Rent (Friday 25th September) speed runs and Staging

IIn this lesson we all thought that it would really benefit our understanding of the play if we did a speed run of the show, this it where you perform every scene but you only mention key lines of the scene or facts that change the cause of events. We were split off into two groups and the group that I was in was given act two, I was really pleased with this act as it was the one that I was the most unsure about at this point.


Within my group I played the part of Mark as he is my character and also appearing in most scenes throughout the second act. The key parts of the act that I suggested we focused on was the breaking back into the flat, the fight between Maureen and Joanne, we also included Angels death, the fight between everyone and then when everyone helps Mimi out of a bad place.


When it came to the run I think I paid more attention to my characters journey through the play, and how he was effected by things that were going on. I think that my character gets caught up in everything to much and people always drag him into everything when it isn't always his fault. My characters journey through the play is always very sudden, as he seems to go from on thing to another, whether it's splitting from is partner at the start then to his friends dying. And I think that doing the speed run makes it clear how one thing leads to another

We then spoke about the theatrical conventions of the play. This is the rules that you make up for your own play, these can include staging and things that you do on stage, and things that characters can do. For our play we mainly looked at the staging and the different areas of our set, things like you can't come out of the flat area without going up the stairs and going round. Things like this makes the play seem more planned out and life like for the audience and can also help to create a world of the play for us actors. Our staging is called 'Imersive' theatre, this is a mixture of traverse and in the round, as we have our audience all around us but then inbetween the audience sections we have staging, where we can put scenes or songs, this makes the audience feel more involved and part of the scene. This style of theatre explores breaking the fourth wall between the actors and the audience. This works well with my character in particular I think, as my character has some narration and some of his songs help to keep the the story rolling.

This photo is in credit of Emily D'Agostino

My own target for the next lesson is to familiarise myself more with the songs 'will i' and 'life support'. As this is what we will be working on soon.