Workshop (2) - "Opening Sequence"

In this lesson we made a start on the first number: "Opening Sequence". Lewis and I had both come up with very different ideas for this number, so we both presented our ideas to the class. Below are the ideas that Lewis came up with:

• spoken word poetry - almost like the inspirational rhyming speech videos
• "dancing on my own" instrumental playing underneath
• different characters (newspaper editor / businessman / actress / lover)
• use cannon for certain lines - "time to fly"

Ollie suggested that we could keep these characters throughout the entire performance - this could be how we link all of the songs (if we decide to link them or not). We thought that "The River Won't Flow" could be about the newspaper boy, "The World Was Dancing" could be the lover and "The Stars and the Moon" could be the performer's audition. We then thought that the first and the last song could be about everyone, but we could have every other song based on / about one character (as there are five of us and five songs, excluding the opening and the last song).

We decided that I would be the performer, James would be the lover, Ollie would be the businessman and Rob would be a newspaper editor. We then had to come up with a character for Lewis. We didn't want anything to do with writing or movement, so we thought he could be a taxi driver. We then thought that Lewis could pick up the other characters at different and important parts of their life (e.g. the lover on the way to a date where he would propose, or my character on the way to an audition).

Lewis then split up the lines to where he wanted. We all read through this a few times to ensure we knew what we were doing and that our timing was okay. We then thought that Rob could play the song on piano and he could be a musician instead. I then suggested that he could be a song-writer and could be trying to figure out the song in the beginning. This would have been quite nice, but it would have meant that Rob wouldn't be doing much movement or anything, so we kept to the original idea of him being a newspaper editor. When reading through the script, I then quietly sang the first few lines of the "Opening Sequence" to the instrumental of "dancing on my own". This actually worked with the song really well. I then just improvised some riffs and different "ooh's" over the music. We then thought that my character could be holding a script and singing these random lines as if she is trying to learn her piece for an audition and is just practising.

Next lesson we shall hopefully get this number up on its feet.