On Tuesday we had a rehearsal with our Musical Director ‘Rob’ we covered all of the songs throughout the play starting with the well know ensemble numbers:
- Perfect Young Ladies
- The Boyfriend
- The Riviera
After we had covered these numbers some of us got sent off to work on our own thing and people with duets and solos stayed to rehearse their number. These 3 musical numbers are the only numbers I am involved in throughout our production of The Boyfriend. I felt confident when singing perfect young ladies as I think this is a lively and enjoyable number also that tuning, harmonies aren’t too difficult. In relation to The Boyfriend I didn’t know I had a solo so when it came to it I was abit blown away as I didn’t expect it, however after singing through my solo a few times I felt happy and confident to perform it in front of the class. The Boyfriend score is actually written for sopranos therefore Rob has decided to add extra harmonies for the altos which also results in our version of The Boyfriend been slightly different compared to the original. I found The Rivera quit difficult to sing this been because it has a staccato tempo, basically meaning its fast. I need to work on my diction and breathe control in order for me to be successful whilst singing this song. We all need to work on adding characterisation to each song to make it have a better sound. For example we need to sing in RP as that’s how people would have spoken in the 1920’s, we also need to focus on certain vowels to make the diction much clearer and characterised. For the next music rehearsal Rob wants us all off book, so I will be rehearsing in my own time until I feel confident with the lyrics.
Today we started the rehearsal by performing our answers to the question- find an historical person who would have influenced my character? We had to present our answers to the class in the accent of our character. I enjoyed doing this as an RP accent comes rather easy to me and also I enjoyed acting as my character but not having to follow a script. I also believe people enjoyed listening to my answer as a few people laughed at what I was saying, how I was speaking etc. After this we continued to block the rest of the musical. We started from the begging therefore I performed the first scene without script, this was successful however I did skip Dulcie’s line which was ‘Oh how thrilling’. But I did identify this immediately so we went back to a few lines before and ran it again. I found this rehearsal extremely beneficial as we have now set the whole of The Boyfriend, I also felt confident with everything that I was involved in. Tim has decided to add a rewrite at the end of the show which results in myself having a few extra lines too which is nice! I need to continue to rehearse in my own time though as in the next few rehearsals we will be focussing on choreography.
ardenrjones 