Year 1 Half Term 5 - Week 7

05/06/23 - ITS SHOW WEEK!! 

And here commences the start of our final show week - yes we are doing The Last Resort next week but that is a group show with only one date. 

Today cast 1 was using the theatre to rehearse as their show is first, while this was happening I spent today making sure everyone had costumes ready for tomorrow. To do this I started writing a list of who definitely has costumes and who still needs things finding/buying. The one thing my production group realised was Amy would not have enough time to get changed for the play scene so we scrapped that idea and decided we would focus more on making her look different with props. Once we had checked this plan over with Kelly me and Latoya went off and started making jewelry out of paper, Latoya made the crowns while I made the paper link necklaces. 

After this I went and checked that my costume fit me, luckily it did as this was something I was quite worried about. I think this is thing I dislike most about being an actress and being on an acting course is unfortunately there's not a lot of options for plus size people as it is more expensive and stressful to get the costumes. Once I knew my dress fit me I started looking for a jacket to buy for older Amy March.

06/06/23 - Cast 1 - Watching the show to get some more ideas for my role.

It's the first show!

The day started off with tech runs so no one was allowed in the theatre while everything was getting sorted. Because of this each cast went away and rehearsed what we could. 

I rehearsed my scenes with Henry as he is Laurie in my cast and Millie was kind enough to watch so she could give me notes on how to improve the scenes. The scenes we worked on were the ones where Laurie and Amy are at a ball and having a flirtatious fight and the one where Laurie goes back for Amy after Beth dies to confess his feelings. 

We started off with the ball scene. This scene starts off with Laurie and Amy being quite flirty with one another until Laurie gets sick of who Amy has turned into - what I mean by this is that Amy has been away with Aunt March and has learnt French and become very unlike herself, she first uses this thinking it will impress Laurie but soon realises it doesn't and leaves. This scene is important because it shows the audience that Laurie likes Amy the way she was even if she was bratty. The impression I get from this is that Laurie likes how Amy was always very honest. I struggled with this scene as it's something I'm not used to playing so Millie gave me some pointers, she helped me by saying that using my prop more will make it look better. This is because Amy has a fan in this scene so waving it around while she is speaking French or flaunting the fact that she is promised to Mr Vaughn shows that she is trying to be extra. Then when she realises he is unimpressed by this she will stop using her fan to show the difference. This helped me loads because I had something to show the difference between my feelings.

The next scene we did is definitely the scene I struggled with most though. This is because I'm really not a very touchy feely person. Of course I needed to get over that for this scene but it was definitely difficult. Amy and Laurie hug a lot in this scene and it was very awkward at first as we didn't even know how we were supposed to hug to make it look realistic. I can't lie it definitely made us all laugh and made rehearsals more fun than we thought. Once I had got passed my issues with not being a higher the scene definitely started to get better, Millie was a great help when giving me notes because she made me re-do the scene if she could tell I wasn't really feeling it. I liked this because it meant when we were happy with it, it was a really rewarding feeling because it was definitely the best we could do. 

Once I had finished rehearsing I watched cast 1 and it was incredible, I got so many notes and ideas on how to make my Amy March better and just seeing my friends on stage was great. 

07/06/23 - Cast 2 - Ballroom Extra.

Today I was part of the ensemble... it started off a little rocky but when it came to the show it went great. 

When we first went onto the stage for the dress rehearsal I was the only girl in the ensemble dancing. This was worrying because there was meant to be 2 more girls there and no one knew who it was meant to be and why they weren't there. As soon as we were off stage me and the people in the ensemble went straight to the list of people who were meant to be dancing and started figuring out what happened. The main issue we had was there wasn't enough costumes for people in the ensemble. Because of this costume got together and started figuring out who could fit into the spare dresses and if they were free to be in the dance scene. Luckily Charley was free and fit into the spare dress and we had enough people for the dance! 

Then it was the show, this was much less nerve wracking because we knew we had enough people for the dance and we were prepared. There was a tiny little mishap which was that Jamie accidentally rotated the wrong way and ended up dancing with me instead of Charley, this was fine though because Morgan realised quickly and it didn't create loads of confusion and the dance still carried on smoothly.

08/06/23 - AND WHAT WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR... SHOW DAYY!!

TODAY IS THE DAY GUYS!

The day I have been anxiously waiting for all week is here and I am so excited. Don't get me wrong I am very nervous but this is my first main role so I'm ready. We started the day off with a dress rehearsal. This was interesting to say the least, there was some mistakes and some costume faults but we got there in the end. After the dress rehearsal I was definitely feeling a lot better about the show though. Some people were more nervous but I was ready to get out there and smash it. I did mess up in the dress rehearsal but we were able to move on from it so I knew it was something we could figure out before the play. The main thing we worked on was the play scene. This is because the play scene is main thing that will get the laughs from people so we really wanted it to be good. I won't lie I wanted to improv the scene but my cast mates were not happy with that idea so we decided to rehearse it. I wanted to improvise it because I wanted it to be real and flow a bit more but I also understood why my cast mates would not like that so I would rather them feel comfortable once we were happy with it, it was time to get ready...

While we were getting sorted Kelly came up to me and told me the jacket I had bought for older Amy would not work. This was stressful because I was worried I wasn't going to look any different but Kelly told me not to worry because she had lots of shawls I could pick from to wear over my shoulders. This made me feel better and I was ready to go on stage.

OMG it's time!! 

The show was amazing, it didn't go without it's faults but they made the play what it was. It started off strong, I improvised slightly in the play scene but still made sure things were similar so the others wouldn't get confused as I didn't want to ruin it for them and we got so many laughs! it was an amazing feeling. Towards the end of Act 1 some things got mixed up and I was pushed on stage as people thought I was meant to be on, I wasn't, but it was okay because I just made sure I stayed in character and said something that made sense so I could leave the stage and Millie and Henry were able to pull it back around. It was no one's fault and it actually filled in a very awkward gap so it kind of worked out for the best and it showed me that I can improvise under pressure. The second half also had a few mishaps but nothing we couldn't manage it was truly the best experience ever I came off stage very happy with the result and very proud of myself which is the first time I've been able to congratulate myself instead of being to hard on myself which shows me that I've finally started to believe in myself which is the best thing that could come out of this show for me. 

"Father!" 

"I wish I was at Sallies." 

"A letter from Father!"

"Rodrigo, Rodrigo, Save me!"