24/11/15
To begin this lesson we ran through the adult section of the play; this was so we could develop our characters further by adding in what we had picked up on from our "character swap" lesson. This section went really well as we now understand our characters better and have a stronger understanding of character interactions. What did need altering in this run through was our blocking in some places. However, this has now been sorted.
After rehearsing the adult section, we did "speed run" of the entire children section. We were allowed our scripts for this run, as we had no time to think, we had to say our lines as fast as we could whilst being clear and understandable. The reason we did this "speed run" was so we got an idea of our characters emotional development throughout the day of their nativity. We were also able to get a pattern in our heads of where we go, blocking wise, throughout the play. Our slow-motion section was very comical as it ended up being almost normal-speed reactions but with exaggerated movements.
26/11/15
Today we went through all the songs from the play. We split off into groups to rehearse our duet songs. I have two duets in the play (one with Gabriel and one with Ryan), but as Rhiannon wasn't in this lesson, I began work on the duet with Robert. This song is to the tune of "Once in Royal David's City". It describes how Mary's Mum is a very pressurising parent, whilst Ryan's Dad doesn't pay Ryan as much attention as he should. We found the first part of our duet fairly easy, however we found the second half more challenging as our lines overlap slightly and we are unsure on timing and melody. If we had sheet music we would have been fine, as we both can read music, but the play doesn't come with any sheet music, only lyrics.
After rehearsing in our pairs all small groups, we joined back as one group and worked on the ensemble pieces "Silent Night" (as children) and "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" (as adults). As children, our singing doesn't matter too much; we don't have to sing in tune all the time and timings don't have to be 100% perfect. However, as adults, our singing has to be slightly better and more mature to show our characters ages. We can use backing tracks for the majority of the pieces in the play, but we can't use a backing track for "We Wish you a Merry Christmas". This is because within the song, each character has a little solo but to the tune of a different Christmas song (the tune that their characters children sang earlier in the play). We still have a lot of polishing to do on the songs and they need staging, but we have made a great start on them.
