Rent production meeting

Today we sat down as a group and had a meeting about our production of Rent to decided what we needed to disscuss about our whole story. In our meeting we were ask to work in pairs and talk about what we wanted our production to reprsent. I was paired with Meg to start writing what we wanted from the show, we came up with these ideas:
Dark and gritty
Dirty (Setting)
Conection with characters
Small cast (Personal)
Colourful cloths and characters

I didn't agree with all of what me and Meg came up with as I want our show to be centre around the issues in the show, not the characters themselfs. I wanted our show to focus on this to link back to Jonathan Larson original creation of Rent which was to create awareness of Aids but with our production I wanted to create awareness of more issues within Rent like poverity, drug abuse and reaching for your dreams. I would like this to be what our production of Rent was about as it would diversities us from other productions but everyone else wanted the show to be about the emotional invovelment of characters.
We started to talk about our roles in the production other then our characters and what we can do to help our improve our show. We talked about what roles we can be in our production:
Costume designer: Freya
Set crew: Tom and Dan S
Lighting: Dan M
Front of house: Dom
Fundraising: Me, Meg, Carl and Toby
We then had a quick talk about where we wanted to perform and what equipment we wanted for the show. We all agreed we wanted to perform our production in our school hall as our stage in the hall is black and dirty so it would help set our production in the realism we want for the show. We also talked about staging and said we wanted to have an extention of the stage but on a lower platfrom so we can get some levels in our performance. Finally we decided to have our audience set up in cabaret as we belived it would set a better atmoshpere for them instead of conventional sitting.

Seasons of Love

Today we started to look at the start of Act 2, Seasons of love but we were sadly absent 2 members of our production today. We sat down around a piano as we wanted to mainly focus on the vocal side of the number as it is a very powerfully vocal number number. The 2 main harmony groups were Meg, Lorna and Tom in the high group and the rest of us in the lower group.We sung through the number after we each learnt our harmony until we reached "Measured in love" which me and Dom split off from the lower group to pick a new slightly higher harmony compared to the lower group. When we reache "Seasons of love" we split into boys and girls to sing.
Girls: "Seasons of love"
Boys: "Seasons of... love"
This is repeat each time we sing seasons of love. We then started to decide who we wanted as our soloists, we decided to give the first solo to Carl and split the second solo with Freya singing the the whole solo but having Dan S join in on the line "In bridges". We sung through the rest of the number and removed the soloist that sings behind our vocals as none of us felt that we had the vocal range to reach and match the notes they sing so we removed the soloist. We sung through the whole number and after Carl asked if he could sing his solo as a duet with someone as he was strugling to stay with the tune, so I volentered to sing with him so it's now a duet with betwen me and Carl. We sung throught the number and then stood up in a line to perform the number again.

Run Through Numbers

Today we decided to look back over everything we had done in the past as we though that we had tage a large amount of the musical numbers. We looked over the number we had staged which are:
Tune up 1
Voicemail 1
Tune up 2
Rent
Tango Maureen
Life support
Another day
Will I?
La Vie Boheme

We also decdied to run through all our numbers in the order of our show so that it almost feels like a full show run through. So we started with Tune up 1- Rent without stopping as each number went in to each other without a break. We sung through Tune up1- Tune up 2 without any problem until we reach Rent, it became clear that not everyone in the number knew the words to the song so the ending of the number fell a bit flat. We kept moving though and set the target to learn the words for when we next run that number. We ran through Tango Maureen with no problem as it was the most recent number wehad stage so we quiclky moved on to Life support which went really well as we went through the number very quick until we reached Another day. Another day was fine other than not everyone was still confident on the words or tune yet, we decided to try this number a second time as we had already went over this number recently  so we wanted to get it done and not spend any more time on this number in future lessons. We ran through Will I? with no problem so we quickly moved onto La Vie Boheme with we went through with no problem until we reach Collins "In honor" which we hadn't stage yet so as we had a bit of spare time at the end of the lesson so we tried to improvise the last part of the number till we would reach the next I should tell you which we hadn't set yet.

Tango Maureen Part 2

Today we split off again to work on our indvidual numbers as we had done the lesson before. So me, Dan M and Freya contiued to work on Tango Maureen and sorting out our opening to the number. We kept the start of the number number simple in just having us stand and sing to each other until we reach the first "Tango Maureen" which is sung by me. I then wanted to start dancing like abit of an idot becaues ithough that Mark is that type of character who would just make a fool of himself. So when I start to sing, i swing my right arm above my head roll my waist and jump closer to Freya, I then do a quick step and turn on "merry-go-round" adn pretend to be on strings when  dsing "dangling". I follow this with a knee slide towards Freya and twist my body side to side. Then get up and move away for my next line where I act as a voice of torment wondering around her putting doubts about Maureen in her mind. After this we reach where we started choreagrphing last lesson so we decided to keep going forward and polishing the steps. We then wanted to change the ending movement where we all circle aroung the stage, we wanted to move me and Freya into the centre and had us moving around the oposite direction to everyone else so we can signal me and Freya out as we're the only people who are actually there. We then went over Another day with Meg and Tom new movement within the number while the rest of us went over the words with ur harmony lines in the background in the number.

Tango Maureen Part 1

Today we split off into groups to work on seperate numbers so that we can cover a large range of the show.
Toby, Carl, Dom and Dan S went off to create the staging for all three verions of "Christmas bells". Meg and Tom went off to work on "Another day" becaues they wanted to change soem of their movement in the number. Me, Freya and Dan M created "Tango Maureen" in this lesson, Dan create a Tango stylied dance for me and Freya to perform to "Tango Maureen". We started the song half way hrought going from "Where'd you learn to tango", where me and freya meet in the middel and she leads me back and we do a 180 step turn so then leads me the other way back to the centre. On the line "you should try it in heels", Freya lifts her leg and wraps it round me. Then me and frey waltz gown stage, spin then pull back into each other again. We then spilt off till "When your dacing" which is where me and freya hold hands doing an extended leg walk. I then try to turn her freya to which she then turns me, we though this would be humours to our audienece while fitting our characters personaility. After freya turns me we join again stepping foward followed by a rise hip twist. We then split off, moving to the centre of the stage until "I'll have tangoed at all", there is then a loud beat in the music following this in which i stamp my foot throwing my right hand out to pull Freya in. We were then inspired by the movies veion of the dance to Tango Maureen and decided we would copy some of the moves from their dance as well as having others join Me and Freya while dancing.

The groups we dancing are:
Me and Freya
Toby and Dan M
Tom and Meg
Carl and Lorna
Dan S and Dom
The groups were decided bassed aroung realtionships in the show as well as who was comfortable dancing the women steps in the number. The steps for the male side of dance break are two hop steps then step legs apart. Then we turn her out while letting go but then grab her to pull her back in with another turn. Those were the steps that we liked and wanted to borrow from the film but after those steps we are back with our partner in a circle shap around the stage in which we start to travel around the stage using the step left, right, up, up with our legs. Everyone else then leave while me an Freya split off to other sides of the stage to finish singng the song which is the end of our song.
Our target for the next lesson is to polish what we have stage as well as come up with a start to the number for me and Freya.

Life Support- Will I? Part 2

Today we decided that we would quickly run through "Life Support" and "Another day" before we moved onto "Will I?". We an through these numbers with little problem other than not everyone was confident with the lyrics in "Another Day" but we still decided to move on and stage "Will I?". In our version of "Will I?" we had Dom who is playing Paul start the song standingin the centre of the stage, the rest of us are spread out around him. We all decided we wanted to just stand and sing this number as we all the song is a very sentimental song that shouldn't have movement to accompany it after Dom sings through "Will I?" once, we split our selves into three groups to sing throurgh in the layers that get created during the song. Group one who sings through the song five times is me, Lorna and Tom. Group two is Toby, Dan M, Freya and Dom. The final group is Meg, Carl and Dan S.
After we had finished setting "Will I?" we went back to "Life Support" and ran all the way through to "Will I?". Having some speare time after setting these numbers we talked about what other songs in Act 1 we wanted to cut from our performance. The number we have cut from Act 1 rent are as followed:

• "You okay honey?"
• The end of "You'll See"
• "Out Tonight"
• "The streets"
• "Christmas Bells" except the starting verse
• La Vie boheme B

Life Support- Will I? Part 1

Today we looked at 3 different numbers to create over the next 2 lessons which are the numbers "Life support", "Another day" and "Will I?". We deided to cut "Out tonight" as we agreed that the song held no purpoes to the plot of story. We all received the words for "Life Support" while Tom and Meg went off to work on staging "Another day", we stage Life support sitting in a full circle and assigned the names of the members to our cast except we decided we would keep Meg as Mimi in the meeting to sulttlely tell our audienece that Mimi has Aids as well. Life support was resenable easy to set as we all decided to have everyone stay sitting with Tom at the appartment behind us.
After we finised setting "Life support" we brought back Tom and Meg and added them to our performance after inform them what we do during the song.
After we ran through "Life Support" with Tom and Meg and then moved onto have look at what thoes two created for their "Another day" piece. We all learned the last verse of the song to sing in the wings as we didn't want to create a dance on stage or create anything on stage to distract away from Tom and Meg's growing drama throughtout the song.

"I can't control
My destiny
I trust my soul
My only goal is just
To be
There's only now
There's only here
Give in to love
Or live in fear
No other path
No other way
No day but today...
No day but today
No day but today
No day but today
No day but today
No day but today"
These are the lyrics we all sing as a company at the end of another day, we spent the last half of our lesson singin through the lyrics trying to learn them. After we had finished learning "Another day" we ran out of tme to start looking at "Will I?" so we decided to go home and learn the words ready for the next lesson so that we could set the number quickly.

This is a video of our version of "Life support"