Workshop (17) - Epiphany

In this lesson we workshopped pages 78 to 80. This song, "Epiphany", happens after Judge Turpin has stormed out of Todd's tonsorial parlour and Todd has sent Anthony away. Mrs Lovett runs up the stairs to see what has happened to which an angry Todd replies that it is Lovett's fault that he didn't get to kill Turpin, and he concludes that everyone deserves to die.

We are beginning this song stage left on the stage, as this is where Todd's tonsorial parlour is. We had to start it here as this is where the scene before takes place. We shall finish this song in the pie shop ready for the next song, "A Little Priest". Below are the ideas we came up with for this song:

• Use Audience - similar to film. Walk about the audience and use them as the people that Sweeney is singing to. Naturalistic to abstract to naturalistic. Similar to the film. Starting and ending naturalistically, middle part abstract as it is his dream.
• Walk through streets of London R-B-T - Create a similar scene to when Todd walked from the boat to Lovett's shop, by using the rest of the cast on the floor space to use Frantic Assembly's technique of "round-by-through".
• All be Sweeney - Have certain movements to show characters mind set Rest of cast all be Sweeney.

As we were intending on using the rest of the cast for this song, we couldn't really stage what Rob would do for the middle part of this song so we worked on the beginning. We staged this part and then he experimented with what he could do for the middle section. We workshopped what I could whilst Rob does this- the following ideas were what we came up with (though due to not having a large cast present today, we only workshopped ideas one and two):

1. I froze:   Whilst Rob moved about I tried freezing exactly where I was when he jumped out the window (as it were). This meant that I didn't draw any attention away from Rob's actions as well as presenting that Rob is in his own dream (as I, normality, had frozen).We liked the abstract side of Rob jumping out the window as it was symbolic of the audience being taken through the window to his mind and dreams.
2. Pretended he was still in room:   Whilst Rob was down on the floor, I pretended that he was still in the room with me. I did everything in mime and showed where Rob was (was in real life, whilst he is on the floor in his dreams) by my eye line and focus. I changed my focus throughout the song, got up and moved about in places, all the time looking at middle distance, to make it look as if I could see him. We much preferred this to me freezing as it looked quite interesting and clearly showed that Todd is lost in this dream state - as well as giving the audience an idea of what Lovett thought and felt about Todd's "epiphany".
3. Go on journey with him:   We shall try him taking me with him, wherever he went during the song - almost as if I were his hostage. We shall try this idea next lesson when we shall have more of the cast there.
4. Part of ensemble:   Next lesson we shall try out our ideas for the ensemble (as mentioned earlier in this blog) when we have more of the cast present.