Without You

Today we ran through Santa Fe which we had created last lesson before we moved on to have a look at the next number "without you" and for this number we wanted to try to show the story of all the couples in this number, so we split into groups and were given a section of the song to create a routine too while Mimi sings. We decided my character would not be in this number as Mark has no developing love story in the show so I help Freya create the movement for Maureen and Joanne.

"The stars gleam
The poets dream
The eagles fly

Without you

The earth turns
The sun burns
But I die 

without you"

Freya and I were given this section from the song to come with movement that Joanne and Maureen can do in the background of the number. During the first four lines Maureen and Joanne walk to each other at the back of the stage from opposite sides, they then use there back facing hands to grab the others before Maureen twirls into Joanne were they embrace each other for a moment before Joanne lets go to try and leave.

During the second four lines Maureen turns Joanne back to face her before running her hand up to Joanne's face the both going into each other before they both step away to go. they both then freeze until the end where they turns to face Angel as he dies.

in the verse after this Carl and Dom set up a hospital bed which Collins walks Angel while he slowly dies. Tom and Meg created a movement style dance which is happening at the front of the stage during Angels death.

Santa Fe

Today we wanted to try and get a start on several different numbers in today's lesson. We set our welds the target of look at at these numbers from the show in these groups:
I'll cover you= Toby and Dan M
Voicemail 2= Meg and Dan S
One song glory= Tom
Christmas bells= me, Carl and Dom

Our objective of running our rehearsal like this was too see if we could start several number in a rehearsal and then have us finish them ourselves outside of lessons, so with each number our goal wasn't to finish them today but to have at least several ideas on what we wanted to happen with them. Everyone went off to do their independent worker on the songs while Me, Carl and Dom talked about ideas for Christmas bells. This version of Christmas bells start after the end of the song "rent" and used everyone except Mark, Roger and Angle. So looking at where everyone ended in Rent we looked at what we could do with the member we had who were spaced out the stage and audience. We decided to try having the people on stage cross in front of the table while singing so that Mark and Roger wouldn't be seen, during this Bennie and Collins come from the audience to join in and make a line with everyone at the front of the stage while singing before walking off.
After working independently for a while we came together to work on the number Santa Fe.
We all decided that Meg should choreograph us a part of this dance that starts from the second "Let's open up a restaurant". For our dance we're in 2 groups of 3, Meg, Dom, Carl on stage right and me, Tom, Dan S on stage left. Meg's side starts the dance first. They walk on with a 2 step turn step then on the next line of the song we walk on doing the same as them. We then walk around the room to our new position for the dance that we wanted to try and make flow with the movement.
We start but side stepping right and reach our arms round in a circle then move them in a figure of eight while we push our left leg out and back in. We then do a step change into and spin over our right shoulder while travelling to the left. We then turn back the way we just came doing a gallop spin which goes into gentle walking upstage right while sweeping our feet round.We then sweep our right foot all the way round before goin to walk into a semi circle to end the movement side of this number.

You'll see

Continuing from last lesson where we set our selves targets for next lesson we started to look at "You'll see" which me, Carl and Tom looked at for this lesson. This number continues after "Today 4 you" so in the background of this number we have Collins and Angel listening in on Roger, Mark and Bennie's talk. Carl playing Bennie enters through the audience at which point I say my line about his character to the audience as he comes up onto the stage. The number was simple to stage as it was mostly a conversation between the three of them. We reached the part of the song where Bennie leave which is where we had decided to cut the rest of the song as the second half isn't needed for the progression of the story so we have removed this from our version of Rent.
After this we ran through "Goodbye love" into "what you own" so we could recap what we had done in the past lessons so we can move on to work on more numbers in Act II next lesson.

Run act 2

Today we decided to run every thing we have done in Act II so by the end of the lesson we can have a list to look at that shows us what numbers we still have left to do. So we started with "Seasons of love" then reached "Happy New year B" which not everyone knew but that was fine as we had only just recently looked at this number so we continued through skipping "take me or leave me" as we hadn't set this number yet in to "seasons of Love B" which we sang through as we weren't sure how to set this number yet. Which then lead into "Without you" which we ran through without no problem vocally or physically. We moved past "I'll cover you reprise" as we hadn't set this number yet which ment we straight into "Goodbye love" through to "What you own" both numbers ran well with no problems arising. We then moved past "Finale A" as we hadn't set that yet to go into "Your eyes" and then "Finale B". Miss had told us for next lesson she will have the backing tracks for every number next lesson so we can practice with them.

Happy New year

Today we continued to look at the start of Act II. We had already done "Seasons of Love" in lessons before so we skipped past that to look at "Happy New Year A" which we had decided to cut from our version of Rent as well as cutting Mark's mum in "voice mail 3" and the first little part of "Happy New year B". So after "Seasons of love" it goes into Alexi Darlings voice mail which is done Dom and then starts "Happy New year B" which skips the little bit to go straight in with "5 4 3... Open". The rest of "Happy New year B" we kept the same and was simple to set as it was mostly dialogue. The difficulty with this number was as group we struggled with the timing of our lines for track so we had gone over this number several times in the lesson so we could practice our timings. After practicing this number a few times we started to go over "Seasons of love" into "Voice mail 3" into "Happy New year B". We practiced over  these three songs a few times as well as our transitions between the songs.

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.