Friday 13th November (happy new year b and speed run)

In this rehearsal we had our first half with out muscial director, and we spent this time to look into Happy new year B' and we did a sing through of it. I was confident in this song as I didn't have to many lines, so I took a leadership role and offered my support to others that may have had more in the song. My lines are simple, but the line in particular that I spend more time on was "friendship is thicker than blood" and " depends on not denying emotion" as these have a had melody and they are faster than everyone else's, I had to play around with saying these in different ways in order to fit them in to the timings.

In the second half of this lesson we went into the rehearsal room and did a ruff speed run of the second act, this involved looking into ruff blocking but this was mainly for the areas and then how we would link each scene. 

My initial impression of the act is that the pace is a lot faster than the first act, this is a big change as in the first act it covers about a month of the lives of the characters but in the second act it covers a hole year, and the characters lives seem to jump from one dramatic state to another. I think that the pace is one of the main features of the this show, and in order to fit in all of the messages within it the pace needs to be kept up. Although all of the characters go through a journey in the second act, I saw into my own character and how he is always thrown into the middle of everything, and everyone seems to take everything out on him, such as Roger shouting at him when mimi leaves, Maureen not liking him getting along with Joanne. 

Over all the second act has a negative feel to it, this is a big change to the first act, and would come as I big shock to the audience as the watch in comparison to the first act. At the start of this act we hear the song 'Seasons of love' this is a foreshadow of the act that is about to come, as the song tells the story of the life and how you should make every moment count, and that is the moral of life to the characters as they see everything changing.

We also looked into the narrative devices within the show, the main one is the in character narration, and my character plays a big part in that, as most of my lines and my earlier songs are out to the audience and narrate the characters and their lives. This helps to keep the audience on top of what i happening. But also helps to keep the story rolling as it does jump around a bit. The other narration devise is obviously the songs, as in most musicals that tell. Story either of a character (E.G 'tango Maureen, where it describes the character to the audience and highlights a lot of her character traits).

As a class our target for the next few weeks is to get on top of our act two songs, as we won't be spending time in lessons learning them but just running, so I will be taking on independent rehearsals for our own songs, such as 'what you own' where I have a arranged a one to one with the musical director, to get my half of the song down early.