Monday 26th November 2018

On Tuesday the rest of the group began with working on “Razzle Dazzle”. I am in this scene, but I’m just sort of sitting around watching this all unfold. So, I decided it would be more beneficial for me and Zoe to go off and work on our piece to ensure that we were 100% confident with the song. So, we ran over the piece as a whole and identified that the cane piece still wasn’t as strong as we’d like it. It was much better after the breaking down and working on our faces that we did the other week, so we decided to try it again but this time work together to identify where we went wrong and that we were both in time together. Sam mentioned to us at the end of last week that we really need to use diction in order to get our volume up on the song as it’s quite low, so both Zoe and I went through the script and identified the parts where we felt that the volume dropped and we ran over this and tried to use Sam’s idea about diction in order to get the volume up.

I decided it would be a good idea for me to familiarise myself with the Razzle Dazzle choreography so that I would know how to react and what to react to. So, I spent the last 10 minutes of the lesson watching their choreography. Nadine told us that on Thursday we would be having a mock exam. This shocked us all because everyone felt that the show was nowhere near ready. For me this acted almost as a warning light as I knew that I wasn’t comfortable with any of my scenes in terms of my lines.

So, Thursday came around and I’d been working tirelessly to attempt to learn my lines and I felt fairly comfortable with most of the scenes apart from mine and Rachels scene. This was manly because it hadn’t really been pieced together much like everything else had. Rachel wasn’t here on Thursday as she had an audition for university and I was well aware that the real date for the exam was getting closer and we still hadn’t pieced it together yet, so it was worrying me, but this meant that I still had time to familiarise myself with the lines.

So, the mock I felt didn’t go half as bad as what I was expecting. It wasn’t perfect, in fact it was far from it, but I was relatively happy. We did have to skip over I can’t do it alone as Rachel wasn’t her but the work Zoe and I had put into Nowadays and Hot Honey Rag really did pay off and we both couldn’t stop smiling throughout because everything was going right. Nadine then gave us some feedback:

1.       She said that the singing and choreography for all that jazz needed a bit of clarification, she said that the beginning was strong, but it was when we got to the call and response bit was when it kind of fell apart and became messy. A lot of us knew that it’d fallen apart when we were doing it as we were all looking at one another in desperation praying that one of us was confident with what we were doing.

2.       Roxie boys it was clear that we weren’t confident with the dance and it really showed in our faces and that we should be more confident with the dance.

3.       In mine and Alex’s first scene together, it was mentioned that Alex kept facing his back to the audience and that he needed to make sure that he was facing the front, this was partially my fault because I keep turning away from him in an attempt to almost conceal myself away from him and he often would try and get me to look at him.

4.       During Razzle Dazzle it was mentioned that I look a bit out of place, and I completely agreed, I really felt like I didn’t know how to react to what was going on, I didn’t know whether to be shocked because he’d stolen the limelight or angry about it. I figured this would be something that I needed to talk to Richard about.

5.       Another thing that was said was that during Razzle Dazzle when Alex run up the stairs was that he needs to be careful on the rostra staging because if he’s wearing socks he could easily slip over and really hurt himself, I need to think about this as well because I don’t own any jazz shoes and had just planned on wearing black socks, so I need to be careful if I do get up on the rostra.

6.       Nadine said that Nowadays was okay, but we need to interact with one another more when we are singing. I think because both of us aren’t confident singers we’re focusing a lot when we’re singing to make sure it sounds alright and we often forget about our faces. So, I think this is something that we need to work on during our spare time rather than wasting lesson time on it.

7.       After Zoe and I had finished our dance no one really knew what was going on afterwards so, Nadine mentioned that this was something that we needed to clarify nearer the show.

On the Friday everyone was mainly working on what they felt needed the most work. We began by clarifying the harmony in All that Jazz, we decided that it would be better for more people to do the higher harmony and for Rachel to do the lower harmony as she’s comfortable with it and she has quite a naturally loud voice. We then ran over Roxie for all of the boys in the scene and really worked on knowing the choreography and ensuring our faces didn’t look like we didn’t know what we were doing. And then I spent a lot of the lesson just writing down my lines and reading them over and over again as I feel like this is the most beneficial way for me to get to know my lines. Rachel wasn’t here again so if she was, we would’ve gone over our scene together, but I figured I would learn the lines so that when she was in, we could instantly get to rehearsing without scripts which would benefit our characterisation and rehearsal process.  I did mention briefly to Richard about how I should react in Razzle Dazzle and he said that he would opt for the angrier kind of reaction just because the whole show is about Roxie gaining the limelight and then all of a sudden he has it. He said that we would work on it during the tech runs when we would have some time to work with props and lighting as well.