Performance Solutions

Performance problems and solutions

There were many problems that arose during the weeks that went by for all of us. For me specifically I have had a lot of minor problems that got solved with common sense but for these problems a solution had to be found:

A Trip to Mars

Casting the people for this wasn’t as big of a problem as I thought it’d be. We all democratically voted for who would be doing which part and I agreed with the cast.

The entrance had to be changed. I don’t remember exactly why we changed it but I’m glad we did. Before we all entered from the back and it wasn’t as exciting as when we changed it to entering through the main door. Entering through the main door gave it more of a spaceship door feeling to it, which is what we were aiming for and it’s always more interesting to see people enter through places you wouldn’t expect. So the problem that was solved is the staleness of the piece, I guess.

We rehearsed me crushing the spider and leaving it there but if I did that then the spider would be left on stage or someone would have to go find it in the blackout. Finding a small black object in a dark room is not easy. To solve this all I do is crush it and kick it to the backstage.

A Hopeful Date

It’s not easy to rehearse with people from other pathways. I had many opportunities to rehearse with people from my acting pathway because I’m in class with them all the time. To rehearse with someone from Musical Theatre like Lauren I had to do it always in self-directed study. We had to plan things out more carefully. Many times she also had other things planned and she had rehearsal for her charity gig as well. In the end since we don’t waste time when we’re together we got things done quite well in a few sessions.

The biggest challenge of this piece was to find something to do differently. We didn’t want to do it exactly the same as it was in the movie so we wanted to find something to change. Things we considered:

• Switching roles. After some more thought we knew that the phrase ‘I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her’ had to be used because it was so iconic and it doesn’t work as well the other way around.
• Changing the relationship. The possibility of us already being in a relationship came up. Maybe we were in one for a month? Maybe for over a year? Quickly we realised that the way the script is structured we couldn’t have a relationship. We could change the script – and we did for a few things, but this would require drastic changes in script which we thought would drift too far apart from the movie.
• Changing the setting. This is the one that stuck to us the most. We thought about what kind of setting did we want and my suggestion was that it could be in a restaurant as that’s where people would go on a date or when they need to talk to someone. Could have been a coffee shop but I felt the need for something more sophisticated.

Bond Is Captured

During the last days before the show Ines was sick and we had to find a replacement for her. We did, but we hoped we didn’t have to use her because Ines already knew everything. She came back on the last day before show week and so we had to find a place to rehearse the piece. Unfortunately everyone else was also in a similar situation and needed a place to rehearse, as well as the media students occupying the theatre and sometimes the shed. Thankfully they weren’t in the shed. By sharing a space with second year students who were making props for their T.I.E. we managed to block what we had planned.

Justin was in another group that required him to rehearse quite often because it relied a lot on timing (Shaun of the Dead) so instead of wasting time doing nothing I wrote down what we needed for props, lighting, staging, anything script related and also the show description. I did this for ‘A Hopeful Date’ as well.

Theatre entrances are all with a bump so we had to change from where Justin is brought in. Ines struggled to stroll Justin in that chair even when there weren’t any bumps to go over so with the bumps she would require a lot of help especially since Justin was tied to the chair and couldn’t help. Eventually though we didn’t tie Justin to the chair and just tied him. That made everything so much easier because he could get to the backstage without the chair and we carried the chair separately. When in the backstage he would sit down.

Since Justin is sitting for all of the performance there would only be a certain side of the audience that would see his face. To solve this, since the chair spins we got Ines to spin him as I show the album and walk around him. Me and Ines controlled Justin’s movements.

For more information about the daily problems and solutions visit my blog from Day 73 to Day 95.