We began this lesson by doing the "Tune Ups" and "Rent" on the stage. The purpose of this was to work on our staging and our projection. The staging went rather well. We are having an L-shaped bit of stage decking beginning down stage left, and round the corner of where the apron begins. We have a step in the wings to lead us up on to the decking. This decking is used for whenever we are supposed to be on the stage. Our blocking was fairly good in terms of knowing where the centre was and being positioned appropriately, but the projection was an issue.
Projecting:
For this show we shall not using headset microphones, so we really have to project to ensure that we are heard over the backing tracks. As a little experiment, we all had to stand on the stage from where we think our voices would be heard from singing - those who don't think they can project that well stood further downstage, whilst those he can stood upstage. Our teacher then adjusted us to what he thought. This will affect our blocking for songs to come - for example, songs like "Will I" and "Life Support" will be set further downstage, whilst others like "Take Me or Leave Me" and "Over the Moon" doesn't matter so much where they are set.
As Alice and I have had vocal training, we were asked to do "Take Me or Leave Me" on stage to the rest of the class to show them how to project. Projection requires a lot of support - this means you really have to engage your diaphragm, and not have any tension in the shoulders. Alice was told to project and I was told to sing as if I were in a small practice room. This was to show the difference between projecting and not projecting. After this, Cameron and I sang "Tango: Maureen" on the stage. This proved to him how much he had to sing up next to me. However, I thought this was unfair, and I shall not sing as loud in this number as higher voices naturally carry more than lower male voices. We shall also set our number downstage more as we are dancing at the same time, and so projecting will be harder.
"Life Support":
This number we set on front of the L-Shaped decking, the stage in front of it and the stage blocks leading up to the stage. We are all either sitting, kneeling or standing during this number. This creates a variety of levels suggesting that we are all at different stages with our AIDS. We wanted this number to be set in a small section of the stage to show that we are all a close group that stick together and support each other. During the final section of this song, we all hold hands together to portray unity and support. This was also the first time we sang this song properly together. Mr McKay split us in to groups as this song is done in a round. This song sounded quite good as it was our first time performing it, but we need to work on when the song finishes as we are all supposed to finish together but hold on whatever note we just sang - these last notes are supposed to form a chord if done correctly.
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