Globe Community Christmas + evaluation

 We started by doing vocal work to look into singing. We wanted to sing to have another skill on our portfolio. We do different types of vocal warmup. We sing the oh when the saints school mash up with movement. We count 12345 but in a different order with tune. These warmups really warm up our voices and get us ready to sing.

Then we decided we were going to do muppets Christmas Carol for the globe community Christmas, we started singing the first song ‘Scrooge’. There was 8 people that got to sing in groups of 4 and Jess had a solo but I wasn’t confident enough to go for one of those Positions. We made harmonies and highs and lows. We went through the whole song and learned the tune and tone it should be sang in. We did this for a few lessons then  we had a  lesson where started adding choreography. It was only simple things because we’re not trained to dance as a group. 

The most stressful part was trying to remember the lines to this song because we only had a one hour lesson of it a week and time was running out!! 

Once we’d finished that routine and added emotion we started with our next song ‘one more sleep til Christmas ’. Jess is a very talented singer so she did this as a solo and we focused more on creating the world around her and bringing her story to life. We were to devise our own pieces to create a life around her. I went with Laura, Latoya, Pheebs, Gracie and Kadie and we acted as families around a fire at the park, enjoying their Christmas Eve. Then we stood as a happy family and watched as a few of our peers danced in pairs. It was really sweet and we wanted to create as much of a loving energy so we really made it emotional. Then at the end we all came together to sing the last lien. We created this piece on only two lessons so we were a bit worried it wouldn’t look good.

I went home and went over the songs by myself on YouTube so I was more confident. 

Kelly had outfits from the Preston park museum that the lent to us and since it was a period piece we all decided to wear them. I wore a long grey dress with a frilly neck and black Mary janes. People also found costumes from the costume room and in the end everyone had something that would work. We decided on natural makeup to fit the time period. 

We had our final rehearsal as a full APTA run through. We started off with musical theatre running their hip hop piece. Then we ran ours through. We were all a little bit nervous to start because musical theatre are really judgy and we knew they were going to make fun of us ( which they did) but me and my friends spoke before and we said we’re not doing it for them, we’re doing it for acting and it’s more embarrassing to not try at all. Then we ran it and it actually went very well, the degree students loved it. Then the degree students ran their part and it went really well for them too they were unbelievable, they sand a Christmas song. Then we had to all come together at the end to run a final piece. We only came in to sing a little bit of a song then bow. 

Tech run

We went to the globe to do a tech run the day before. They showed us where to put all of our things and we got to see the running order. They showed us where to go on and off the stage and we ran  so we knew what we were doing. I felt a lot more confident after this, now we knew that we could run it all smoothly and that the mics worked. We just needed to remember that, those of us who didn’t have a mic had to be loud when singing. We also had to remember to keep our characterisation in the show whilst remembering our routines.

Showday

We started off the day with our normal lessons. We knew we’d rehearsed it enough to be comfortable with not rehearsing it in the day, we didn’t want to over do it or make anyone more nervous so we left rehearsals and the very good tech run we had the day before. I waited at college with Latoya and Laura for a few hours before walking over to the globe. We were nervous and excited when we seen a crowd of people waiting to get into the doors on our way. We all got our costumes on and sat in the seats waiting for the show to begin. We got to see lots of Stockton's talent before it was our turn. Our show went extremely well, the mics worked and everyone else projected their voice. The audience had good reactions to the show, they laughed when they were supposed to and seemed engaged. No lines were forgotten and it flowed at a nice pace. I was focused on keeping my character in the moment but I was so focused on that I sometimes went a bit out of the moment. I used lots of characterisation and felt very prepared. I think I should’ve tied my hair up instead of keeping it down because it did block my face a bit, that’s something I’ll keep in mind in the future. 

I really enjoyed this experience and I’m so grateful for it. It was so exciting performing again in this theatre but it was even better to have the audience actually sat in the seats watching us up on the stage. I enjoyed the singing, it was fun and an interesting way of telling a story. I’m very grateful Kelly gave us this opportunity.