The Shrinking Land of Kalku

Our community project has finally, after months of hard work, ended. The show was fantastic and the children loved it although the same can't be said for come of the teachers. The tech week ran pretty smoothly with a few hiccups and some changes to the script. There was a lot of waiting around, which can only be expected on a show like Kalku, but everyone was very good about it and enjoyed the time to grab a rest, some food and even some sun which we were very lucky with.

I think everyone involved ejoyed themselves and it was brilliant to have members from all the different pathways and years. The show has very much bonded us as a group and with the champagne flowing, the get out went very well. As a technician myself I find it hard sometimes to realise that some people are not used to fit up's and get outs because they have not had that type of responisbility before. But generally everyone mucked in and we were out of the park within an hour and 30 minutes of the show ending!

Skye the stage manager on the show has done a brilliant job alongside the other technicians. When it was needed she told you to step up and she was a huge support through rehearsals when it felt we were in a complete rut. I have to say that out of all the stage managers I have worked with Skye has definently been one of the best, I think Al has another Emily Thorpe on his hands!

The End of the Beginning

So I'm approching the last week of my degree and it is very scary! I had my last ever lecture yesterday and as yet it hasn't hit me that actually I will be leaving St Mary's very soon. Though I am very excited about starting a career and working with professionals. Each week my life plan changes. First of all I wanted to go travelling as soon as I could afford it and then it changed to moving to York in September then I decided to wait until 2010 to move to York and work until then. But I think I am back at the beginning again, travelling was the most amazing experience I have ever had and I think I need to do it again before I settle down for good. My play at the moment is to graudate (hopefully) and then get a lovely job in a call centre, bore myself to near death and then jump on a plane to Bangkok. However, I do want to carry on with drama until then so working and doing drama at the same time has also been on my mind. I think at the moment all I can do is play it by year and see what happens. Although I think travelling is a definate for me. When I was in Thailand and Malaysia I met so many wonderful people from so many different backgrounds and I would love to do this again for longer.

A very hectic life!

Clearly I have been a very busy bee and it is for this reason that I have neglected my blog. However! rehearsals are going well and although we changed the story on Saturday we are on schedule and will hopefully have a great show. I have learnt a lot from this project and although mistakes have been made we have learnt from them and very much got on with the job!

Build day is always a great day. It is a break from rehearsals and allows everyone to bond. Saturday was a nice sunny day and although we were working inside for most of it and were in two seperate space I do believe we needed that time to refresh ourselves. It worked. Yesterday we rehearsed 10-6 and acheived a hell of a lot.

Other than rehearsals all of us have been writing essays, dissertations, portfolios and rehearsing for other practical assessments. I have only one major problem at the moment and that is the library which seems to have a problem with opening times. During the Easter holidays it was closed on a couple of weekends and had shorter opening hours. On what planet are these people on? On the planet I'm on third years across the country are reading and writing a ridiculous amount and as a result need a space to work. Our library is not a place you can do this. All of the time there are complaints that people are always talking and playing music loudly, the other day I had to ask a group of 2nd years to keep the noise down. My point is the library needs to act more like a place of learning rather than an SU.

The beginning of rehearsals

This week has been a week of stress, productivity and learning lots of new things about myself and the world of community drama. We started rehearsals on Monday and have gotten off to a brilliant start. For myself and Emma as directors we need to learn to think faster and give our instructions to the actors more clearly. The actors need to learn to trust me and Emma , although sometimes they do not know where we are heading with an idea they must trust us to know that we do.

We have had some great work come out of this week, with Mark coming into supervise the Friday rehearsal he gave Emma and I lots of new fresh ideas and good ways to approach the actors. Our notes to them have not always been efficient and I think that is where we are going wrong, also our knowledge of the story and the characters is not dense enough. However we have got a great Water Nymph scene and Milky Magician so next week we will be working even harder and hopefully get some brilliant scene together.

Saturday was a daunting prospect for me. I was tired from the past week and needed a good day off but somewhere in Ham House I found the day off I desperately needed. I had my face painted, played lots of games with the children; who not many were there did hopefull have a good time. The children loved Giants/Heroes/Dwarfs and Bang Splat. Although I was talking with Mark after and he pointed out the use of miming a gun when playing Bang Splat. I am not sure what I think about this yet. I think that in a 'Utopian world' where gangs did not shoot one another then this game is fine; but we do not live in this world and so as Community Drama workshoppers we need to take in consideration of the schools we go to and the young people we work with when deciding what games to play with them.

Going back to Ham House, I really love working here, as Mark says it really does give you a new energy to do things. I think National Trust does this for me a lot, all their buildings are beautiful, welcoming and more importantly the people who work for NT are always lovely.

Hang On

I went to see Hang On last night at the Hammersmith Lyric. Its a co-production between Theatre Rites, Ockmans Razor and Hammersmith Lyric in association with Theatre Royal York. Entering the auditorium you are greeted by six clothes hangers all with different items of clothing hung on them. Then each member of the cast enters, and to the delight of the children notice the audience. They all choose an item of clothing and poor Eric is left with a jacket he does not want. The show goes on and we realise that Stephano likes Tina and Eric is a little bit scared of just about everything; particularly heights. The are graudally replaced by bigger and bigger ones and each time three of the actors explore the hangers and literally hang. This is a very simple concept but works beautifully. The circus and movement are accompanied by recorded music and live percussion by Nao Massuda who is very cool. What was brilliant about this show was its total simplicity and this is what the children loved and what I loved too. The whole design was genius, from the hangers to the lighting and sound. If you can get to see it I would definently recommend it!

An adventure to a seat in the Old Vic

Last night I went to the Old Vic suprisingly for the first time. I don't think I will be going again very soon. I always judge a theatre by how I feel when I enter and when I entered I did not feel good. It was rather unwelcoming and I couldn't find the bar! The doors are like fire doors which is very claustrophobic. Unlike the National (which I am a bit obsessed with at the moment...disertation and all) there is no where to sit and it seems to me very Hollywoodesque as much as Kevin would like to say it isn't!

The stage is another thing completly. OVAL SHAPED? why would anyone design a theatre in this way. My seats had been upgraded and I was excited about being able to see the whole show, boy was I wrong? I had massive railing in front of my face and being short I had to literally climb onto my seat. Once I had finally sat down I realised there was no leg room (I have very short legs, imagine how the tall people feel) then after a mountaneering adventure onto this ridculous seat I had to get back down again because some needed to get past!

This was all in the first ten minutes of my entering the building, so as you can tell I was not in the best of moods.

I was looking forward to a good meaty Irish show. The story was fine, its about a group of sisters and their beliefs, hopes and dreams and some dancing amidst this. The acting was good but the cast as a whole seemed to lack energy and umph so as a moany audience member I was not enthused. The irish members of the audience seemed to enjoy the jokes and the music but it felt the actors relied on the story that bit too much and didn't really add anything to it.

Burnt By theSun

After a day of hardcore studying I went to the National to see Burnt By the Sun. It is set on a hot summers day during the Stalin years of Russia. Kotov a hero from the Russian Revolution and his family are spending their summer in the country, reminicing the past, singing and dancing. One day a childhood friend of Kotov's wife arrives, here the play unravels and we find out that they used to be very much in love. I won't give away the ending but there are spies, betrayal and some death.

As much as I loved the story some of the direction wasn't great. The fight scenes were cringing to watch and did not seem to have any real impact on the audience. The revolving house felt quite strange, although the actors were very comfortable with it. The lighting design was very impressive; Mark Henderson did a wonderful job in creating a hot summers day. Though the sound design went slightly over the top. One minute birds were twittering and the next crickets were cicketing. There didn't seem to be much consistency.

But overall a good performance with some heart wrenching moments and quite a few laughs!