RENT - Cast list 28/09/16

Today I found out I got the part of Mark - who is the main character, he takes the audience through the story and narrates. If I'm honest, I initially wasn't too happy about this purely because Roger is a character I have wanted to play for a long, but once I was explained to as to why got Mark and not Roger, I was fine with the decision. I was told that in my audition, I sang from my throat and tried to force a kind of rocky rasp to my voice to try and suit the character of Roger, and my neck and face went very red when singing the high bits, which is very dangerous for my voice. One of the reasons I was given Mark was because it would force me to change the way I sing so that my voice would become healthier. I was also told that I didn't embody the character of Roger very well, in fact I embodied the character of Mark. Mark is closed character and optimistic - he always tries to make the best of bad situation. He is quite an awkward person. I think this role will challenge me a bit because I am not usually optimistic like Mark is, but I can be quite a closed person sometimes - in the sense that I don't usually say that something is wrong when something is on my mind or bothering me. Vocally, I think it wont be too much of a challenge as from what I've heard, Mark's vocal parts aren't too high nor too low, and he has quite an American pop-punk voice, which is what I have been told my natural voice is.


Cast list:
Mark - Cameron Falconar
Roger - Henri Alabi
Mimi - Taylor Medford-Major
Maureen - Alice Abbott
Joanne - Lorna Clark
Benny - Will Dunn
Collins - Lewis Fisher
Angel - Owen Pickett
Various chorus roles - Warren Joe Banfield and Tyler Goodyear

RENT - auditions 28/09/16

Today's lesson was the auditions for Rent - I auditioned for the part of roger. I feel that vocally, I did quite well - I sang from my chest and supported from my diaphragm and I hit all the high notes, and remembered all the lyrics (except one little slip up). I also projected quite well and my articulations and breath control was good. However I feel my movements didn't embody the character of roger very well, as I felt quite awkward when moving and Roger is a character who doesn't really care much anymore because he knows he's going to die soon, so he'd see no point in feeling awkward. I think my eye contact was quite bad too, I very rarely looked at the audience, and looked below where they were a lot and sometimes at the floor which obviously shows a lack in confidence - however I felt confident. To improve, I could done a bit more research on the character to know how he moves and how he should come across.

RENT - practice for auditions for the musical Rent for our musical theatre unit 22/09/16

For the first part of the lesson, we practiced individually on our audition pieces for 'Rent' - I was practicing Roger's song 'One Song Glory'. Whilst practicing, I noticed that I felt quite comfortable playing this character because I, for some unknown reason, feel I can relate to this character (apart from him having AIDS and his girlfriend dying) - maybe it's just simply the fact that we're both musicians. I find the song to be very challenging as it goes very high pitch, and I really feel the strain and stretch within my voice when singing these parts. We then were asked to perform them infront of the class and Mr Webb would give us feedback; my feedback was that I had to make sure I sing from my diaphragm rather than my throat, as sometimes (mostly at the high bits) it switched to my throat - which can be very dangerous to your vocal chords. I took it upon myself to make sure I do adequate vocal exercises before I sing, to warm up my vocal chords and make singing from my diaphragm a lot easier. For the second part of the lesson, we were split up into pairs to work on a duet song together. I was paired with Alice and we were practicing the duet between Roger and Mimi, 'Would you light my candle?'; within this song, there is a lot of sexual tension between the two characters and flirting mainly coming from Mimi, pulling Roger in and out of the flirting. Since me and Alice have been friends for some years, I felt quite comfortable portraying these tensions in the song.

Musical theatre presentations 19/09/16

Over the weekend, we were asked to produce a PowerPoint presentation on musical theatre, in which should cover the general history of musical types/genres, and how the main aspects of musical theatre are incorporated in a musical theatre performance. I think my presentation was good, it covered most of the required information, however the help/task sheet was very vague and I found it hard to interpret exactly what it was asking me to do hence why some topics are missed out. Whilst watching and listening to other presentations, I was able to note down other information that I had not acquired.

Character singing (JCB song) 15/09/16

Today we had to perform the JCB song on our pairs - since were we given hardly much time to work on this with our partners, and the fact I am terrible with learning lyrics (something I definitely need to work on), me and Henri were quite underprepared and as a result of this we both felt very stupid when doing it, however vocally we were both in time with the song and in tune. Once we had done this, we then as a classed rehearsed the song 'Summer lovin'' from the contemporary musical 'Grease' and we lead by Alice who knows the song inside out so we were all relying on her since none of us really knew that well. Once we got the hang of the backing vocals, and the timings of the song we weren't too bad. We were told that the guys are like a gang and very eager to know about the love lives of one another. I played Danny so I had to lead the T-birds in this song, I did this by standing in the front middle of the guys without blocking the view of the others, and I was very comfortable laughing and joking with the guys. Whilst singing, most of us continued to speak in tune, and it sounded fine in my opinion.
For the last part of the lesson, we did facial and vocal warm ups - these are warm up your face muscles and vocal chords that when you come to act and/or sing, you look or sound tight and seized up, and you sound and look very free and natural. You should do these before a performance so that your face is malleable to portray certain emotions and it looks natural rather than it looking like your acting. As part of the vocal exercises, we did a breathing exercise to understand and improve breath control. The exercise is called bowman on horseback - it is where you breath in as much as possible and hold it, then do a movement, then breathe back out forcefully and quickly, making a loud 'boom' sound as you do. I feel I was quite good at this because I have been singing for a number of years so I think my breath control has improved over the years.

Introduction to the musical theatre unit 14/09/16

Today we were told that our first unit will be musical theatre and I was not too happy about this because I am not the biggest fan of doing Musical theatre (however I like watching it) but regardless I shall do my best. As an introduction to musical theatre, we were told to pick a song to sing in front of the class. I was told by Mr Webb that we were doing this to embarrass us all, so I decided to choose an funny song to have some fun with it, so I chose Tribute by Tenacious D - as a result of this, I wasn't that focussed on my singing so it didn't sound as good as it could have been (and I was also suffering from a bit of a lost voice so it didn't sound good anyway). After I performed the song, I was given feedback (at which point I then realised Mr Webb wanted to hear our voices so he could see how we could cope with other songs and musicals, so clearly my song choice was poor). My feedback was that I need to find my range as when the pitch got higher at a point in the song, I really struggled and my voice cracked, however he said at the other points it sound very good.

For the second part of the less, Mr Webb gave us a song to show an example of character singing or 'talking in tune' because it is very easy to do and for people who aren't confident singers, it is an easy 'cheat' way of getting round actually singing. The song was JCB by Nizlopi. We went through the song as a whole a few times to familiarise ourselves with the song, and we were then assigned the task of learning the song and coming up with some sort of basic movement in pairs.  

Metamorphosis piece 12/09/16

Over the past two lessons, we have been split into two groups and our task was to devise a short piece around the stimulus 'metamorphosis' today we performed our piece to the class. Metamorphosis means change or transition. Our piece was looking at someone who is totally sane, has a 'normal' life and a daily routine in which our character is very comfortable with and has been doing for years, and it shows his transition from sane to insane, by little thing changing and/or going wrong in his daily routine (e.g. as part of the routine, he makes himself a cup of tea, and one time he drops and smashes the mug); and then he starts to forget thing in the routine (e.g. as part of the routine, he gets the newspaper from outside and reads a couple of pages, and one time he forgets to get the paper). And each time the routine restarts with him waking up to the sound of the alarm, the same song comes on with a radio 1 sound first; this was to show that everyday is pretty much the same for this guy. Also, every time he wakes up, he takes longer to get out of bed to show he is starting to lose the drive to live his life because it's so boring as he does the same thing every day. The final 'straw' that makes the final push to insanity is when he wakes up, there is no song like the other times, and he walks in to say good morning but he sees his family are dead. This turns him to complete insanity. We then created a movement piece to show his insanity.

When we performed it, it went very badly because the piece itself was bad, however I believe the idea was very good and unique. Me and Tyler (us playing the family) was told we looked very comfortable doing the naturalistic drama during the performance before we die, but looked very uncomfortable and awkward when doing the physical theatre. However Henri (playing the main character) was told he looked very uncomfortable doing the naturalistic drama, however very comfortable doing the physical drama. We also hadn't really thought through properly how we were going to show our idea well, it just looked a bit rushed and bashed together.
This is the daily routine we came up with.

From today's lesson, I realised I need to work on my physical theatre skills, both coming up with ideas for a PT piece and actually performing it. I also realised I need to work on figuring out how to transfer my ideas to a performance in a way that makes the performance look neat and clever.


For the second half of the lesson, Mr Webb lead a focus exercise where we laid down on the floor with music in the background, and we had to focus on what Mr Webb was saying and imagine and try to feel what he was saying (i.e. he would say that our faces, knees and ribs hurt). The point of this exercise was to have some sort of focus and this is what we should do before a performance to focus properly and get into character. During and after the exercise I felt very focussed and ready to perform something.