Helen

Tuesday 27th January

We began work on the comedic song, Helen, to which Liam is taking the lead in. We sat and listened to the song, and discussed our ideas. After this, Liam informed us of what he wanted each of us to do in terms of characters and actions in the song. Danny and I play his best mates, who subsequently are his backing dancers and the cause for the progression of the movement into a more dance-orientated piece. The other cast members each play what seems to represent a version of Helen, in the background, whilst Liam acts out and sings the song. Amanda plays his mother, who features at the beginning, questioning who the girl was that she was thinking of.  As we worked through the song, we choreographed certain extracts of the piece, to divide the performance up between movement and acting, to keep the piece comedic and interesting.

Tuesday 24th February
During a run through of all songs and scenes devised so far, we began choreographing moves for the end of the song as a cast. Liam will be stood on a higher level, and the rest of the cast in a line with a gap for Liam along the stage. We made some simple, repetitive moves to make the piece more engaging and exciting, and not just have the performers standing still and singing the end of the song.

Dodgeball

Friday 23rd January
Today we began working on Danny's number, 'Dodgeball'. It transitions from 'I Was Born This Morning' straight into the next song. In the previous number, we have set up what looks like a substitute's bench, where all but myself are sat, awaiting the team captain (who we believe is 'Ryan' in the song, which is my character) to pick them for the team. We decided that throughout the song, at the right moment in the lyrics, I will point at the other characters on the bench, apart from Danny's character 'Billy', who doesn't get chosen. We are using our imagination slightly, as everyone ends up on my team, as we do not have an ensemble cast large enough to form both teams, we are pretending that they are being chosen as well, which allows us to use everyone's character, established in the opening number, on the same team. We spoke through and marked through the song under Danny's instructions, as he has the lead for this number. He stated that at the end, alongside the lyrics, he would like three dodgeballs thrown at him, to which he dodges two, and catches the third, illustrating that his character is good at dodgeball, but isn't picked for another reason. We will need to finalize on this reason next lesson, as well as choreograph the song properly, improving on the plotting that we did today.

Tuesday 24th February
When running through each song, we decided that the rest of the cast required some movement to make the piece less static. As I am the sporty character, and am the first to be standing away from the 'sub's bench' for the dodgeball game, I decided that I could run a warm up session as characters joined me on my team, leaving Danny to wsing about how he isn't getting picked for the squad. As the song progresses further, we then get into a group huddle, like many stereotypical American teams in films, and do a team cheer. This allows us to then move on to the final movements decided by Danny, where three of us grab dodgeballs and throw them at Danny at designated lines at the end of the song. On the last throw, completed by myself and Danny, he catches the ball, and throws it back to us in anger.

I Was Born This Morning

This choreographed piece was constructed after we had characterised each person and their set song for their narrative. From the discussions, we had set the overall narrative within a high school in America. Therefore it seemed fitting that the opening number was set in form time, setting up the diegesis of the production. The choreography itself illustrates each character and their traits, personalities and general mood towards each other on stage. The movement seems simple, but illustrates a stereotypical group of uninterested students watching the clock until they are free from the confines of high school.

I had an input on the choreography, as we had 8 beats, which would normally be referred to as a dance break, only it was shorter, and a random dance didn't seem fitting with the atmosphere of the performance so far. My input was that each character grabs their desk, and turns it 45 degrees to the left on the first beat, then to the middle for the second beat, then 45 degrees to the right for the third beat, then back to the middle on beat four. The next four beats illustrate a sort of student revolt, in that each beat consisted of the characters slamming their fists onto the desk. The first beat was everyone's right hand, followed by the left hand on beat two, then the subsequent two beats were both fists slamming on the desk at the same time.

How We Chose The Songs To Include

Before we began work on the first song, ‘I Was Born This Morning’, we discussed all the songs that we individually felt could work well in the workshop performance. Personally, I wanted ‘Asleep on My Arm’ and ‘Nerd Love’ to be in the production, as when I listened to them previously, they were the ones that jumped out at me. We sat around the desk, all with pen and paper to hand, and listened to each song, and noted our first impressions or our opinions if we had already listened to the album. After we had gone through each song, we were asked to go home and consider what song we would like to take a lead in, everyone getting their own song so that everyone is of equal opportunity. When we came back for the next lesson, we each put down our top three preferences of songs; mine were ‘Honey’, ‘Asleep on My Arm’, ‘Nerd Love’. We were meant to rank them in order of preference, but I couldn’t decide between them, and Steve wanted ‘Honey’, and so I felt that it made sense if I went for one of the other songs, as I didn’t mind.

Upon being giving the songs, I was allocated the lead of ‘Asleep on My Arm’. We then had to each come up with a persona for our character. All of this characterisation was helping to decide on a narrative and also to help us come up with ideas for the opening number, 'I Was Born This Morning’. My idea for my character was a ‘jock’ style character, the stereotypical sporty character that you find in American high schools. We soon realised that we all came up with stereotypical characters of high school students, and therefore were able to construct a narrative loosely connecting all characters through being at the same high school. This then allowed us to create the opening number, with all of us in character.

Notes on Songs

THE WAR SONG

-        Comedy – satirical of modern army and warfare

-        Outcast

-         16-18 year old grunger kid

-          Black nails, pale and weak

-          Teenage angst

-          Bored and dumb, a drifter

-          Marching army in background

ASLEEP ON MY ARM

-          Both boy and girl in bed

-          He acts out the entire lyrics through facial expressions and slight body movements

-          Singer will have to work on singing whilst laying down

-          ALTERNATIVELY, singer could stand and have someone else in the bed, acting his lyrics, whilst he sings to the audience

-          ALTERNATIVELY, singer could interact with other actors whilst a body double lays in bed being his character

-          Scene before:

o    illustrates a nice relationship

o   Threatening father of the girl – stereotypical judgement of father of a girlfriend

NERD LOVE

-          Classic American high school student archetypes

-          Nerd girl in green sweater, glasses, high socks, long skirt

-          Guy as a jock, sporty high school student

-          Meet in a quiet library, where girl is reading Twilight

-          Love at first sight kind of idea

-          People act out the things quoted in the lyrics, eg. The Star Trek characters enter and do Spock signs and stuff (the famous hand signal) to the narrative of the lyrics

GOOD FOR YOU

-          Soloist singing, taking centre stage

-          Movement from the rest of the cast behind her, to make the performance more encapsulating

-          An emotional protagonist, lighted in a way that makes her seem lonely

-          A song about dreaming of an ideal situation

-          IDEA: she discovers her ex-boyfriend with another girl  and gets jealous

-          IDEA: Ex-boyfriend is actually Spiderman!! She can’t be with him because he’s a superhero, and it just wouldn’t work

HONEY

-          Someone escaping the friendzone!

-          His best friend has been going through a rough patch with her boyfriend

-          Singer has fancied her for ages but never wanted to say

-          Finally confessed it and feels much better for it, confidence is shown in the song

-          Ends badly, rejected at the end of the song, audience feel sympathy for him

MAMA CUT ME DEEPER!

-          Blood motif

-          Struggling kid

-          Stresses of life

-          Mum is harsher on him, rather than support

-          “at least the hurt is proof of life” – his mum is doing this so he understands the pains of the world

-          Although it’s his song, relates to all characters on stage? All in sections, acting out the same movements

SON OF A GUN

-          Sporty kid who’s actually a nerd, geeking out

DODGE BALL

-          Not being picked for the team, not being picked for other things too

-          He’s an outcast

-          ALTERNATIVELY he’s popular but feels awful about it all

HELEN

-          Movement piece referencing pornography as the lyrics state without doing it physically (for obvious reasons!)

Asleep On My Arm - Research

Liam informed me of a YouTube video where we could base some of our ideas for the song 'Asleep On My Arm', which I am leading, from. The video features members the original cast that perform in the Spotify album that I have. The YouTube video is of, Jason 'SweetTooth' Williams, and his girlfriend, asleep on his arm. They perform it sitting on what looks like a bar stool, allowing them to have some more physical movement to express the lyrics further than just vocally. Jason expresses concerned  looks and comedic shapes on his face, causing the comedy of the lyrics to align with his acting for a greater comedic effect. This helped me to characterise my character some more, working on the comedic tones within the song which is overall, about love.

The Assignment

We were given an album, ‘Things to Ruin by Joe Iconis’, which is a collection of songs that meant which the composer states is “some of the songs are written specifically for the show, some of them found their way in” and they were hoping that the audience leave the production thinking they have seen a musical theatre piece, but not entirely able to describe what they had just seen. We each went away and listened to the album, available on YouTube or on Spotify. I first heard the album back at the start of the summer holidays, and felt that the setting suited a high school environment, but some of the songs, such as ‘Albuquerque Anyway’ featured a character that didn't connect with the high school environment. We will need to take this into consideration when we are coming up with a narrative, or when we are characterising each character and their song.

The performance could be a series of narrative strands, each following a character and a song, with a few scenes to extend their narrative slightly. We first discussed how the performance could be a song cycle, how each song doesn’t necessarily have to connect, and it can merely follow characters from all walks of life, from any era. However, upon discussing our characters further, we made the decision that we can set the overarching narrative in a school, and follow individual students, that may not necessarily be connected, but still attend the same high school.

The difficulties behind creating a performance based on an album are that we do not have a script, and we didn't have a narrative given to us. These were things we had to create ourselves, all through workshops and discussions. This devising will lead to a production from a selection of the songs, without having a script or narrative to originally base our performance on.

‘Things To Ruin’ as a stimulus gave us somewhat relatable narratives from the songs, such as ‘The War Song’, who features an outsider who feels lost, a narrative that many teenagers might face. The characters we drafted from our songs all seem relatable in some way, which helps us in characterisation. The idea of it being set in a school means that we can base our performance on our own experiences in school, particularly in Sixth Form, with our production’s narrative being set in a high school.