Run Act 1

Today we decided to run through all of the songs we had stage and few we hadn't in act 1 as it had been a while since we done anything from Act 1 for the past few lessons. We started through "Tune up 1" - "Rent", then we quickly set "Tune up 3" as its half a page of dialogue between Mark and Roger before Mark leaves to find Collins. We then continue through to "one song glory" and then "light my candle" which we hadn't fully staged yet, so we let Tom and Meg work through the number to create the piece so they can improve it in another rehearsal. We continued to work through the show and reach "You'll see" which is another number we haven't set probably yet, me and Carl have listen to this number before but hadn't set it before. We then continued through Act I to the song "We're okay" which we still need to create so we pushed forward and reached "La Vie Boheme" which we got to the end. Continuing from this number we still need to set "I should tell you" but have  also decided to cut"La Vie Boheme B" from our creation of Rent. So we only have "light my candle", "you'll see", "we're okay" and I should tell you" left to set in Act I.

Your eyes and Finale B

Today we had a quick look at "your eyes" and then staged our "finale B". We quickly went through "your eyes" as its only Roger singing, we quickly ran through it so we all would know where we would be for "finale B". During the first half of the song Roger moves to cuddle Mimi on the table while the rest of us surrounds them singing and when the boys and girls split into their two songs we are joined on stage by everyone even Angel as its the finale. At the end of the song we all huddle together and make like a photo finish of the whole group for the end. We spent most of this lesson going through the vocals and harmonies for boys and girls in this finale before we ran through "your eyes" and "finale B". During "your eyes" all our characters present are backed off around the edges of the stage so the audiences focus is on Roger singing to Mimi. We ran through both the numbers with no problem and have now stage the end of our performance workshop of Rent.

What you own

This lesson before we started anything we said that our next number we are going to stage is "What you own" which follows "Goodbye love" so we wanted to sort out what happens in this number so that we can run through "Goodbye love" and go straight into "What you own". We split our cast in half as we wanted to add more vocals into this number so while I as Mark sings the first chorus, Dan M, Lorna, Freya and Carl will join in with me when I reach "and when you're living in". They are space our around me as this song we have set up to be like a dream for Mark and Roger as this song shows them wanting to fix their lifes. In the secong chorus Meg, Toby, Dan S and Dom join in singing with me and Tom on the same line as my group did with the first chorus before on the ending chorus "Dying in America" which we have everyone singing in with. We set out the piece with our stage plan in mind of having our extension of the stage with Lower still decking. So during the first half of the song we have Mark in the apartment standing in front of his table, Angel, Bennie, Maureen and Joanne are spread out across the stage to help showcase the dream effect were trying to show. The same sort of idea is done with Roger but on the lower stage with Mimi, Collins, Paul and the Drug dealer. The song is more about the vocals then the action so we just have us stand and sing with Roger and Mark occasionally moving around. Me and Tom, as we both play Roger and Mark, have spent our time going the harmonies of the song.

Goodbye love

Continuing on from last lesson we we ran through "without you" and polished the number before we started the next number which was "Goodbye love".
We had decided to cut "Halloween" from our performance as it was just Mark and served no relevance to the plot of our show but we took the first couple of lines to use as Mark's narration leading into "Goodbye love". So before "Goodbye love" start Mark says:
"Hi. It's Mark Cohen. Is Alexi there? Uh, No need to bother her. Just let her know that I'm running late for my appointment... Yes, i'll still be there... Yes, I signed the contract... Thanks. How Did We Get Here? How The Hell...
Pan Left - Close On The Steeple Of The
Church"

"Pan left" is the que for everyone to start exiting the chapel for the start of the song. Mark is down stage right, Collins is down stage left with everyone else spread out between. During the song we see each of the characters start to fight until Collins tells everyone off for fighting at the funeral. Everyone leaves except Mark and Roger who both make their way centre stage for their confrontation between each other where we have made Mark appear as really nice person trying to help a friend while Roger is portray as a horrible friend to Mark, trying to make Mark feel as if he is the one who that has failed everyone. After this Mark goes back upstage while Mimi walks in for her goodbye to Roger before Bennie walks in and Mimi leaves. We then move on to the next scene where Dan S who is playing the priest throws Collins out, we quickly worked through this scene before we ended the rehearsal. Next lesson we decided to look at "what you own" as the number follows straight on from "Goodbye love".

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.