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1. Chicago Context and Character
Chicago is a Jazz/dark comedy musical set in the 1920’s. The theme of the
musical is ‘crime pays’ and it is about Female criminals that talk about the
crimes they have committed through the eyes of Roxie who sees her life
through a musical. The story is a satire take on true stories and the corruption
within criminal justice. The piece we are doing from Chicago is ‘Cell Block
Tango’. This piece is about six women at the Cook County Jail who explain
why they are in jail as they stay accused of killing their romantic partners.
During this piece, I am playing the character Velma Kelly. Kelly is one of the
main characters in Chicago and is based around Belva Gaertner. She was a
cabaret singer who had been married and divorced twice until she found, what
she thought to be, the love of her life, Walter Law. She ended up shooting Law
and making it look like a suicide. He was found in the front seat of Belva’s car
and she was arrested for the murder on the 12th March 1924. Velma’s
character is similar to this, she is a nightclub singer who was an acrobatic
double act with her sister Veronica. This was until she caught her with her
husband and presumably killed them both. Then she is sent to the Cook
County Jail with all the other females in the musical.
Cell Block Tango takes place in act one of the musical and occurs right at the
beginning after All That Jazz and Funny Honey. All that jazz is the opening
number performed by Velma Kelly which occurs as Roxie Hart shoots her
lover for not introducing her to a nightclub producer as she was an aspiring
Vaudeville performer. When Roxie's husband comes home she convinces him
that it was self defence as he was an intruder and begged him to take the
blame. The sergeant then convinces her husband that there was no intruder at
all and Roxie was just cheating on him, in the form of Funny Honey. Roxie is
then arrested and introduced to the six merry murderesses where Cell Block
Tango takes place.
This piece includes musical theatre elements like singing, dancing and acting.
However, we will just be dancing and acting as that is our strongest point. For
the words, we will just lip sync our parts. Main skills evident in this routine
include: characterisation, timing and spatial awareness. These skills are
important to the routine because it helps us tell the story well, engage the
audience, have a clean routine, no collisions and professionalism. An example
of our characterisation in Cell Block Tango is when we look back at the
audience angrily to intimidate them. An example of timing is when we use

2. cannons and have a specific cue each so we can hit the final beat all at the
same time. Lastly, we have to use spatial awareness as we often cross paths
with each when walking in different directions, especially when the soloists
come on for their solo sections. This ensures we have no collisions on stage
where someone could get injured.
In rehearsals, I am working on my solo section as it is the next part of the
song. I will work on this in my own time so when our group is together we can
just work on finishing the routine with the parts we all do together. Therefore,
by the end of it we can just work on perfecting and cleaning it.