Tuesday 8 December 2009

12 HOUR MUSCIAL!!!






WE DID ITTTTTTT!!!!

For 12 hours we wrote the theme tune sang the theme tune danced the theme tune argued over the theme tune and acted the theme tune! Or should that be musical?!
It was the most amazing, intense, magical, creative, crazy, agitating, happy, annoying, mental experience of my life and I loved every second of it!!

I am on such a buzz from it, it was immense! Some audience members were negative about it all and were like it was sh*t… thanks mate. But some were like wow you did it in 12 hours… I was like I knowwwwww! And to those that were negative I was like ok do better then come tell me what you think. Idiots!

Learning lines, songs, and dances was crazzzzzy! And improvisation slowly became the way forward…but we achieved something that has never been done before at St Mary’s and may have possibly set a record?! So if anyone can do better try otherwise shut up!
Cos we ARE amazing and what we did was amazing!! =)

So so so proud!!! =)

The weekend of the 5th and 6th!

I have not blogged in over a month and a half now….more fool me!
But nevertheless the time has come for me to return to it….

We have now performed and participated in our first weekend at ham house and sadly the only one I will be doing =(

For me it could not have been a bigger success! I loved every moment of it and thought that we all, as a company did really really well!

On the SATURDAY we all arrived at 10 am, well I was ten minutes late as usual. We got straight to work, organising the days activities and the order they would be in, as well as putting on our final bits of costume. We gathered in the “mess room” and waited for 11am to arrive along with the children!
We decided to have a vocal warm up and went into the education room, this helped us become focused and got us all geared up and excited, singing and humming away.

I was due to face paint at 11am, but thank God! There was only one child that needed their face painted at that time so I let Claudia take control as I did not trust myself with a brush, paint and a child’s face!

I found myself on a break and went off to eat my lunch/breakfast! I then was due to start my storytelling in the buttery and so off I went to sit on my perch and read from my BIG book! As children started arriving I grew more and more excited and started to enjoy myself more.

At one point I was telling my story in the day and mark came in and joined me and sat down with the children and their parents and after I had finished everyone looked at me as if they wanted more stories, so mark suggested to me that perhaps we should consider having another story teller upstairs with me. Which I thought was a fabulous idea as at times I was quite lonely.

Enter Briony and her story about the wittles and how they were as poor as poor could be. I felt this idea worked really well and sharing the experience with someone made it more intense and magical.

As they day wore on and my story had been told for the umpteenth time, I had a feeling of satisfaction more than anything else, as I had seen the children’s faces and how much they had enjoyed my story.

I then took a little walk over to the marquee and came across a CUPCAKE stand!!!!! Ahhhhhh!!!! This made my day!!!! I bought 3!! Not all for me! I did share, but they were like heaven and the cupcakes just made my day even better! =)

SUNDAY

By this point I was exhausted already!! I had gone to my uncle’s house for dinner and ended up staying there most of the night! So didn’t get much sleep. Nevertheless I was not going to let the company down and turned up, late again, however I had a valid excuse! Gary was talking to me at the door!

So in I walked to the “mess room” and again began another eventful day!
I was performing for the first hour in the buttery with Briony, however it was so quiet in the house Briony and I ended up rehearsing and then just having a good chat, which I found really nice as I have never really gotten to know her before Sunday and so it was an hour well spent I think!

The house was a lot busier on Sunday than it was on Saturday and I was constantly telling my story. 2 people pulled out so we were all constantly working… again I was lucky enough to escape face painting! However Jayne painted a loverly cupcake on my face!! =)

There was so much going on that it felt really good to be a part of it and to hear some of the feedback we were getting made me feel even better!

My mummy and stepdad came to see me at about half 2 and caught the end of my story which was nice, and then we went for a little wonder around the marquee and shop and orangery. Again I had CUPCAKES!!! My mummy bought me 2! =) ahh the little pleasures in life!!

By the end of the day I was truly exhausted and ready for bed! But we needed to de-brief and to our delight Gary had bought us cupcakes to say thank you however I did not have any as by this point I had had 3 in 24 hours and felt slightly sick!!

Mark decided to tell parents I had had 7! And commenced in telling me that I looked like one in what I was wearing!!

All in all a fabbbbb weekend! I just wish I could do the following two!! =(

=) x x x x

Thursday 15 October 2009

*random post *

I just felt that i should blog for the sake of blogging... I am having a tough week at the mo and the thought of going to ham house tomo and being in that environment is starting to cheer me up.

I feel sometimes one needs a bad week/phase inorder to realise how lucky you are.
My ideas at the moment are few and far between and i feel like i'm juggling many balls in the air and at any moment they are about to drop! =(

Let's hope i can pull through this bad phase and get on with it all with a smile on my face =)

x x x x

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Session 3...Tour of the House =)

Within today’s session we were given a tour of Ham House! I was extremely excited for this and enjoyed it very much; however as ignorant as this may sound I wasn’t as impressed by the house as I thought I would be.

Since I was a child I have grown up visiting various National Trust Houses all over England and Wales, for some reason I felt that Ham House considering its history, it would have been bigger and grander. I felt I should have been more in awe of it, except I wasn’t. If I am honest the House scared me slightly, I found it to be very eerie, quiet, dark and cold. I didn’t feel very comfortable and didn’t want to stay too long in one place there.

The main room that made me feel uneasy the most was the long room used for “exercise” it was covered in dark wooden panelling and even though the light had been shut out the room seemed like it would be very dark and cold in there in general. The paintings on the wall were slightly odd too. There were various paintings of both the children of the house and of people that the family knew. To me it felt like I was looking at their modern day version of “facebook” and of who they know and who their acquaintances are.

When we saw the servants’ quarters I was taken aback by how small the area was that these people had to live in. It felt slightly sad that these people lived a life like that. The area we were shown where we could perform in were used by the servants themselves, so again these rooms were not grand at all, and slightly small.

The kitchen is one of the performance spaces we have been given, and this space I feel will provide countless ideas and starting points. We could either use this space for a periodic story or a story just based in a kitchen.

One of the other performance spaces we have been given used to be a bathroom. This space in particular I feel would be brilliant for different uses. The room reminded me of the bookshop in the film “you’ve got mail” and that instantly made me think of magical things and costumes and most importantly CHRISTMAS!!!!!

After the tour, Mark gave us a pack of proposals that we have received so far for upcoming projects. One that did interest me was the idea of Reminiscence Theatre, and working in private residential homes for the elderly, this would involve taking their story and making it into a performance and playing it back to them to see their response.

A project which I would really, really love to do would be to work in a prison, as I have mentioned before, or to work with young offenders, I have discussed this with Mark and hopefully, the idea will progress somewhere…which again would be extremely exciting!!

Thursday 8 October 2009

Session 2....At the House....

I really really really enjoyed today's session!!
We had our lecture at Ham House, and discussed what we will be doing in the upcoming months leading to Christmas.

We have been told that we will be running a storytelling project and face painting at the “family fun” events held over three weekends in December. We have been told that we will have (hopefully) three different performance spaces, meaning that we can tell shorter stories and keep the event and the audience moving.

How do we deliver this and how do we make it work effectively?

We need to deliver and event that is fragmented – happens for only 2-5 minutes, possibility of stories or long jokes. It is vital there is fluidity and that the whole thing can dissolve and start again.

I think costumes will be essential, I feel that, as it is over the Christmas period, we should have the theme of magic and fairies to keep the children captured and to make them feel like they are really in a magical place and make them want to come back again, to the house.

There is the possibility of maybe creating things for different age groups maybe each room is for a different age group.

Maybe other “family fun” events that we could consider could be making things, creating costumes out of household “rubbish”.

Within the lecture we all split into groups and went off to find a spot and then had to tell a story about the spot we found.

Our group found a garden with boxes and chairs, and we came up with the idea of being each season and telling a poem about how all the seasons come together to meet. I pitched to the rest of the company that maybe this could be one of our stories for the Christmas event, however the group felt it would be put to better use if we were to save the idea and use it in the summer period. As due to the fact that it was based outdoors, it meant that if the weather was rubbish, our story and ideas would go to waste. I felt that this was a good idea to save it for the summer.

Sunday 27 September 2009

1st session....

The first session today was a bit overwhelming but hearing about what is going to happen sounds pretty exciting!
The idea of working at Ham House and being a volunteer is something i am extremely looking forward to. But to be honest it also sounds like a lot of work.

When listening to Mark in lecture, we were told we can do our own project as well as working with Ham House, i would love to work with a young offenders institute or with a prison, but again the prospect of making more wrok for myself puts me off.
I may just wait and see what unfolds, before making any decisions!!