Five weeks down! In just five weeks our talented cast will perform for their audience. That meant that this week it was time to buckle down and begin to shape the initial scenes of the show. Using the characters whom the cast had created for themselves over the past four weeks, the cast fine tuned the narrative which the performance would take and what roles they would all play in the events to come.
We started this week with some ensemble work. Learning to move as a group. Strong teamwork is the basis for successful devising, so we wanted to give the cast a chance to link together as a whole in order to tackle the challenges we gave them as this week's rehearsal kicked off. The aim of the game this week was simple, but required lots of concentration from everyone in order to work. Together the group must start and stop walking. Usually it takes a few practices but once the ball is rolling the cast find that it is easy to synchronise the stopping and starting. Everyone tried hard to focus on the others in the group and were eventually able to make it to the point where they too, stopped and started at the same time.
Once the games were done the cast discussed the finer details of the narrative. As a group they performed a quick speed run of the play, focusing on the bigger events in each scene so that we could map out what happened where and what impact this would have on the larger narrative, as well as each individual character.
Once that was done we moved onto scene one. This involved two different elements of theatre. The first half of the scene involves a physical theatre sequence, while the second introduces dialogue into the play. Using the script, which had been devised for the scene, the cast explored the latter half of the scene. In this scene we establish the different personalities of the characters through dialogue and body language, as well as set into motion events that will have repercussions later on.
The story tells of several teenagers in Exeter during World War II, who oneday, for varying reasons, find themselves in the ruins of St Mary's church. Events unfold and suddenly the group find themselves stranded in the church during an air raid. While they are all trapped in the church, the individuals begin to bond and eventually the ruins become a meeting ground for them to all go to every day.
Once the cast had finished work on the scripted section of the scene it was time to return to the start and look at the initial physical theatre sequence. The choice of this style for the introduction was to incorporate both the sense of a regular day and that of being alive during a time of war, as things go from normal to life-threatening in mere moments.The sequence follows each characters 'journey' through the day and what their characters do when bombs aren't falling. Enough on that, however, we don't want to spoil the show by revealing everything!
Finally, with what time we had left in the rehearsal, the cast improvised 'snippets from St Mary's,' as Jake liked to call it. These snippets involved two or three characters interacting with each other on a normal night in the St Mary's church meeting place. All the stimulus the cast were given was that they had to interact with each other and not leave their designated area of the church. This activity lead to some interesting scenes, however. For instance, a group who were sat atop the broken stairs discussed the stars and one character's obsession with watching the bombs drop. Another one featured another character revealing that his reasons for not joining the army, while a third involved one of the more abrasive members of the friendship group revealing personal information about himself which he had previously kept hidden. Again, it was incredible to see what the cast created through improvisation and what can be nicely transferred into the established narrative to make it even bigger and better.
Again, we are incredibly impressed with all of the hard effort the cast are putting in. The performance is shaping up to look absolutely brilliant and we can't wait to see it grow even more next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment