Tonight we started making our approach towards the production of “A Christmas Carol.” With the show all cast it was time to start looking to creating the show. Once gathered we got ready for class with our dance party as led by Kaylie. Dancing led to warm-ups, Kaylie let us through one of our favorites, puppet master. You start as a puppet dangling on a string in the puppetmaster manipulates each string as we stretch your arms and stretch our heads and then flop over. After warming up it was time to check in. Our check in question for the week was, “Who is someone you admire?” Sam R starting us off, he admires his grandparents whom he loves. Emily admires her mother and father. Lucy admires her sister. Claire and Anna admire each other. After checking in we played an ensemble game. We played one that was new for this show, it's a Victorian parlor game that Peter and Kendra showed us. We played it once before and it was such a success we decided to play it again. It is Pass the Slipper, in this instance the part of the slipper was played by a feather duster. One person sits in the middle with their eyes closed as we pass around the slipper behind her back. Once the person opens their eyes they have to guess who has the slipper, very fun game that could've been played during the time of Scrooge, Fred, and Bob Cratchit. After our ensemble game it was time to get to work.
We started off with the music. Kaylie took us over the words and music of Carol of the Bells and then added in some dance steps. Everybody took to it very well, it's going to take some practice, it's very challenging to singing in the round and remember dance steps but if anyone can do it our ensemble can. After a solid introduction to the music we began blocking our first scene.
Excited to start blocking!
Our first scene starts with Scrooge and Bob Cratchit in the office working diligently. Clare will be playing our very first Scrooge for A Christmas Carol. Andrew will be playing Bob Cratchit for the first scene. As we begin the scene Scrooge was standing over Bob Cratchit making sure that he's working hard. In comes Fred played by Ben. Fred and Scrooge bicker for a while about the true merits of Christmas and Scrooge is having none of it. Claire is off to a great start with this character and she made some very strong vocal and physical choices with Scrooge’s signature line, “Bah Humbug.” After Fred leaves two businessmen enter the workspace, Emily and Anna, asking for donations during this holiday times which Scrooge promptly rejects. The scene ends with Scrooge reluctantly giving Cratchit Christmas day off. On we moved to scene two, Sam F took over the role of Scrooge and Lucy stepped in as Jacob Marley the ghost of Scrooge’s business partner. This is only a two person scene so is our actors worked on blocking while the rest of our ensemble spent some time journaling their thoughts on the play and their roles within it. Sam began the scene sitting in a chair that doubled as his bed as the church bells chimed loudly waking Scrooge. Lucy, weighted down with chains makes her way into Scrooge’s bedroom. I was working with Lucy on this character and I am already having a great time. I think she is too. She's making such great choices you can really feel the weight of those chains pulling Bob Marley down as Lucy told Sam F of the imminent ghostly visitors.
With that we were done blocking the first two scenes of the play. We only have four class periods left before dress rehearsal, we still have a lot to work to do but we are definitely off to a great start. To finish up class we gathered back around the music board and did some more work on our choreography we got back in our groups and worked on combining the moves, the words, and the music, like I said it's going to take some time but we will be more than ready come show day. Last up was our check out question, “What was your favorite part of class?” It was neat to see how many different answers we had for this one some liked the music, actually several liked the music, and others liked playing the different roles. With that our birthday boy Ben led us in I take from the Heavens and it was time to head home. Not too many classes left but we get into my favorite part of the work, blocking and character development, I can't wait for next week.
