My Production Journey - Production Diaries (Year 2, Term 4)

   Candidate Declaration - I confirm that the attached portfolio is all my own work* and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself.

Tuesday 29th April 

Today was the first official day of rehearsals for The Railway Children. We started the day by doing a quick warm up with the whole class -  we did this to get us prepared for the day both mentally and physically and it ensured everyone was in the zone for rehearsing. We then split into our casts - everyone in the Railway Children went next door to Tom's room, where we got started on the project!

This show we are doing a little differently as it is being performed at Locomotive, Shildon. Before we started blocking anything, we taped two lines along the floor to represent the stage that we have, as it will be done with Traverse Staging. This means that we will have an audience on both sides of the stage to consider performing to - as seen in the image. This is a challenge on our skill as actors as it requires us to think a bit more about our staging and where to position ourselves, as we need to make sure that everyone gets to see something going on at all times - not just the back of our heads. It also means that our blocking will be slightly different to usual, as it will be performed long-ways down the stage, not to a specific side.

After this was done, we moved on to blocking the beginning of the play with both casts. Due to the fact that we are performing in a museum, we are unable to use lots of set and we have minimal lighting - therefore the blocking, characterisation and suitcaseography are the key aspects of this play as well as the strong ensemble - which in my opinion is the key part of this play.

We started straight away with Cast 1 - in this cast i am part of the ensemble so i enter with my family that i would be using in the other cast. The performance starts with everyone enterting and chattering, going into a freeze frame of waiting at a train station, with suitcases - which is a key part of the performance. From this freeze frame, the three main children enter and start the scene - in which we stay frozen until the character of Peter says the word 'ordinary.' This is where we bring on the minimal set we have - a table and chairs and build a wall to represent the house out of suitcases. This wall took a lot of trial and error but ended up looking great. We managed to block up to page 17 - already making great progress!

Wednesday 30th April 

Today my cast started with the Lovely Bones lot - this was nice to see the progress that the other half of our group had made whilst i had been next door all of yesterday. I am not in the Lovely Bones until Act 2, however today Kelly was focusing on getting detail and precision based on what they had blocked yesterday. Therefore, whilst my cast was busy being in the scene, i made myself useful by going through the book of The Lovely Bones and found out all the key dates and events from the beginning of the play until the point they had blocked and helped to make a timeline of these in order. This was helpful to me as it gave me more of an insight of what the play was about for research purposes, and it was also helpful to the class as they could understand what events followed what and how their characters felt about it - a key example of this would be Ruth who had a dream about seeing Susie the day of her death - this is a personal but useful thing for my classmates playing her to know. I also got to watch and take photos of the reahersal process so far - where they were blocking a cross over of phones and everyone searching for Susie.

The rest of the day i spent back with the Railway Children - the first part of the morning we spent in the black box room and worked on picking production roles and accents that we have to do, as they are both very different to our own - Yorkshire and RP. This was helpful as it allowed us to get into the voice properly, therefore when acting it isn't a worry of how it is going to sound and i can focus on the detail and characterisation over the pressure of the voice. We then moved to the dance studio for the afternoon where we continued blocking from pages 17 - 22 as well as going over everything we had already done. The blocking time has been very helpful especially when i'm playing the role of Phyllis, as being up and doing it helps not only with where to go and how to do it, but with learning lines and character chemistry between me and my family. A key part of the blocking from today however would be the carriage that the family go in to arrive at Yorkshire. We take the suitcases from the wall and turn it into a carriage that the family sit in. The challenge of this came from the fact we had to make them still visible to both sides of the audience as well as remember what suitcases went where. However, the end result looked great!

Thursday 1st May

Today we started the day with everyone in the main dance studio with Tom, as a few of our classmates were doing their final school performance of DNA. We spent the morning working on accents. Accents are an important thing for an actor to be able to do as it unlocks more role opportunities within the future. The way that Tom approached them this time however was by using a text and chart that they cover in drama school - The Phonetic Alphabet with a text that covers all contenansts and vowels. This alphabet focuses on how the words sound over how they are spelt, for example there are multiple ways a 'TH' word can sound in a different accent. 

After we worked on accents for awhile, we went back next door to Tom's room and we did a suitcaseography run from the beginning to scene 32 with cast one. This was extremely useful as i got to figure out my tracks with the suitcase as an ensemble member, as well as watch my counterpart for any blocking i may have missed whilst being in the Lovely Bones room.

After we did this run, we continued to block more (page 22-32) with the suitcases - we made the house for when the family reach Yorkshire. This was really creative, as it showed the passing of location and time through something we can use as a set as well as a prop. 

Tuesday 6th May 

On Tuesday, i sat in the Lovely Bones room with my cast as they worked on the Grandma Lynn scene, it was really interesting to watch as they brought the piece to life. Whilst i was in here, i also worked on my production role - working more on the programme alongside this.

When we went back into The Railway Children, we worked again with the suitcases, getting to the point of creating Perk's office as well as a moving train, ans worked up until mother gets sick and calls for the doctor.

Wednesday 7th May - Thursday 8th May 

These two days we didn't have Tom as much as he was out with his Level 4 show he had been directing, so we spent a lot of the time going over our production and what we had already blocked. We did runs of what we have blocked so far with both casts over these days. This was helpful as we got to keep everything in our heads without losing track of what we've done.

During this time, i looked into costume for The Lovely Bones. There was a lot of bright colours and an introduction to jeans and dungarees at this time - i decided to go with buying some dungarees and a colourful shirt. Alongside this, i also managed to nearly finish the programme - the design at this point was fully done, it was just about filling in the photos and quotes from everyone.

Wednesday 14th May

Today was a really productive day! The Railway Children did both cast run through, as well as started blocking the second act of the show. Both casts did a run of this and i worked again on the programme and research role.

Alongside this, I GOT ACCEPTED INTO LAMDA!! My dream drama school, meaning i am definitely leaving in September - such a surreal feeling.

Monday 19th May - Thursday 22nd May 

Over this week, we spent a lot of the time doing full runs of each cast and ensuring everyone has the right costume and props. At this point, we feel we are very ready for show week next week so we tried to not overdo anything, one run through per cast a day. The majority of these runs were without costume however on Wednesday my cast did a costume run. This was extremely helpful as it meant we got to understand how movement and props would work within the production and helped get into character a lot more.