Week Seven

During this session, Myf got her metaphorical whip out and we engaged in a very intense run through of the show.

We commenced with a few rehearsals of 'Brian's Song', which was a bit strange with half the dancers missing. Our timing and everything is fine but we need to work with the COVs a lot more.

I'm liking the Bride's Dance, it's quite ethereal. I believe that it's the strongest section within 'Of the spirit, of the will' and it acts as a good centre-piece.

When the time came to work on the Piaf segment, I was eager to get cracking and iron out the segment's winkles. To my disappointment, the more we rehearse and 'workshop' the piece- the worse it seems to get. I feel like the segment is so flat, dull and passionless and I don't know what to do to improve it without either sentimentalising it or hyping up angst. If we can find a (non-cliched) way of building a climax, we'd be much better off. SIGH! In my ordinary creative life, I would have scrapped this and started again a while ago, but I wouldn't dream of traumatising others with this dramatic approach.
I also think that the segment has been dragged through so many generations of Year 9 Drama and TV references that there's little of Piaf in our 'Piaf'. This could be because a large number of the students have never heard of Edith Piaf and therefore they're more concerned with the aesthetic or the "dramatic" sides rather than trying to represent an abstract part of the chanteuse- this is something I detect very strongly in some of their suggestions. EXAMPLE: It's like if you are having a conversation with your hairdresser and you slip a witty culture reference or pun into your conversation, but they're unacquainted with what you are referencing so the glorious bit of humour goes over their heads and they take what you've said literally and jump on their own tangents. D'ya get what I mean?
Oh, well. It's too late to change things with this Piaf segment. I'll be fine as long as we tweak it so that everyone knows what they're doing, and it'll 'work' if we find a way to build tension. As Anna said, this production is not really about us: it's about the COVs. We should just work on making it an experience for them, and worry about high art another time.
I know that I'm not a very good collaborator. 99.9% of the time, I only work by myself and that's how I attain good results. I think a lot about whatever I'm creating and I edit and rework things inside my head and I don't need to 'catch up' and brainstorm with others because I'm in my own company twenty-four hours a day. The only time when I invite others in is when it's feedback time.
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KISSES!