First Full Run Through of Grease

Summer Nights 2:00-5:29
This was our first full run through of Grease. This was when we put all of the scenes that we'd been rehearsing into a whole performance. We had to have our teacher fill in for the two boys who were helping us out. I feel that this stop start momentum made it difficult for us to perform at 100% energy. I felt that throughout Summer Nights I didn't have much to do due to the lack of the choreography. I didn't feel confident enough in my characterization to carry Rizzo throughout the song with no dialogue or choreography. In order to fix this I asked my director for different rehearsal techniques that I could try in order to improve upon my characterization. He told me to try Hot seating and the roll on the wall, as it makes you think about the decisions your character would make and what type of personality they have. My target is to use this in my next workshop and ask my peers if they see an improvement in my character.
However one positive to summer nights was our final note as I was able to reach my note that's above Ellie's. The harmonization worked well and created a climax that would give the audience a cathartic reaction.

5:31-6:54 Throughout the next scene I struggled with my timings as I was late with my first line "This guy sounds like a drip". I went away and practised this scene later in the evening in order to create a smoother flow when delivering lines.

Hopelessly Devoted 7:14-8:28
When watching back my solo I realized that I needed to add more characterization. Because I had a sore throat I was focusing on how my vocals sounded rather than my performance as a whole. I set my self a target to film myself singing this song and focus on improving my character through song. A tecnique i am going to try is trying to relate my characters emotion to a memory that I have lived, maybe channeling this emotion will make my character more believable for the audience.

Freddy My Love 10:19-20:58
My role throughout Freddy My Love is to sing to top harmony. Throughout this run through I think that practicing my harmony from my recording has helped a lot as I have been able to find my starting note much easier. The only thing that I feel still needs work is trying to hold my ending high note for longer so that I don't drop the three part harmony in the performance. In order to do this I am going to practice pulling my stomach in more and breathing in more breath in order to put more energy into the note.

The Jive 13:36-16:16
One improvement that I think we need to make, looking back, is my entrance into the dance I feel that it could be a symbolic moment that shows that Danny doesn't act like himself when he is around his friends. At 14:06 I get into the formation for our partner section. When watching this video back I found that Ramy and I were out of time. This shows that we need to have a slow breakdown of all the movements within this section in order to find what we are doing wrong that keeps us out of time with the rest of the group. I will ask Ellie and Brandon to go through this with us as they are always in time to the song and are present in all of our workshops and are easier to get hold of. Another Improvement that I need to make is that I need to be more upset when Danny leaves me alone again as Rebecca is going to sing her solo to me and 'pick me up' but if i'm not acting upset it won't make sense.

You're The One That I Want
I need to work on my characterization throughout this number, as i'm meant to be 'sexy' and teasing Danny but at the minute there is no physical contact between us and no attitude when I am singing. In order to rectify this I will book more rehearsals with Ramy in order to get used to dancing closely with him, and have after school sessions with our director in order to help me with my characterization.

Learning You're The One That I Want with a Choreographer

My Target: To learn the chorography to You’re The One That I Want and practice my characterisation.

We also worked with a choreographer in order to choreograph our finale song which is ‘You’re The One That I Want’. In this song I play Sandy with Ramy playing Danny. We were also using the 2010 London cast’s choreography again because they also have a small cast and it makes it easier to follow your characters movements. Within this song I have to lure Danny in by selling the idea of sex. In order to do this I have to be very confident and get the balance of dynamic gestures just right. The song is good for an ensemble piece as it allows everybody to dance in partners and showcase their dancing ability. In order to teach the choreography it was decided that it would be best to initially focus on the movements the others have to perform whilst Ramy and I are dancing together and then work with us separately. We then started on the unison section that is choreographed in the second chorus of the song. Within this workshop we focused on just getting our footwork right and making sure that our proxemics with our partners was good. We decided that we would move onto adding our hand and arm movement in the next workshop.  One problem I did find was being able to dance so sexily and so close to Ramy as I am not as confident in the role as I should be. When having to do actions like swing my leg up onto him and run my hands down his chest I felt slightly awkward. This is something that I will need to overcome in order to play Sandy as in this scene as she is body confident. In order to get better at this my Choreographer, told me to research into the character more and schedule rehearsals with Ramy in order to get more comfortable dancing together.  

My Target for my next workshop would be to add the arm movements to the unison section of the choreography and book sessions with Ramy so that we can practice dancing together and getting more comfortable.

Summer Nights First Run Through

This is our first attempt at singing Summer Nights and performing the beginning of our choreography from our repertoire. From watching back this recording, I can hear us listening to the 2010 London casts version. One problem we did face when performing this was lack of confidence in the dance movements and the arrangements of the song. As you can see by the video the London cast hold notes on for longer than what we rehearsed. My target for my next workshop is to watch over the 2010 cast's video and gain confidence in the choreography. Then that will enable me to perform Summer Nights without the aid of the video and we can sing our arrangement for the song, rather than getting confused with theirs. 

Working with a Choreographer and Learning Summer Nights

My Target: To learn the choreography to Summer Nights from a piece of repertoire that Fits well with my company.

When working with a choreographer we knew that we would have to find a stage version of Grease to use as repertoire so we researched different versions of Summer Nights and came across the 2010 London Cast. This repertoire was perfect as it had a small cast and also showed the whole songs choreography. After happily choosing this as what we were going to use, we split ourselves up at different sides of the stage to create our crosscutting effect. In order to start learning the chorography  we worked on the girl’s and boy’s parts separately, using certain lyrics as anchor points, prompting us to remember the different actions we needed to perform to perform. An example of this would we ‘Splashing around’ On this line two of the girls had to lean on the table Ellie was standing on and kick their legs whilst Waving their arms in unison.  One problem we did encounter was that the video we used as repertoire also had cameras crosscutting the actors, meaning that when the T-birds were on screen we couldn’t see what the girls were doing. This meant that we had to rely on our characterisation in order to keep the scene flowing and not make it look static when we didn’t have any choreography to follow. In order to combat this we decided that If we learnt all of the choreography first we would then be able to stage our moments of ‘dialogue’ This meaning that we knew exactly what person we were going to look at and ‘act with’ when we didn’t have a section of choreography. One thing that I felt I struggled with was getting the dynamics of the choreography right. Summer Nights is such an upbeat song and I struggled to keep my movements big, depicting the ‘American Teen’ vibe that I was supposed to be giving off.

My target for my next workshop would be to keep myself ‘bouncy’ throughout the routine and to try singing the song as well as performing the choreography. This is important in order to know if we need to make any changes to the choreography so that we can still sing well.

Second Workshop With Director

My Target: To find libretto that could link our songs and scenes together.

In the second workshop when working with a director we sat down and chose all of the libretto needed in order to link together all of our chosen scenes. We felt that the dialogue is extremely important as it allows the audience to see what each character’s personality is like and what their relationships are with other characters. Grease is very character driven and because of this we had to learn the differences each character had. To do this we stood in a circle and performed an exercise where we could improve upon our characterisation skills. When the director counted down from 3 we had to pose as a given character. This helped as it made us thing about posture, body language, facial expression and levels. It made us embody certain characters, which also made us think about how they would react with other characters on stage. 


After performing this exercise we took the beginning of our script and started staging it keeping in mind our characters proxemics with other characters. It was decided by the director that the boys would be on one side and the girls would be on the other to create the effect of crosscutting on the stage. This effect would then carry on into our first song ‘Summer Nights’. We were hopeful that this planned staging would allow us to have something to start rehearsing with, but also could be a theme that carries through the whole performance. Grease is an extremely apparent Boys Vs Girls Musical, and their groups of friends are  important to them.  So having almost a boy’s side and a girl’s side of the stage helps to create this sense of ownership between the friends.

I felt that although we started looking at libretto we still don’t have enough in order to link together all of our narrative. The target for my next workshop would be to continue with characterisation work for half the workshop and then carry on trying to find pieces of script that we can add within scenes in order for our condensed version of grease to still make sense to the audience.

First workshop working with a Musical Director

My Target: To arrange Summer Nights and start to work on characterisation through song.

In my first workshop with the Musical director we looked at singing the opening number Summer Nights as an ensemble. Firstly, it was important to find each of our ranges so that when singing Harmonies we were singing comfortably. In order to do this we all did a warm up where we would sing up the scale, whenever we were starting to feel that we were putting strain on our voice we would stop and that is where we would know where our voices are the most comfortable. As we sang it was evident that I was the only one that could sing around the soprano range so I was placed on the top harmonies.  After this we split ourselves into Danny, Sandy, Pink Ladies and T-Birds. This was so that it made it easier for Danny and Sandy to work together when singing, and for me, the Pink ladies and the T-Birds to sing the harmonies underneath. One problem we did face was that Ellie who is playing Sandy is an Alto and couldn’t reach her final note in the song, In order to make it work and still include the Harmony we brought mine and the other Pink ladies’ final note up so that we would sing above her instead. In order for us to not forget what parts we are singing, Mrs Guy our Musical director told us to record ourselves singing our parts the song and then practice it.

I feel that I achieved my target of arranging the song Summer Nights and having my recording that I can practice with in my own time. In my next workshop I would like to start arranging other songs and continue to practice characterisation within song.

First workshop with Director

My target: To pick the scenes that will be used within our 20 minutes of Grease.

In one of my first workshops for Grease we worked with a Director and condensed the Grease musical in order to make it roughly 20 minutes long for our showcase. In order to do this we first had to decide what plot we wanted and what character’s stories we wanted to follow. Although different characters have great songs like Rizzos’ There Are worse things I could do’, we chose to stick with the story of Danny and Sandy. This meant that our musical had to start with the ensemble song Summer Nights. We all felt this was a great song to include as it is extremely character based and would be able to show off our ability to act within song. It also meant that we could convey the plot to the audience directly though the lyrics and not need to include anything of Danny and Sandy at the beach at the beginning of the musical. After this we split the rest of our musical into scenes, the next being Danny and Sandy meet, then the sleep over that the girls have when ‘Freddy My Love’ is sang in order for someone to have a solo. Next would be ‘Hopelessly Devoted’ which would give another opportunity for a solo and tells the audience that sandy loves Danny but doesn’t feel like he loves her back. After than we will include Hand Jive as it allows for an opportunity for choreography and to showcase that we can act, dance and sing at the same time. We will have ‘You’re The One That I Want’ as the finale of Grease. When piecing all of the scenes together we knew that we would have to include dialogue in order for the plot to make sense, because of this we tasked ourselves to look through the script in our next workshop and find all the libretto we wanted to add. At the end of this workshop we chose to have a small cast, so that the people involved would be more reliable and so that we have to challenge ourselves with multi rolling. In order to play to our strengths, we decided that Ramy would Play Danny as he is the most confident in his acting and singing ability, We would have Ellie as Sandy within Summer Nights and then multi roll as Marty, Rebecca as Frenchy, Erin as Rizzo, and then myself as Marty in Summer nights and Then Sandy for the end.  We decided this Multi-rolling would work so that I would be able to sing a solo section too. 

I feel that we reached this target by selection songs that would help to create a smooth flowing narrative together.  The target for the next workshop is to find some dialogue that could link these songs and scenes together.

Skills Audit

My Skills Audit from BetsyJoWarren