Category: skills in practice

Academic report

History of Variety 

Harrison Snell 

Variety has been a key form of entertainment for hundreds of years and has been witnessed by countless people from all walks of life, but where did this great showcase of skill begin and what has brought it to the type of show we know and love today. 

Variety has had many forms through the years most notably the era of ENSA during the second world war. Wikipedia – Entertainments national service association, last edited on 11 November 2018, ENSA is the, Entertainments National Service Association; It was formed in world war 2 in 1939 by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson. Its main aim was to provide the British Armed forces entertainment during wartime. Their first big performance was at RAF Hendon on 17 October 1939 in North London. Some of those on the bill for this performance are Adelaide Hall, The Western Brothers and Mantovani and Anglo-Italian composer/conductor. Dancer Vivian Hole was in the Netherlands travelling in a scenery truck when it drove over a German land mine killing her, this was the only fatality that ENSA suffered during the second world war. 

With the war in full swing back home, we began to see changes in our theatre, and this is explained by the wartime effort, and how many theatres closed. Brockett, O.  (1982) Modern Theatre. 1st edition. Printed in the USA: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. 

“With the coming of the war in 1939, the English theatre was soon at a virtual standstill. At the height of the German blitz only one theatre remained open in London. The Old Vic retreated to provinces, Donald Wolfit organized lunch-time programs, and a few others attempted to keep the theatre alive, but for the most part English theatrical life was almost completely disrupted” 

The art of sword swallowing originated from India over 4000 years ago; It began around 2000BC by Fakirs and shaman priests who developed the art, along with other dangerous religious practices. The encyclopedia definition of this art is wrong as it would in fact be more uncomfortable to walk out onto stage with a pre-inserted sheath. In 2008 Sword swallowers international association founded the annual world sword swallowers day. Sword swallowing- – https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/sword-swallowing/ 

 

 

 

Show week evaluation

This week was our show and this meant high stress as we had been working hard to pull it together and wanted the shows to go well. We had three performances of the show for people to come and see, the open dress rehearsal on Wednesday afternoon for college students to attend, the Wednesday evening performance for paying public and also the Thursday evening performance for paying public.

The first show arrived and the whole company was a bit nervous about performing to a college audience due to the energy levels of teenagers. This however did not effect the way we performed the show, energy levels were up and focus was sustained throughout. The first piece I am in is A Town Called Malice, this piece involves strong characterisation, this means each person in the dance is telling a story. At the start of the dance me and Danilo open up the curtain at the back to reveal the back wall of the stage, we would usually get in position at the start of Hat dance. This piece went well and the characters came across really well.

After this piece there is a costume change in which I ditch the suit jacket, put on a red piece of ribbon as a bow tie then get into a high vis jacket and a hard hat ready for my next appearance on stage.

I then play the part of a stage hand that interrupts the compares, we felt that this fitted and added to the comedy of the little connector as it continued the theme of the play that goes wrong with  Cameron and Matts characters, once the door is in place the scene begins. After a while I interrupt and make up a reason to leave the scene early with the door in order to have time to get ready and in place for the next piece.

The next piece is Dancin’ fool, this piece is all about big characters, big faces and big smiles. It’s all about entertainment it is supposed to be a show at a bar somewhere exotic. This works really nicely with the variety feel we are going for with the show as it means we have had some contrasting dances as well as acting.

At the end of DF I had to run off stage and vary out a very quick change in time to be ready for Believe, my physical theatre piece with Danilo and Jasmine. This piece went well each time we performed it and I feel that during the public performance all three of us gave 110% energy to the piece and we received positive feedback each time we performed it, the piece again worked really well with the variety element of the performance as it was something a little bit different.

After believe there is another compare moment that is interrupted by the stage hands but this time we are bringing on a table complete with door mouse and all. This went well in the final two performances however in the open dress run the runner malfunctioned and we had to improve our way out of it, this actually resulted in good humour. We then made sure the runner was fixed and ready for the rest of the performances, we were sure not to break character.

After this  piece I changed into a Hawaiian shirt ready for the final few pieces in the show these were Alice 3, seasons of love and hand Jive. These pieces went well on each night and nicely rounded off the performances.

To conclude show week went well as the feedback from the audiences was good, there was a nice variety of pieces in the performances and we all had great energy throughout each night and made each night as if it was the first time we had done stuff               (acting based) .

Christmas showcase prep week

This week was the week before curtain up and it was spent rehearsing, light plotting and tech setting. This meant as part of the technician team for productions I got to learn how to safely use the talloscope.

 

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These pictures show the process of helping setting up the riggs and then the light plotting process this was to see how the lights would react to the different costumes.

In this week we ran the pieces out of order for light plotting, which was a bit of a pain for cueing the lights as when saving ques it goes into a continuous list, so to re-order things are a bit tricky from what Lee had said. Light plotting consisted of  going through the key points in each scene or piece to see what they wanted and what they could have, also considered was how well the audience could see their faces, this was solved through using front light, these are either warm or cold depending on what mood you want. then we had four booms set up for side light with 4 parcans and 4 side spots of sort, these provided figure and definition to performers, we also had back light the same as front light, then we have intelligent LED’s which can change colour this is where the fun starts with picking colours and transitions. However for more intimate pieces or when they wanted to highlight something we had three fairly tight spot lights to chose from SL SR CS. I found observing and helping Lee very interesting and really, really hope I can help out more in the future with him.

In this week we also worked on setting up the drama studio AKA backstage, this mesnt getting costume rails out and set up it also meant organising the props, before and after every run. door1

This door was used in the opening Alice in wonder land act, on the other side is a countryside painting, it is used in both a practical way and a comedic way.

 

 

November 2018 performing arts blog

This blog post will cover all different skills and what I did and how I improved them through November.

November has been a month for rehearsals rehearsals and you guessed it more rehearsals; In college we are working towards putting on a Christmas showcase, we have been working on some main pieces but have also had the chance to audition solo pieces, another big thing for this month was the musical auditions.

The main stuff was:

Dancin’ Fool

A Town Called Malice

Haqnd Jive

and  Audition prep

 

Dancin fool,

for this piece I really had to work on my characterisation and facial expression throughout the performance. One point I improved was thinking about who am I in this scene, and I decided that I am a cool show dancer there to entertain guests, that is why now in the dance I am very smiley and very very energetic. A big part of this show is the choreography set by Grover Dale, he took inspiration from a pioneer for dance, especially within musical theatre, the great Robert Louis Fosse. Sadly he died aged 60 in 1987, when Fosse was younger he had visions of becoming the next Fred Astaire… this was however short lived as he was told he would never dance due to problems with his legs. His first marriage was to his dance partner Mary Ann Niles, this didn’t last as he had a total of three marriages under his belt by the time he passed over.

Below is a picture of him performing his iconic dance style, this picture is almost a direct reflection of the iconic king of pops’ ‘smooth criminal’. People have said that, “None of his moves where his own and even his style his hats and his glove, it was all Fosse” – Karma.

fosse.jpg

MJ

If so and MJ truly has taken his style from Bobs style of dance, we should firstly give him the credit he deserves but also thank him for enabling the phenomenon of MJ.

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Image – Copacabana (1994 Original London Cast) – 4. Dancin’ Fool

A Town Called Malice,

This dance is very chilled and all about the hardships of life,  as a performer it is really important to tell the story that is why a lot of the time during this dance our hands are in our pockets, it is also very reliant of face expression as this is where my emotion and character will come from a lot of the time it is also important as the audience connect with faces and if your face is not telling the story they will not fully believe the story. I had to spend a lot of time working on and rehearsing the second line section as I kept of doing the wrong foot work, however I’ve now learnt the correct footwork and am able to confidently perform it. Paul Weller has said that it was written about his hometown Woking, and also the experiences of teenage life there. The song is also said to be a play on the title of a 1950 novel called A town Like Alice, however Paul Weller denies having read it at the time. The song itself was a hit released as the first single from an album on 29 January 1982, it entered the chart at number one on the British music charts, staying at the top for three weeks, preventing the stranglers from taking the number one spot. The song has also made quite an impact on TV and film, following taken from Wiki – “Town Called Malice” was featured prominently in the 1985 comedy film National Lampoon’s European Vacation, provided the soundtrack for a key scene in the 2000 drama Billy Elliot,[12] and was the opening track to the 2005 film The Matador.[13] It also appeared in the opening sequence of the third episode of the seventh season of The Walking Dead. In the Elementary series Sherlock rehearsed it in 18th episode of the sixth season. It is played before every Millwall F.C. home game and is also played before the second half of Woking F.C. games when they play at their home ground Kingfield Stadium.[citation needed]. The song was used in the opening scene of a season six episode of the CBS series Elementary” titled “The Visions of Norman P. Horowitz”.

 

Image result for men in blazers and cigarettes

 

Hand Jive,

This is a dance based on high energy, big characters and loud costumes. For this dance my biggest challenge was learning to do the dance without a partner 90% of the time, this was hard as there is a lot of partner work withing it and then a whole duets section, however I choreographed the section for me and my partner and taught it to her when I could. This dance also has something called ‘The drill’ in it and this was a challenge for me to learn as it is a rather quick movement. Taken from Wiki – The hand jive is also featured prominently in the Broadway musical Grease (1971) through the song “Born to Hand Jive“; in the movie adaptation of the musical, the song is performed by Sha Na Na. On a DVD audio commentary for the movie, choreographer Patricia Birch mentions that the dance also went by the much more risque name “hand job“, but the title was changed as Grease was aimed at a family audience. Jazz fusion guitarist John Scofield’s 1993 album is called by [Hand Jive (album)] The long-running Walt Disney World musical Festival of the Lion King (1997) uses this[clarification needed] during the song “Hakuna Matata,” and the performers and audience do it while singing the song. The audience is taught the hand jive some time before the show begins. The 2005 album “Midnight Boom” by the band The Kills features the hand-jive rhythm in the song “Sour Cherry.” The band’s goal while writing the album was to write rhythms inspired by old-school school-yard hand claps.

Image result for hand jive

 

We also spent a lot of time carrying out audition prep for the Addams family, this consisted f learning a monologue,  a song and an accent. The males had to learn script for Gomez, this was fun as he is a different character to one in most plays so playing around with it was interesting, the song was Morticia,  a musical number about his wife denying him cheeky fun time.

My actual audition however I flunked due to nerves, I stumbled on lines and songs, however it was a good experience as it was carried out like a professional audition. I got cast as Mal the american Father of Wednesdays boyfriend.

Image result for the addams family musical

Dance and Physical theatre with Jo Monday 1st and 8th October

In these sessions we looked at running a town called malice, and our physical theatre pieces. In a town called malice I enjoy the section along the back wall as it is a really nice cannon and really adds to the character of the piece. I still am struggling with the section after the second diagonal line as I am still messing up my footwork. I need to make sure that that section is set in stone and I am comfortable doing it, I will do this by running that section in front of the mirror and asking my friends or Jo if she can go over it with me at some point. I will aim to have it down by the end of November as I feel this is more than achievable.

After watching DV8’s ‘the cost of living’ we were given the challenge in small groups to re-create a piece from the film and add our own twist to it. My group was made up of me Danilo and Jasmine, we decided to do the ‘do you believe in life after love’ the reason for this is that we found it humorous because of the use of facial expressions and contrast in his character

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(Image above is at the start of the scene and his main expression throughout the film)

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(Image above is during the song and shows how he is set free by the music and the  repetition in his routine starts to waver)

In the piece we are doing however we have added our own narrative, at first it is me and Jasmine doing the same and then I start to enjoy myself more and more until I move around the space having a great time, however as I move back I reveal Dan and him and Jasmine do the dance but begin to do it together and begin to leave; In this case she is supposed to me my girlfriend so I then panic as I cannot find her and I run off,  they then come back on and change to a different dance, I finally come back on and I’m completely broken inside, I lose all enjoyment and get upset. We have tried to look at the timing with the music to make sure things fit, and I do this as the point where I come back on is a slower piece of the track and fits with/ reflects my emotion. To improve I am going to increase my energy when I am enjoying myself, I will do this by improving my endurance this will mean working hard in body conditioning and thinking about being a healthy performer, I aim to look at being as energetic as possible by the Christmas Variety show.