Rehearsing and tying our performance together

For this weeks sessions, we started by doing a rough run through of our whole performance so we could have a rough estimate of how long our performance was going to be. We got a rough time of about 25 minutes allowing an extra five or ten minutes more.

We then discussed the parts that jumped out at us that we didn't intend on including in the performance but we thought worked really well. For example, when working on the ending or the performance, Tia and Meghan were facing one way and Ami was facing the other way; there was a part in the ending when we take a step forward and then drop our heads and arms to the floor, when doing this they were in a 'zig zag' form and when the stepped forward they met in the middle to form a line. I thought this looked really effective and it used slight mirroring and also looked very sharp.

For some sections, the music lasted longer than the routine or didn't really have an ending to it such as the grotesque dance routine. For this we came up with the idea that as we end up in a small group at front and centre stage, this reminded us of bohemian rhapsody. We thought we should use this as it adds comedy into the performance. However, this did not tie in with the theme of our performance so we thought that it would be an effective idea to have the music cut off and Tia and Meghan say "that was very inappropriate for a funeral" This would also be an effective transition into the dance routine that followed it as we could walk into our next positions in an 'awkward' style.

As we did not have an ending, we began to brain storm some ideas. In the end we came up with the
idea of circulating back to the beginning of the performance where we open the letters; we then worked around this. We came up with the idea of having small groups and one letter being passed from group to group with important news on it. However, every time the letter was passed the reaction to the news would be different, as if we had all received different news. As I am the last person to have the letter, we thought that it would be effective for me to look at the letter then put it back in the envelope for the ending. We then came up with the idea of having Meghan singing in the background. We chose the song Home Town by Adele as this song is very peaceful but also sad

After this, we worked on running through the performance and making each movement and transition more precise. We also discussed costumes. We came up with the idea of all having plain t-shirts but different colours to show that we're all different  but all look the same as each other.

We then had a costume run through to see if the costumes worked well together and they did. They were light so we could move around easily and didnt get too hot.