first of all congrats to Lucia stef and elissa for getting the roles in the musical. it is awesome to work in such close promximity with such talented girlies:)

for the first time in a while i am feeling quietly confident about our ensemble progress. I feel as if we are finally getting things together. I am particulaly proud of our hospital scene, when we get our symbolisim going i think that we could get a really good response from the audience.

One of my concerns atm is getting the use of our props underway. I feel as though if we dont start familiarising ourselves with them constantly, our performance could be less confident and lacking in pace and continuim. So hopefully we can get that underway really soon.

I am really looking forward to hearing miss craigs response on our coverup scene. It will be really helpful to get another drama teachers perspective on it, and hopefully if it turns out we are verging to far away from the structure, miss craig will possibly give us a few pointers to put us on the right track.

Thanks to cash for the email about the nuclear power article..Just skimming through i thought we could use a few legitimate quotes and facts opinions etc to strengthen our final scene.

Most likely we will have to change tuesdays rehearsal but we will talk about that in tomorrows class!
Keep it us ya’ll
Jess

We’ve been rehearsing heaps lately and it’s been awesome - I’m not freaking out as much about how much we have to do because lately we’ve been progressing really well and getting scenes done without any problems.  I’m really surprised that our early morning 7.30am rehearsals have been working, it seems as though we get more creative ideas when we’re all half asleep :P.

Mr Cash came up with a pretty cool idea today for our hospital scene- we had the basis of the scene, but he thought of a sweet way to include symbolism with some small props and I think this could really enhance our scene and give it some more depth.  We’re aiming for an ‘ooo ahhh’ reaction from the audience haha.

As for our focus (or lack of!!) we really need to improve! haha. It seems as though we have a few lines here and there that just trigger off bursts of laughter.  We already got over the ‘Cherdovyev’ line that Lucia says, so hopefully we can put the rest of these ‘funny’ lines followed by laughter to the side, soon! Once we’ve perfected all of scene 1 and got the timing of our actions and pace of the drama a little tighter, I think we can then really focus on our movement, facial expressions and gestures to enhance our characters of the power plant workers a little more. Working on these things can really help to give our ensemble that pinch of energy that will hopefully make it awesome to watch and especially to perform!

So girlies,  let’s keep scripting, thinking of new ideas, rehearsing a whole lot and having awesome fun :)  Great work girls for the week.

-Elissa

Well, last week we really got a big nudge of inspiration. I must admit, we haven’t been as resourceful with our time as we should. But now, we’ve taken a big step of improvement. Our current ideas are booming and I just love what we’ve come up with for our cover-up scene. I really believe the symbolism in it shines and is highly entertaining.

We have three rehearsals coming up this week; two after school and one before school, so I think we have sufficient time to get another big nudge in the right direction. I’m really looking forward to another creative week of developing our ensemble. However, in the back of our minds, we know THE PRESSURES ON! AHHHHHH!

- vesna

Aghhh i just have so many thoughts about ensemble now!! I’m sure you all got my little freak out email about how we really need to get cracking? Sorry lol..just a tad stressed about the fact that in five weeks right now we will probably be on the mount stage performing!!Eeek huh?!

Any who we had to cancel todays avo rehearsal which was a bummer..but these things happen and it only makes us all the more determined to make up for missed time.
For example… tomorrow morning we have a rehearsal at 7.30(i haven’t been anywhere that early for ages unless i was still out from the night before jks lol) Mornings we decided were fab for scripting as we are all a little slow.

Myself, ves n lu discovered that one of our teachers will be absent from class on thurs before our avo rehearsal so as this is a free period now(no we are not just skipping class for drama!) we will do as much as we can before stef and lu finish class and join us for another hr & 1/2.

Vesna also briefly mentioned an awesome idea for coverups to a few of us other than what we had already. The symbolism in her idea is really clear but creative in that it is a common “saying” as such(can’t say much more or it will give it away!)

just an idea…as we need a fair bit of script done maybe we should work on that (dedicate more time to getting the piece down pat?) n get everyone to go home in own time and familiarise themselves with the script so that when we have “acting time” to put it together it will be pretty tight.. I dunno just a suggestion. Or we allocate certain people to work on bits of the script here and there as we go? Let me know what you guys reckon..

So see you all bright and early tomorrow morning!
Jess-

As Jess said previously, we had a full day rehearsal at Stefania’s house today as we really needed it!  We got some really good ideas going.  Having such thorough research behind us has really helped as we no longer need to stop during impro and read over our notes to try and find answers - it’s all there for us and we don’t have to waste time looking for the details of the event anymore.

Today we came up with some really good synchronisation of our movements.  All moving in unison can create a really powerful and interesting scene and we’ve used this a few times throughout our ensemble so far.  It will take a lot of rehearsing to get these movements absolutely perfect but I know we can do it !

 I’m loving our Scene 1 c) and the completely different perspective we took on it. I think this could really work and the symbolism we’re employing could be oh so awesome and hopefully gets the audience thinking a little deeper.

 Anyway I’m looking forward to this weeks rehearsals back at school , great work today handful (apart from the little distraction of holiday events and boys that we HAD to talk about haha).

 -Elissa.

Today the handful congregated at Stefs for another scripting, blocking, impro session. We got a fair bit down pat, and came up with a cover-up scene with lots of symbolism in total Avila style.lol. Ideas were coming from all directions and once we started and controlled our focus(”chedovyev!” lol), everything went swimmingly.

We ended up being at stefs for about five hrs, we didn’t get as much done as we would have liked, but the scenes that we did complete we were fairly happy with. Another two rehearsals this week (i think tuesday after school and friday morning?) will hopefully allow us to progress much further.

Another thing we talked about was whether or not to have any props or actual set. Our idea was that by doing our ensemble this way, we would be incorporating another non-naturalistic style of theatre called Poor Theatre. If we were to use this in our ensemble it is true it would be difficult but on the other hand we believe it would strengthen our acting and the piece itself. Needless to say we have the idea so far that we will use a singular prop that will carry immense symbolism and also so we can incorporate transformation of object.

Looking forward to the special lesson with Cashy first drama class back.
Jess

this is the 2nd time iv had to write this blog cos of my comp deleting it or the web site doing something i dunno but anyway…cranky!
so after a nice break in qld soakin up the sun im thinking i will have to chain myself to the comp to make up for all the typing the rest of the handful have done..
just reflecting on the end of term progress;
We were all feeling really confident at the end of term-rehearsing in every drama class we had and all 2 2hr rehearsals outside of school time a week. These were really helpful as we really got into the development of the piece and started to own it more, rather than it just being a task sheet. Scripting was done, and scenes were blocked and our ensemble began to get really exciting. We even came in at 7.30 one morning to script for an hr!
We found we were having some trouble with the russian accent so Cash kindly produced a cd for each of us that would hopefully improve our use of the expressive skill, voice.
Now the holidays…Not much has happened in the way of our ensemble which is a bit of a worry (showtime is in 5 weeks) but going by our previous fast development record, we shouldn’t have much to worry about. Looking forward to the full day rehearsal at stefs and hpeofully we can fit in another one before the holidays end. Keep at it girlies
Jess

I have to strongly agree with Looch’s point that we need a holiday rehearsal sooon.. just looked in school diary and discovered once we’re back at school we have only 5 weeks until the ensemble night.. if we have a holiday rehearsal it would benefit us soooo much!

i’ve typed the script of what we have so far so next time we meet i can give it to you all and we can learn lines and get everything tight.

looking forward to seeing you all again

the pinky, stefania

p.s HAPPY EASTEERR  hope the easter bunny gives u looots of chocies!