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.