Thursday 24 September 2015

Little Shop of Horrors - rehearsals week 3 (11th - 15th May)


The main focus on the show for rehearsals this week were making sure the setting and blocking of scenes and dialogue was complete, allowing us to then go away, annotate our scripts for direction and character analysis purposes, and start learning lines - having the direction of scenes set.
Going through dialogue for both our director and us to direct has really been a very beneficial factor for all of us for many various reasons like; enhancing our understanding of our characters and the story as whole; therefore allowing us to really get more into role of our characters; being able to explore the subtext and objectives of dialogue within scenes all towards our characterisation and creating these individual characters; being able to notice and create that contrast and similarities between different characters; and generally seeing the show and story as a whole coming together. For me, personally, these various different reasons are certainly why I've found the setting and blocking of dialogue and scenes, and working with my fellow cast members as well as our directors, has been a strongly beneficial factor of the rehearsal process.

Also this week, we worked on producing the finale number to the show, which is held and carried strongly by vocals and vocal harmonies - providing an overall powerful finish to the show. What's good about the way we have done this number is that having hardly any sort of movement throughout the number, puts emphasis on the vocal arrangement and also the lyrics and story we, as the cast, are telling, and allows to really perform the number through facial expressions, body language and charisma.  Before the number, Seymour sacrifices himself to the plant in order to try and kill it from the inside. We also are left with the information of a plan to form Audrey IIs all over the world for business and attraction purposes, only then are we relieved that this was in fact Audrey II's plan all along - world conquer. Because of this, throughout the finale number, we inform and warn the audience "don't feed the plants!" as if this was reality, which, in my opinion, is a very effective way of relating to and directly addressing the audience, leaving them feeling engaged and a part of the story.
When singing through the song and creating a sort of vocal arrangement for the number, I was able to pick out harmony lines in certain bits of the song to add that extra flare and wow-factor - especially on the end note, where I sing a note of a higher harmony line that goes well with the melody of the final note, adding slightly more of an enhancement to this big, powerful finale note of the whole show.
A target that I am giving myself for when we next visit this number is to make sure that my joint contribution to the vocal arrangement throughout this song is produced confidentially and to make sure the levels of performance and energy is still kept high, and not letting the fact of there being hardly any sort of movement or choreography bring them levels down.




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