Musical Theatre (15) - "Rent"

In yesterday's lesson we sang through "Rent" and then blocked it. We had sung this before but needed to go over the vocals to improve the harmonies and vocal energy throughout.

Vocal energy:
We knew that the vocal energy would improve when we added movement, but we needed to get this energy without the movement to ensure that we are using our diaphragms to avoid strains. If you do not put enough energy in to it then you are probably not using your diaphragm and instead are singing from your throat. However, this could also be from a lack of training from the majority of the class. Therefore, in the vocal warm-up I ensured that I did some breathing exercises to engage the diaphragm, inter-costal muscles and pelvic floor.

Harmonies and solos:

When singing along to the actual track, our vocals sounded fine, however, with the backing track some of our timings were off. Cameron struggled with knowing when to come in and I lost my timing in places on my solo part. However, after singing through the piece a couple of times with the backing track, we managed to improve our timing. As I am doing a version of "Rent" at the moment outside of school, I already knew and was confident with the harmonies for the ensemble verses of the song. Below is the first verse that everybody sings:

• "How do you leave the past behind when it keeps finding ways to get to your heart?"   -   this is sung in unison by the entire cast
• "It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out till you're torn apart, rent!"   -  boys continue with the melody. girls sing a harmony a third above. everyone shouts "rent" in unison.
• "How can you connect in an age where strangers, landlords, lovers, your own blood cells betray"   -   everyone in unison.
• "What binds the fabric together when the raging, shifting winds of change keep ripping away?"   -   boys on melody. Taylor and Alice sing the third above harmony. I sing the fifth above harmony.

The harmonies still need work as some people get distracted by the harmonies going on and so don't sing the melody. Therefore, on Tuesday we shall all stay behind after school to go through the harmonies together.

Movement:
We haven't completely staged the whole piece yet, but we wanted to keep it fairly naturalistic. It isn't a dance number, but is more of an angry piece with blocking. Therefore Cameron and Henri start centre and just do what comes naturally. Whenever anyone is supposed to be on the phone (i.e. me when I am on the phone to Joanne, and Benny when he is on the phone to Allison) we stand stage left on the L-shaped steel decking. We have movement for the dance-break though. Mr McKay (who did the production of "Rent" last year with me - he played Angel) decided that he would use similar choreography to last year. Instead of running sideways, Dan got Henri and Cameron to run forwards and back. However, Tyler, Warren and I run sideways behind them. We all do four runs and four hops on both legs, a circular lunge (Cameron and Henri go one way, and the rest of us go the other), two punches and a full turn jump. The running represents their anger and shows that their anger is too intense to control. The circular lunge creates a sense of unity between the ensemble as well as a sense of tension. The punches and jump also shows their frustration and anger.

Summary:
All we have left to do for this piece is to go through the harmonies and polish the movement.