carries on until the scene is over. 

After this we carried on rehearsals. Today we did scene 2,3 and 4.

Scene 2 is the play scene. I really enjoyed doing this scene because its one of my favourites. Amy is dramatic and over acting on stage and then kicks someone out of her chair so she doesn't have to pretend faint onto the ground. This is important to me because it shows Amy would rather take someone's chair then possibly hurt herself. 

Scene 3 is the scene where Jo convinces the sisters to give their Christmas food to The Hummel's (a poor family in the play). This scene is funny to me because Amy caves in and says yes to giving the food to The Hummel's but takes the popovers to carry so she can eat as many as possible on the way the their. This also shows that Amy is quite selfish because you can tell all the sisters are reluctant to give up their food but still do and although Amy does agree she will still eat the food knowing it's going to someone who needs it more.

Scene 4 is the scene where Jo burns Meg's hair off. I also really enjoy this scene because although Amy is finding it quite funny that Jo has messed up she helps Meg because she knows how upset she was about her hair. This is important because to me it shows that Amy still cares for others. However it is changed quite quickly when she asks Meg to make sure Jo doesn't disgrace their family.

During todays rehearsal I learnt that when it comes to Amy's sisters she will be there for them but will still make it about herself. It really shows that she is only a kid and is worried about the rules of that time. 

11/05/23 - Going from scene 1 - 4 fully, learning scene 5 and 6 with the lads.

This morning Kelly only needed the girls so we didn't do a warm up. 

Straight away we started from the beginning of the play and went through to scene 4. Doing this was really useful because its good to go through it and see if the blocking of each scene will fit right and we can smoothly transition between each one. 

We then did scene 6 which is the scene where Laurie is invited by Jo to join their ladies club. This club is where the girls can be whoever they want (they dress up as men) and the fact that Jo is asking if an actual boy can join is a shock. When the girls say yes Laurie jumps out to reveal he was there the whole time. 

After lunch we then went back to scene 5 which is the ball scene. Amy isn't originally in this scene but Kelly decided she would like Marmee, Beth and Amy to be at the side of the scene showing that Amy is at home dancing with Beth because Beth is trying to cheer her up as she's unhappy that she couldn't go to the actual ball. 

For the other casts i am an extra dancing in the background of the ball, so I learnt where I will be standing in there version.

Today I learnt the first scenes of Act 1.