In the first rehearsal of the boyfriend we had a few read through’s of the show. I firstly read the character of Maisie followed by the character of Madame Dubbonnet and finally I read the character of Fay. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the character of Maisie as I found the character portrayal to be rather humours at times however due to this been my first read through of this show, I did struggle with keeping the pace flowing at times. When I read as Madame Dobbonet I did feel rather nervous and this was because she speaks a lot of French and I can’t fluently speak it never mind read it. On the last read through I played the character Fay and I felt extremely confident I believe this was due to the fact that I now felt familiar with the script and the language used throughout. From the first lesson I gained an understanding of what the show was actually about and I started to get a feel for all of the characters. I had read the musical before the first rehearsal but you never get a realistic feel for it when you’re reading it to yourself especially when you are reading all of the characters. If I had to criticise myself from the first lesson I would say that I need to make sure I feel more relaxed about reading aloud in front of people on the first attempt. However I do believe that the majority of people don’t thoroughly enjoy reading aloud because it can be embarrassing when you can’t pronounce a word correctly etc. Tim did mention in the lesson that it’s important that you treat a read through as an experiment and try something new on each read through as it’s about getting to know the show and just having fun with it. When Tim was discussing this he made me realise that people aren’t actually judging one another and it is about the things he mentioned. In this lesson we got set some homework which was to research historical events from the era in which The Boyfriend was set this being the 1920’s.
In the following lesson we was all casted so we knew who was playing what. We started the lesson by presenting our homework to one another – I have discussed this is a previous post. Once we had all presented our work to one another we cracked on with blocking the first few scenes. My character is in the first few scenes a lot therefore I was involved a lot. Tim briefly went over stage directions and how to annotate a script so we can remember where to go and at what time, this is listed below:
UST-Up Stage Right
USL-Up Stage Left
DSL-Down Stage Left
DSR-Down Stage Right
CDS-Cross Down Centre
IN 1- 1ST Wing
IN 2- 2nd Wing
IN 3- 3RD Wing
In 4-4TH Wing
When we first started to block I felt slightly nervous as I had never worked with Tim before and I didn’t know how he would react etc but as time went on I started to feel more and more confident. We blocked from page 1-7, which is rather good considering it was our first official rehearsal. I thoroughly enjoyed the way Tim directs as I felt as if he was actually educating me as well as directing me on the show. I now know what to do for the first few scenes that I am in and ive annotated my script so I can work on this for next lesson, he wants us off script for the scenes we have covered in today’s lesson for our next rehearsal. I believe I will be able to do this as I don’t have that much dialogue. The method I will use to learn the script will be asking people to test me as well as using the look, cover, write, check method. We also got set homework for next lesson which is to research a historical person from the 1920’s and explain how it would influence, effect my character of Fay.
<– This image shows what I have stated above about stage directions.
ardenrjones 