13 Process Journal

Week 1 & 2 (Easter Holidays) : 

During these two weeks I focused on reading the script, finding out about 13, its composer, history, etc. Listened to a few songs, started researching my character and the show as a whole. I also worked on the marketing aspect of the show and came up with the marketing plan.

Week 3:

During the first week of rehearsals, we have worked on "13" which is the opening number of the show. We learned the melody and rythm and were given different parts, I personally was on the lower one. The song is really upbeat which to me really reflects life as a 13 years old kid. The lyrics and the whole atmosphere of the song really helped me getting into character.
We also learnt all Hail the Brain and A little More Homework, I was singing bottom part for both of them. I find A Little More homework really interesting as it is much slower than the rest of the group songs, to me it shows how the kids evolved to young teenagers, a bit more calm, a bit more rational. The song is all about "trying to find myself", they're all experimenting life and discovering themselves, which I found really interesting.

Week 4:

This week we started to learn the choreography for 13. It went really well, mostly everyone learned the choreography really quickly which was surprising as it is such a long song with a lot of parts in between. But the choreography was really nicely put together, was really dynamic, I personally tend to struggle with movement memory but I managed to learn it during the first rehearsal and was very happy with that. This week we also started working on the singing for Hey Kendra and Bad News. Bad news happens when Lucy and Brett start dating, I really enjoy working on it as it has a very jazzy, bluesie melody to it, it is a really ironic song, but it is so serious to them I loved getting to play around with it.

Week 5:

This week, all the songs were learnt. We also finished learningsome choreography for All Hail The Brain, Hey Kendra and Give me what I need. During give me what I need, we had to carry Kendra towards the center of the stage, which reflected Archie's dream. We also started blocking some scenes one by one, while people weren't learning choreography they were blocking the scenes.

Week 6:

During this week we started slowly doing run of the shows, putting in practice all the blocking that had been learnt during the last week. We did had to stop a few times but I thought overall the process was quite good. Most of the problems were coming from moving the platforms which weren't ready to be used so it was a bit tricky to understand what to do without actually doing it. By the end of the week everyone was off book. It got easier to see where the show was going while we were running it but to me, I felt like it wouldn't be ready on time, and really started doubting the final result.

Week 7:

This week was the last week of rehearsals. We didn't get to rehearse on Tuesday as we were rehearsing for the dance showcase, and Marta got injured that day which made us abandon most of the staging we had planned. We cut the stage short as well as one platform, changed some of the blocking to only work with one platform. Not everyone was positive about this, but I personally thought it was exacatly what we needed. It made the show much more clearer and smooth and I thought it couldn't have gone better. Everyone knew what they were doing, and appart from a few mistakes, everything went according to plan.

PRACTICE SCHEDULE PART 3

Monday 

Tension. Work on various muscles tension such as neck, tongue, back etc by doing different relaxation exercises as well as stretches.
Breath. Baby crying/glottal oh oh. To help control the air release.

Tuesday 

Throat pulse. Breathe in as much as possible, breathe out, and when feeling out of breath, do pulses with your throat. Objective: increasing breath intake and control.

Wednesday 

Full siren lip roll. Sirens are excellent as a warm up and help you working on both your low and high range at the same time and help you decreasing the volume of your break. Lip rolls are excellent to develop your technique, engaging the diaphragm and releasing the throat tension.
Resonance. Nia nia, placing the sound forward. This will help me placing my high pitched notes better.

Thursday 

Ng Placement. This will help me developing my nasal placement and reasonance which is excellent to develop a nice belt.
String. This exercise is excellent to develop the belt without stressing your voice.

Friday 

Practice various songs, chest or mixed voice.

Saturday 

Practice various song, head voice.

Sunday 

Body relaxation to rest the voice. As a healthy body is needed for a healthy voice, and not to stress the voice, Sundays will be dedicated to throat and face massaging, gentle yawns as well as some yoga. 
I will also be doing some sight reading and repeating exercises on Sunday to practice theory.

13 Character Research

I started my research by simply looking back at my life a few years ago and trying to remember the atmosphere of being 13, discovering new things and learning about the world. I tried to put myself back in this world where your social life is the number one priority, and things that don't matter that much (such as popularity, etc) seem so important.

I have also paid more attention to young teenagers in the streets, to the way the act, talk, and move. One thing that I noticed by doing this is how loud they were being, how nothing seemed to matter but them. And I really tried to put some of this into Eddie, not caring about anything else than his little group, no matter what the consequences were.

The most of my research however was based on the script. From the way Eddie acts, I quickly came to the conclusion that he was a weak boy, outshined by Brett, and it's almost like he tries to live through Brett's life; which explains why he keeps doing everything for him. Brett is the obvious leader of the group, and while Malcolm seems a bit ditsy, Eddie comes across as a boy who lacks confidence, and therefore can't be a leader like Brett, and ends up worshiping him. I have tried through the rehearsal to develop this lack of confidence by portraying him as 'fakely' shallow and self absorved (always focusing on his muscles/looks, etc). I thought as I am myself quite short I could use it as one of Eddie's complexes.

Ballet Evaluation

Concerning my application during the ballet rehearsals, I was a bit off at the start, missed a few rehearsals the first week, but got back on track and attended every lesson afterwards, remaining focused at all time, doing my best during rehearsals and always being attentive to what was said. I managed to learn the choreography quite quickly, which is something I massively improved on.

Concerning my physical skills, again I think I really improved. As previously mentionned in my movement memory; but also my posture, technique, coordination, timing and accuracy. I feel like I was able to demonstrate proper ballet technique, focusing on my turn out, port de bras and overall coordination. That being said, I thought my performance lacked of use of space a lot, which I didn't realise until watching the video. I also think I lacked of balance and control a few times, especially towards the end pirouette.

Finally concerning my interpretive skills, I think this is what I need to most work on. I thought my performance was technically alright, but lacked massively of interpretation and was really flat. I think what I'm missing is confidence to actually try putting more into the choreography than just the moves.

13 Marketing

13 The Musical - Proposal

13 – the Musical Proposal

1.       Performance

I have been assigned the role of Eddie for the show. Eddie is one of Brett’s good friend, bit of a wanna be always by his side.

My first objective is to be almost off book by the 25th of April and completely off book by the 2^nd of May. This is an ultimate deadline ; but I’ll be off book as soon as possible to be able to work more efficiently on the acting/singing.

While learning my lines I’ll also work on characterisation to really get into the role and make it my own.

I’ll be learning the songs in rehearsals, reccord them and listen to them after each rehearsal to memorise them as soon as possible.

I want to be absolutely into character by the 11th of May and then use the rest of the time to experiment different ways to play and develop the character and see what works best.

2.     Marketing

As well as the role of Eddie I am in charge of the marketing for this show. I have planned to make a photoshoot with the cast and make posters and flyers to distribute around various departments to advertise the show. I will also email heads of departments about the show.

I thought of organising a sort of pre show party where some of the cast members will perform. This would ideally be a sort of Q&A with drinks where we would have the opportunity to talk about the show. The idea behind this is to show the talented cast we have and show them all the work that has been done and therefore attract more people to see the show. I was hoping to collect money for charity on the doors. Basically let people put  any amount of money in a bucket to attend.

I was also hoping that we could use a part of the ticket price for charity i.e : if tickets were to be £3 say that 50p goes to charity. I thought this was a good way to sell tickets as well as do a good act. The charity I was thinking of is called Raleigh, it is a team of 18-24 years old and they work on water, sanitation and livelihoods projects in Tanzania, Nicaragua and Nepal. I think this charity would really suit the audience we would have for this show, and I know the person who is going to be the team leader of the 18-24 team.

Finally, I wanted to do a lot of social media work. As the show is about 13 years old, and therefore targets a young audience, it would be the perfect way to communicate about it. I was hoping to have access to the lsc expressive arts twitter account as it is already and established account with followers. I want to post daily updates about the progress as well as behind the scenes pictures and videos. I intend to film some rehearsals (about 30 seconds), have some interview with the cast, film the making of the set, costumes, lighting, etc. and post everything on the twitter account. 

LOGS Week ending 06/03

Monday - https://soundcloud.com/anne-munoz-1/voice-061

I think in this recording I still tense my throat far too much although my tongue is out when I get into the high notes and mentally give up before it even happens. I think I also need to focus more on placing the sound forward, in the mask. My target for next week is to relax more and focus on the sound placement.

Wednesday - https://soundcloud.com/anne-munoz-1/voice-062

I found this exercise easier to do, there was less tension in my throat and it felt easier to rich the high notes. It is probably due to the fact that the "Nia" sound helps me placing the sound in the mask, I feel like the more I practice this exercise, the easier the Monday exercise will be as I'll find it less hard to place the sound properly. I think next time I need to push myself more and try to go higher.