Rehearsal Blog

Weeks Four & Five: 12 & 19 June 2008

I have put the final two weeks together because our objective for both has been to pull everything together and gear up for performance.  Week Four was spent beginning to make that leap: getting away from relying on the scripts, getting the scene ‘on its feet’, building on the exercises from previous weeks. After a spot of ‘Dog and Bone’, our warm-up which raised everyone’s energy, we split into our Rosmersholm and The Crucible groups. We had a really focused session where we moved around every group, watching and feeding back on their work, giving them direction.  What we realised this week was that the excerpts we had chosen were actually quite long! We wanted to give the students ownership of their pieces, and for them to feel comfortable with the amount they had to learn. So we asked them to spend some time before the next session working out what part of the excerpt they found most exciting and what was realistic for them to learn, and either shortening, or cutting their excerpt.  This will make for an interesting variety of pieces for the final showing.

Week Five was actually the most exciting session yet. We began with a vocal and physical warm up, involving some ‘Funky Chicken’ (shaking arms and legs and counting down from 8, 6, 4, 2 then 1!) and some tongue-twisters. We then split into our two groups and began by setting up a performance area. Each group then showed us their work so far. There was a real sense of progression in all groups from the previous week. Just about everyone had learnt their lines and had really been working hard on putting detail into their scenes. The students were really beginning to use the space and to find interesting ways of exploring their character. After everyone had shown their work, the rest of the audience gave positive and constructive feedback, identifying bits that were effective and bits that still needed work. Each group then went off to put into practice the notes they had just been given, and at the end of the session, everyone showed their work again. It was astonishing how much they all moved forward from the beginning of the session. It was really exciting to see a tangible improvement from everyone, not only within the scenes themselves: individual performances had become more confident and assured, and we could see some really bold choices being made.

A great point to be at a week before the showings at the Almeida, I feel really confident about what they have achieved so far and positive that their hard work will produce some brilliant results next week.

Kate Budgen Residency Co-director.