Thursday's over

Oh my gosh! That's Thursday over! Tomorrow is dress rehearsal day, then Saturday is the "public" performance of the extracts. Ulp!

It might be worth a word of explanation here. On Friday we present the work we have been doing to the rest of the school. Technically it's a dress rehearsal. Indeed, it's normal for the extract to be interrupted by the director fixing positioning, etc. But to many of the students, this is the performance that matters - it's the performance that's for the people they have been lunching with and sharing the bar with for the past week.

Anyway, that's another day. Today we started in the theatre. Each class gets one half day in the theatre before dress rehearsal. Ours was quite a good time to be there, because we had managed one run and were ready for another. So we did a run where I played Steven/Tony.

I thought this went okay. This was mainly because we got to the end of the extract without me having to resort to the book, I think that everyone else felt it was awful, and our director had to work hard with some positive words to raise everyone's spirits.

After tea break, we did another run where Julian played Steven/Tony and I was Rico. As far as I was concerned, this was a shambles. I failed to strike a pieve of furniture, and didn't show up at a point where I was meant to show a new tablecloth to the boss. I was devastated; everyone else seemed to think that it had gone much better than the previous run!

Then it was lunchtime, and a free afternoon. At lunch the classes for next year (2009) were announced. They are La Cage Aux Folles, A Funny Thing Happened... and Die Fledermaus. I would love to try La Cage, but I am just not convinced I can make it work with domestic life. Hmmm.....

During the afternoon Jo, our assistant director, helped us out a lot with dancing. I spent most of the afternoon dancing then went back to my room for a shower before dinner.

Another thing I did was try to write down my costume plot. As explained previously, there is no changing room, and there is an open curtain at the back of the stage. That means you cannot go from one side of the stage to the other - you must have your costume set at the correct side of the stage. So I spent about an hour writing down my notes of where I exit for each scene (for each character) and which costume I need to have pre-set.

While at dinner, three of us were talking and decided we wanted some more dance time. There was one chap who had only ever done one show before the school, and was feeling slightly overwhelmed. Then there was a girl who is a great dancer, and felt that any error was unforgivable. Somewhere in the middle was me, who realised that in "Dancin' Fool", he would have nobody to copy as he was right in front of the entire chorus...

We spent about two hours in the evening with my iPod and an active speaker, my notes and our collective memory, but by the end of it we had a pretty solid grasp of both Dancin' Fool and the opening. I feel that I might be able to do them both without humiliating myself. Which is a great step forward. For me, that represents the best of what summer school is about - the students getting together to try to do things just right!

I was determined to have an early bed, but here I am after 11pm writing my blog...