Music!

This week in theatre was a week straight of intensive rehearsals. On Monday Mr. Fearnehough was still absent, but as an ensemble we decided to continuing working on the list of improvements that we gathered last week. Our first priority was to reduce the total length of time by 10 minutes, additionally we needed to whip our comedic timing into shape because some of the scenes, like the restaurant scene, which were dragging on with the dialogue going in circles. On Monday we also fixed the love scene. Though initially we thought it would be funny if the zanni came and ruined the romantic moment between Jack and Rose, however when we were working on the scene in rehearsals, the objective of the scene (which was for Jack and Rose to fall in love) was lost by the silliness of the zanni. After finding this problem we fixed it by removing the zanni and adding dialogue for Jack. At the end of the scene, instead of just asking Rose out to the movies, he makes a grand gesture that appears to be a marriage proposal but then surprises the audience by his simple date request= LAUGHS.

On Wednesday we decided to tackle the finale or ending of the whole piece. The problem was that the ending kind of blended with the last scene and it was unclear why all the characters ended up at Rose’s house. We changed the dialogue so it’s as if the zanni bring Rose home and Mickey chases after, still trying to win Rose over. However when Axel and Jack come back into the scene, Mickey makes one last ditch attempt to physically grab Rose but then the zanni tackle him (me) to the ground and drag me kicking and screaming off the stage. Then Rose and Jack get a final moment together and Jack picks her up and twirls her around. Then the magic ending begins and the awesome song “I’m a Believer” from Shrek comes on and all the players run back on stage and begin dancing. At first we were going to just leave the ending like this with us doing “random dancing”, however on reflection we decided it would be more in the spirit of commedia dell’arte to involve the audience. Now after we run on we each grab an audience member and begin dancing with them. Then when the chorus hits all the actors begin a choreographed dance, push the audience members off, and then take our bow.

Additionally throughout this week we added in the music, which in a word is BRILLIANT. For the scenes that were boring or dragging a pop of song really added the needed energy to the scene and to us as actors. For example in the fight scene between Mickey and the zanni the “Eye of the Tiger” plays, then when Jack and Rose first see each other the song “I believe in miracles” plays. We all had a bit of a surprise when Axel started to play the Jaws theme during the cinema scene when Rose’s father discovers that she was there with Jack. However I think today during rehearsal we need to finalize the scene changes, the reactions of the characters while they watch “The Notebook” because I don’t think the movie is coming across, and the use of the signs/placards with emotions that we introduced during the week with words such as “Eww, boo, d’aww (which apparently needs to be changed to “aww”).