1. Rent Rehearsal with Musical Director (full write up)
The focus of this rehearsal as a class was to try and sort the staging out and to begin to add
characterisation, personally my focus in this lesson was to try and do the end whistle note as
I have not felt confident enough to do, so I thought in this rehearsal with the musical director
involved I would try it and listen to the feedback given. I also wanted to work on my
projection in the parts before the whistle note as well as my articulation and timing. The
rehearsal was held in the drama studio, where most of our musical theatre rehearsals are
held, and it was lead by our musical director as we needed to hear feedback of what to work
on, which included some of us going away and learning the lyrics so we wouldn't miss the
first “how” in ‘how do you measure a year?”. As a company we decided that the
characterisation needs to start being brought in as at the moment we look very plain and
bored, therefore we need to start working on our posture, mannerism, our reaction and
interaction with other characters and expressions. Seasons of Love is the opening number
because as a company it showcases how versatile we are, as out of the whole cast
performing Seasons of Love, only 3 of us are singers/ have singing experience, as well as
setting a good pace for the rest of the showcase, and also opens on a very strong, emotional
piece. So in this lesson as I said, I achieved the whistle note, the feedback I was given was
to not rush the note, to ensure that I do not damage my vocal cords and that I can get up to
the note comfortably and the best I can. From my peers I think they were quite shocked that
I managed to do the note as watching the video back they all looked rather shocked when i
got to the note. We were also told that we need to focus on characterisation, and when we
were starting to clap, our director told us we had a dead clap, that we needed to embody the
full character and that we re did the lower harmony, so we took ria from the higher harmony
and put her in the lower harmony to enable the lower harmony to sound to have more
projection. Personally I feel confident when doing the harmonies as I find it easy to focus on
just my notes, and to block out the other tones of singing. And as a class I think it is one of
our strong skills, as it only took us a few tries in the first rehearsal of Seasons of Love with
our musical director, we only have to polish them off now. As a class no one really discussed
lead roles of actually having roles, we just divided the three solos up, to the 3 singers in the
class, you could possibly imply that the character’s solo that I have, could be a lead role, as
it is a strong part and she would not sing it if she didn't have some kind of input. In this
lesson I felt my skill in projection was my strength as when watching the videos back I can
identify my voice in the mix of all the voices, I feel a weakness I had was holding the whistle
note but I don't really expect much from it, because it was my first time doing it so i am trying
not to break it down to much or think about what was wrong with it, I just want to know what
to improve and how to make it better. Which is to do more vocal warm ups to lubricate my
vocal cords, so that I can achieve the note. At the start of this class, the target was to sort
out the staging for the piece, but instead we focused on singing the actual song as we felt it
needed a rehearsal to make sure we still knew what we were doing throughout the piece. I
felt personally that at the end of the rehearsal I had achieved my goal of working on my
projection; as I said previously I could identify my voice when rewatching the videos of the
rehearsal. My SMART target for the next rehearsal is to start bringing more characterisation
into the piece and to start showing more emotions when singing my solo part, and maybe
add more interaction and reaction with other characters.
