Unit 9: Log

12th September 2018: Wednesday 

This lesson we watched an older version of the film A Christmas Carol, with the actors. While watching the film I noted down ideas that popped into my head for an opportunity to add a dance; for example, the toy shop that Tiny Tim was staring into, it had a long piece of music so the dancers could be toys that come to life. Another scene where we could have dancing was Fezziwig’s party scene that’s set in the Christmas past where the party guests are dancing. The actors also had ideas for when scrooge walks past some Carollers he could push them out the way. 

14th September 2018: Friday 

We were given our scripts and began reading through them, so everyone understood the flow of the play. The actors then showed us their version of A Christmas Carol in five minutes, it was easy to understand the story still even with the limited time.  

19th September 2018: Wednesday 

This lesson was all about making tableaux, we started off in groups and we were told to think of main themes that are shown in A Christmas Carol. After some thought we decided on redemption and then the next task was to think about making a Tableaux that conveys redemption. We came up with: two scrooges, one showing him scaring some poor people and the other him lending some money to a Begger. This shows the progression that scrooge had made. We then saw the other groups and made some improvements in either the way the person was standing or where they were standing. After we had seen each group, we then merged each group to create one main Tableaux that we will start and finish the play with. The next task was to create a Tableaux that will start moving to begin the scene of Fezziwig’s party, splitting into two groups each creating a party Tableaux and a small scene. Once again, we merged the two different scenes to form the scene. I think this is a good technique as it is a way of getting the audience to think about the mood and atmosphere of the scene before it actually starts. 

21st September 2018: Friday 

Today was the auditions for A Christmas Carol, Claire, Me and Marshall had been talking outside of lessons how the part of Christmas Yet To Come could be portrayed through dance as that character doesn’t have a speaking part. We decided to audition for this role and we created a short piece of choreography that includes the Ghost main action of pointing as our stimulus. We had created motifs to show the passing of time and of the pain he’s caused to people.      

26th September 2018: Wednesday 

This morning after ballet we began to look at steps to include in our “snowflake” dance at the beginning of the play that sets the mood and scene of winter such as ballet walks and the different variations such as travelling backwards and sideways and some gliding steps to act as if we were ice-skating. Then in the afternoon lesson the actors were away on a trip so we demonstrated some of the steps to the remainder of the class and also showed our Christmas yet to come dance as well. We then started to think about including scrooge into our dance and what lines he will say.  

28th September 2018: Friday 

We began running through the script cutting or adding anything that was needed. I was assigned a role along with Marshall and Claire to be poor people outside scrooge’s workplace. 

1st October 2018: Monday: 

In the acting lesson we worked on the scene of where Scrooge meets the ghost of Christmas Past. During the song that the ghost sings there is an instrumental piece of music where the dancers (Me, Claire and Marshall) come in as if we were figures of the past as after the song comes to a fade, we become figure of boys who Scrooge used to know. (video below) After we began creating choreography for the song ‘Hard knock life’ for when scrooge comes to meet ignorance and want. (video below) 

3rd October 2018: Wednesday 

This time after ballet we worked on cleaning up the dance scene in Past’s song. Then later in the class with the actors we began to teach them the choreography to ‘hard knock life’. We began to teach them the beginning by putting them into pairs and labelling them either one or two whether you were on the left or right side of your partner. We taught them section by section making sure they understood the timing and the movements themselves. At times it was hard to teach them as sometimes they were talking amongst themselves or weren’t listening but we managed to teach the majority of the choreography. (video below)

5th October 2018: Friday 

Today we ran through the whole play blocking out spaces and handing out extra roles, for example I was assigned another role: Rebecca Cratchit. This full rehearsal helped us see which scenes are needing more work and which scenes are coming along nicely. We were marking cues for when we enter the scene in our scripts along with movement needed. 

31st October 2018: Wednesday 

We created the choreography for Fred’s party scene in the lesson after ballet and then later we taught it to the actors. When teaching we didn’t have music yet so we went with counts. They difficulties with teaching this dance was the change in the directions and the going in and out of everybody. When picking the song for the dance we decided on ‘Deck the halls’ by pentatonix, the only problem with this song was that the song had made the tempo of the dance faster which threw the actors off slightly.   

November - December:
From this stage in the process, the main objectives for the rehearsals were to work on the dance of Christmas yet to come and the full run through of the whole play. Something that went well during the rehearsals for the group party dances was that everyone knew the choreography, however they did need improvement such as making the movement more precise and together an example would be spacing for Fred’s party; changing the line from vertical to horizontal, as it made better use of the space, while taking into account of the stage at the back. Marshall and I decided to change the choreography for the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as we felt that we created the choreography with three people in mind and that without the third anymore it wasn’t working. This was difficult as we were running out of time before the performance so we were on a tight schedule but also because we had to change the music we were using too. Despite having to start from scratch it gave us the opportunity to take a look at the script to base the choreography off of the text. Another thing that was good during rehearsals is that I wasn’t in many of the acting scenes so that gave me the opportunity to work on the Christmas future dance with Marshall however that meant we hardly had the opportunity to practice with Scrooge. 

Christmas carol evaluation:  

My roles were the ghost of Christmas yet to come, ignorance and want, Rebecca Cratchit, skaters, figures and partygoers. My main role was the ghost of Christmas yet to come, alongside Marshall, we auditioned for this role, because we thought that the role would be conveyed better through dance as the character doesn’t speak.  

To develop my character and the dance for the ghost of Christmas yet to come, I researched what traits this character has, such as scary and mysterious. After watching the film and having read the book I knew this ghost has a signature piece of movement which is the pointing of its finger towards the future.  

Originally there were three dancers playing the ghost, but due to unexpected circumstances we were left with two. At this point in time we had already made a piece of choreography with the three of us with music, we had decided on keeping the choreography for that moment in time with just the two of us. This piece of choreography had the classic pointing of the fingers and the creepy feel. The feedback I got for it was to be stronger in my movements and to make sure to keep the diagonal a diagonal. Unfortunately, we had to scrap that music and choreography as it didn’t fit anymore and lacked the impact we wanted.  

Two days before the first show, Marshall and I created the new choreography for the dance which we were a lot more content with; it had more dance content than the last one and we were a lot more involved with scrooge. 

During the rehearsal process there was a lot of stopping and starting. This is because the majority of the time people were late to rehearsals; some didn’t even bother turning up at all until the end. We had to start over the rehearsals as we lost our first scrooge, this became frustrating as it meant we had to go over things we had already done; this became a small setback in the process of completing the show. It was difficult teaching the three dances to the acting students because as I have mentioned earlier half of them weren’t here half the time. Also, as they don’t do any dancing it took them longer to pick up the choreography and harder for them to remember it. Another thing that was hard during rehearsals was that we had separate lessons from the actors and we only shared two lessons together, however I think that it was good as well as it allowed me and Marshall to work on our choreography and the other dances.  

During the rehearsals I learned that everyone needed to have more energy and put more effort in. The skills I learned was to keep focused and continuously working on the dances or the scenes I'm in as there were distractions and delays, so I made sure I was always working on something.  I would’ve started the dress runs and tech runs sooner but due to circumstances and being set back it was understandable..To prepare for unit 12 I just need to make sure I have everything planned out and work systematically in order to finish by a deadline leaving room for any additional improvements and more rehearsal run throughs. 

Overall, I feel that the final performances were effective as I had done my research on my character and so I delivered a strong performance alike everyone else. Also, the costumes were strong as it set the time period clearly which helps portray the context of how life was like during the Victorian times. The feedback I got from my family was all positive, such as I" it was good as it really demonstrated the change in scrooge’s attitude towards poor people”. During one of the performances there was a lighting issue which affected the some of the performers focus but they still pulled through with the scene.