Rehearsal Diary

Fugee Rehearsals 

  A week prior , after lessons spent reading the script, Sharon gave us the opportunity to choose two characters that we would wish to audition for. We had to choose one primary choice and one secondary. I chose Cheung for my primary choice and The Market Trader for my second.  We then set preparation for are audition by reading through the play in those  specific characters we chose to audition for. This helps familiarise ourselves with our characters, giving us  a lot of information about how our character reacts with other characters as well as showing us how they should be played. This method of choosing characters and auditioning for them helps us learn lines faster, enhancing our performance as those our the characters we felt obliged to play improving the performance as a whole.

There was a lot of competition to play the role of Cheung in which four people myself included were enthusiastic to play the role. My audition went well  however my attendance after the auditions let me down subsequently giving the role to be joint between Abe and Georgina. Attendence for an actor is profesinolsiom meaning you cant be late on set because time is money, its nothing personal to do with my ability to perform its just business and  thats how I see it. Luckily I got my secondary role as Market Trader instead in which I already knew the lines for.

After the auditions and the cast was decided , we then started getting the performance up and running. We had a few problems at the start because not many people knew their lines, but we wanted to do the scenes and to see how the characters react with each other in order to get a sense of the emotions within the scenes .I gave an ideas for the opening scene which was to individualy show our unique roles in the street and say unscripted dialogue  in the attempt to bring the scene alive before it officialy starts. I gave this idea to  help us all get a sense of the characters we were playing as well as organising our positions on stage to help with transitions  from scene to scene which at the time were unnatural and very slow. The transitions  didn't feel very organised  and they didn't seem fit the pacing of the play. This is because the play is very fast and the scenes need to almost overlap  each other to make sure there is no time in-between. 

We created a timeline showing our preparation towards the final performance in which by the time we had done a full cast rehearsal the next step was to learn our lines

 After we learned our lines we could really start to hone in on fixing up the other aspects of our performance, whatever it may be,  I find there to be always a correlation between learning lines and performance. Once we all  learn our lines we become more comfortable in our characters shoes making the progression and development of  our performance accelerate. This correlation defiantly  relies on the performance of the actors, otherwise it falls flat, so getting the foundation covered as fast as possible is the main  top priority.  

We designed  the costumes of the characters we were assigned keeping it mind that it had to be simple nothing extravagant. I picked the costumes for a Market Trader and had a concept for Child soldier. The costume I had for Market Trader  was  denim shorts, slippers and a white linen shirt. To show half formal attire and the other half to be street wear . This would suggest my character to be hardworking  and comfortable with the environment he’s  surrounded by. The Child Soldier costume I thought of timberlands or working boots and camouflage jackets. For props we  had wooden guns made for us, resembling the  AK-47.


From my research child soldiers I concluded that this outfit and the AK - 47 rifle was authentic.




This image of a market trader shows the owner wearing a shirt and shorts. This research influenced my outfit choice design, defining my character.

We started to gather more ideas and create concepts for specific scenes like the scene with Kojo and Ara when they go outside to see trees. This gave us the idea  to all group together and become a huge tree where  we all idividually hold a leaf.  After the concepts we started to do full run-throughs of the performance .

Unfortunately I was abcsent from the rest of the full run through rehearsals due to an incident I had outside lesson which made me temporarily suspended. However I was still organised with designing my costume and learning my lines making me indulged into the character I was playing . I  was being kept up to date via the group chat we have on WhatsApp.

When I was allowed back to rehearse in preparation for the final performance I found it difficult a first but I adapted in order to learn my quse.  I mostly found the transitions hard because It wasn’t drilled into my routine in comparison to the other actors who’ve been rehearsing the full run through a week prior. To overcome this problem I had to stay focus, listen and practically improvise.

 Some transition problems came up for some characters who didn't have enough time to change costume completely because they were in consecutive scenes. However I didn’t really have that problem because I only played one character who had a distinctive costume. I only transitioned for the Tree scene, Street scenes and Child Soldiers. Transitioning into a child soldier was putting on a camouflage jacket and hunching my back to seem more smaller and weak like a child. 

Personally I believe we needed more rehearsals to enhance our performance but  after the  completion of the dress rehearsals including the sound and lighting elements it implemented the illusion that we were ready. I  wasn’t ready but I was confident in myself that I could do my best when it came to my individual performance.

Evaluation of Final Performance

Despite the fact that I only got to perform once due to my suspension I felt that the piece altogether went really well.  Everyone seemed focused on the goal to give the best performance to end the year with. I was happy with the overall performance however I was quite annoyed that I only got to perform once as I felt I had more energy to bring to the stage and I felt my performance wasn't enough as I could have  done a better. I believe the reason why I  struggled to come to a self satisfied conclusion of my performance because I had already felt disadvantaged due to to the lack of full run through  rehearsals. 

The cast was good at hitting their ques on time as perfectly as they could. Some actors were very professional and stayed in role throughout even when some people slipped up on a line they helped keep the scene alive by either skipping to the next line where  or improvising the whole scene entirely to save the performance . I remember this happening in a scene which I was meant to be on stage for but it was hard to remember that scene to be of significance because I only say one line. During rehearsals I done this however the scene was revived because someone said my line for me, but in the performance  I said the line off stage.This shows that despite the minor slip ups I made during the performance I still done the best I could to communicate my characters role to the audience by using vocal projection and body language to show emotion and unique characteristics distinguishing myself from other actors.