13/05/24 - 16/05/24

 Week 58 of Milly's acting journey

Monday was a very hot day, so we focused on vocal warm-ups and acting games that would use our improvisational skills and test them. It was a nice start to the day before we all separate into our different groups. Kelly decided to spend the day with Radium Girls cast as she felt like she hadn't spent time with them like she's spent with the 'One Flew Over..' casts, so we had Abbie today who decided that it would be beneficial for us to do a full run through if we had enough time and attempt it without our scripts, and it was chosen that Cast 1 would go first. I felt really confident on the first few scenes and performing it without my script, so I appreciated the challenge as I'd normally hold it as a safety blanket in case I felt myself forgetting the line. I did need it for the group therapy scenes as those are quite bitty, in the sense that her lines have no correlation to the lines she's responding to because her objective is to just create chaos within the group, not make it better. After lunch, we went straight into Act 2 and got to just before Nurse Ratched enters to disrupt the party. Due to all of Act 2 still being new to us, it was good to go over it and look at the blocking of it all. A lot of the scenes were new to me, like the party scene is very new to us all, so we just went for it and waited until the following day to see how Kelly would block it and how she envisioned it to look like. 

After our morning warm-ups, Alan had an activity based on listening to one another using the main three listening types - empathetic, selective and ignoring the person. I worked with Adam on it, and it was clear to see how we both reacted to all 3 of the different types of listening ways. When we did the empathetic listening, we both were intent and asked questions about what they were saying alongside being genuinely interested in the conversation. Selective and full on ignoring the person were very different and Alan made a great point about the whole reason for the activity, in that when you are acting alongside one person, you need to be empathetic listening, since a lot of people try and just remember what their next line is and don't really pay attention to the lines the person opposite them is saying so there's no reaction to it at all. I really enjoyed the warm-up and it set us up nicely for the rest of our rehearsals. Because there weren't a lot of rooms and we didn't have a lot of our cast, we looked a McMurphy's death scene which is the very last scene of Act 2 in the black box room. Callum wasn't in, so Aiden played McMurphy for both casts so that we could all have a go at performing it. Kelly wanted us cracking on with it too so it was great to go back and say we have it blocked. After lunch, Cast 2 did the entire end of Act 2 from the party to the very end, including Billy's death which is always such a gripping scene to watch. In terms of blocking and getting to learn lines off script, I found today very productive and I wrote down lots of notes regarding Nurse Ratched and how I feel she would say a few lines to show off her sinister power. 

Wednesday started off as a perfect day. We found out Stockton Riverside will be performing at the National Theatre! SHOUT, which we found out was selected as the winner, will be performed by us in June!! After we all calmed down, we got on with rehearsals and as a lot of people were off yesterday, we revisited everything that we did yesterday with Cast 2 taking lead, and Adam playing Billy just so Noah could watch what he missed yesterday. It was great for me to watch again as I got to try and do a bit of it off script since I had free time to learn it. Straight afterwards, Cast 1 got to perform it, with Noah playing Adam just to have a go at it. Callum was missing from yesterday too, so seeing his take on the very end scene was interesting to see. Since Wednesdays end a little earlier, that's all we got done, but I find revisiting scenes the best way to get the lines and blocking into my head. 

Thursday was dedicated to presenting our production role PowerPoints to Kelly or Abbie. Everyone in the fundraising group went in earlier to go over our power point and just check if there's anything unclear or we missed off the list. Our presentation was at 10:50 so we the second group to go. Abbie and Kelly were both very impressed with what we had achieved with fundraising, and what we plan to do with the money we raise, and how we will just equally split the pot so that everything will be fair. Rehearsals were quite stop and start since presentations would still be going ahead and Kelly would be concentrating on that rather than us, so we took leadership and just cracked on. We did both casts and a full run through of Act 2, with everyone in their original casts. It felt very successful, and I got to do my strangling scene once again with Callum, and it felt really real but didn't hurt one bit. Our two fight co-ordinators George and Aiden were on standby and made sure everything ran smoothly which was great to be aware of.