We spent the whole day in the hall to set the stage, rehearse in the space and do full runs with the full cast...
Setting the stage: Thankfully we didn't have to worry about the remains of the "Grease" set on the stage, as the curtains remain shut for the entire performance. However, we did have to take down all of the banners and flats from this performance. We set up all of our stage blocks and ensured we had all the props we needed. We bought flour and pies, and cut the ribbons down to the sizes we needed.
Our cast: Unfortunately, Taylor wasn't able to come in at all this day as she had food poisoning, therefore we had to find someone else to play beggar woman! Thankfully, our friend Kat came in to save the day - she had never seen Sweeney Todd or even knew the story so we knew we would have to spend a lot of time with her. We spent time running all of the parts she was in and went through all of her entrances and exits. Whilst we worked on other parts of the play, she listened to the songs she was in.
Cutting & running sections: Although it didn't matter if our additional cast members used scripts or not, we preferred it if they didn't. For this reason, and the fact that we were running over with time, we decided that we would cut the discussion between Todd, Anthony and Lovett about hair and Anthony going to the asylum. I also cut down the track of "Greenfinch and Linnet Bird" for Alice, so that she only had to sing one verse from it. We had also never done the ending with the track so we tried this early on in the day, so I had time to alter the track if needs be. When I made this track, I had timed it so that the dialogue fit before we started singing; however, we couldn't work out where I started the dialogue. Moreover, this track sounds very similar until the faster section of the singing - therefore we thought it best if I cut this track so it just had one bar in before I started singing. I cut this track and it actually worked really well. Rob and I weren't very confident with this final song though as we hadn't done it a lot, so we ran this number multiple times (the lyrics are also very quick and we dance at the same time, so this was a worry for us both). The other number that Rob and I kept running was "A Little Priest". We found this number tricky due to the fast lyrics and complex choreo, but we were worried about the space, so wanted to do it a couple of times to get used to the amount of space we have. The other number we ran a few times, as a group, was "Johanna reprise" as this involved our additional cast members. We initially had planned to have a short dance section between Anthony and Johanna and then between Todd and Johanna, but we decided against it as a) we thought it might overwhelm the audience what with the sounds as well, b) we didn't have enough time to sort it, and c) it wasn't really necessary.
One of our runs was to work out where all of our entrances and exits were and who would move what set. Another run was to ensure all lighting cues and sound cues were accurate. Both of these runs were used to see what parts needed the most work - we then worked on these weaker parts for the rest of the time.
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