UNIT 12 : Evaluation of Rehearsal & Performance Process

I feel like the most successful moment within my performance as an individual, was the girls scene, where I played the character ‘Dionne’ alongside  Felicia as ‘Crissy’ and Erin as ‘Jeanie’. The reason why I felt this scene was so successful was because of my efforts in to my character development and creating depth to my character and the scene. I understood my characters purpose in the production and what motivates her and how she responds to the other girls. I understood that the reason for the introduction to the girls but more specifically ‘Jeanie’ was to implement context to aid the audience’s understanding of the relationship dynamics within the play and set up for later encounters. For example we later would understand that ‘Jeanie’ is obsessed with ‘Claude’ but Claude loves ‘Sheila’ but Sheila is in love with ‘Berger’ - Claude’s best friend at that! Additionally I had effective blocking which allowed me to make my own acting choices, which I found helped convey to the audience the dynamics of the friendship between the two girls, Crissy and Dionne are much closer as they tease Jeanie about her obsessive crush on Claude and they are able to share that with the audience and help the audience to feel more included in the secret shenanigans behind Jeanie’s back. I also felt that because I knew my lines off book very quickly I was able to explore the scene in various ways, each time would be different however it worked because I felt it was more authentic that way because I didn’t have to think of the lines and anticipate what was coming next, I just embodied the character and stuck with it.

Vocally, I was proud of myself for pushing through my lower harmony in the number “ I Got Life”. The song is very silly and playful and often changes pace and vocal range as well as the moment. What I was anxious about was that because there was only three girls on that harmony line, I felt like we may be overpowered by the rest of the cast and our harmonies. It is a quick vocal adjustment, but I felt like I achieved it because I cheated the line before and quickly took a deep breath in preparation for my harmony. Another reason why I was concerned about the delivery of this harmony was because I walk with my back faced to the audience until I get to my next blocked position, so I have to work harder to ensure I project and articulate my line and harmony so that the sound is clear to the audience and the rest of the cast because it could potentially throw them off.

Physically I was very proud of the dance to “Electric Blues” - the opening number to Act 2. I remembered the characterisation I needed to portray throughout, although it challenged my endurance multiple times in rehearsals, I would particularly run out of breath by the second chorus which would make it really hard for me to finish the rest of the number, I think the energy and atmosphere of the show helped me to push through the number and make it look like as a tribe/cast - we do this all the time.

I believe the most successful aspects of our performance as an ensemble was again the routine to “Electric Blues” the movement was very challenging and physically demanding and I felt like we pulled together as a company to help encourage those who are not particularly as capable as others regarding picking up steps or muscle memory. In my opinion the dance looked very authentic because the energy and positivity was real, as a cast we made that decision to put in the work for extra rehearsal time and so it stopped becoming a challenge and became more fun to present as a unit. We all hugged as a tribe but also as a cast right before the number and it proved successful and watching the performance back, every thing was on point.

Vocally I feel like “ Dead End” was our strongest vocal performance, although its not as demanding as the others we still need to represent the frustration and alienation the tribe would be feeling and we have to show that in our facial expressions and the way we deliver the lines. Some feedback was to make sure we got to the end of each line and emphasised the last word of each line because it means something to the tribe and audience needs to feel and understand that. 

The Indians Vs Americans scene was the most memorable for me, ‘Hair’ is a psychedelic musical and  so it gives us a chance to take risks with our ideas, because it is a ‘trip’ experience, there were no limits to our creativity. So we took a very dramatic and stereotypical approach to portray these characters. For example the Indian’s created a call which informed the audience and the Americans of there presence before they entered the stage and then they used a rhythmical step and clap formation to approach the Americans and stayed true to the physicality of how we thought a tribal Indian would  act.

By including all three disciplines I can categorically say the most challenging aspect of our performance was the opening number “Aquarius”. I say this because as an ensemble we continued to get the same feedback which was a problem because it meant we weren’t absorbing the feedback and weren’t understanding the context of the song and the production entirely. Vocally I feel like we struggled to understand the style in which we should sing the song and this effected our dancing. We needed to find a balance of projection, articulation and characterisation. When instructed to be louder and more clear we were almost shouting, which drained our energy and then when we were told to take more of a slower and smooth approach we kept at that same level through the song, there was no vocal dynamic and no clear change in the story. Physically the movement side of things was great, it looked really good when everyone was doing the same thing we just needed to keep rehearsing because we changed some of the choreography the day before our show due to spacing, we needed to ensure we were all doing the same thing at the same time even though we were in duets, we were still performing in unison. We needed to remember our characterisation right from the beginning to the end of the song, our aim was to take the audience on our psychedelic journey as well and deeply engage them into our performance. We lacked characterisation and I think this was due to the lack of knowledge of the songs meaning. We needed to be more representational and show he audience of our amazement and sense of wonder of this new era where we were free to explore our sexuality and drugs and a time to emerge from societal evils such as racism and war and just be happy to be ourselves. We needed to keep this mindset throughout the number but this meant trusting our partners and feeling comfortable enough to portray this more sexual style of movement.
For me, I think I contributed a lot to the rehearsal process and development of the performance. Due to the class feeling under rehearsed after doing the first stagger run of the performance, it was my idea to arrange for the class to come together twice in the half term holidays for extra rehearsal time so that when we return we won't be behind schedule. I also helped 'Claude' (Blaize) and 'Jeanie' (Erin) with there duologue. They felt that they weren't making any progression with their scene or development in their characters. On the outside looking in I felt that the relationship was not three dimensional so the meaning would be lost. In my opinion Erin was holding back and she had a lot of time to be more comical with her obsession with Claude before she gets more serious and enquires about his draft card. My advice was to try out an exercise me and Blaize had actually previously learnt in first year when doing duologues which was to just improvise a conversation and when you feel ready just incorporate your lines into the conversation. This is effective because it helps create a build up and a rise of energy in the scene. I also took the position of Jeanie to present to Erin my interpretation on how the scene would go.
As this has been my first musical I feel like I was very naïve to the amount of time and energy that would be needed to make this production to what it came to be. I felt that the reason why the development of some characters and scenes were slow to progress was because we lacked depth and knowledge. We underestimated how much research we would need and how useful it would be to our character development. A skill I've learnt is how to just be in the scene, playing someone in the tribe taught me to not over act and just show that I am dedicated to my character throughout and I am completely entranced into the scene. All together I would say my target for future development would be to take much more risks and make more acting choices. I feel like this will help me progress as an actress because it will open opportunities for me because I'll be able to tackle various roles whilst also finding myself an my own style as a actress.
I feel like I communicated my ideas to the audience because when playing my main character Dionne I formed a persona for her with the way I portrayed her in the girls seen. So I felt that she was a very sassy and sexually confident person, I tried to subtly demonstrate to the audience her appeal to 'Hubert' ( Margaret Mead's husband) by making eye contact and small gestures up until I made a move. When I got dropped because Margaret caught us my response or rather Dionne's response was to laugh about it with the rest of the tribe, because that's how playful they are and with Margaret and Hubert being apart of the older generation the tribe has fun with their intrigue in their hippie culture. In addition it also showed Dionne's relationship with the tribe and how well they know her.