Vsevolod Meyerhold - Biochemical techniques.

Tec Week:

Rehearsal schedule:

Tec week started on the 11th of June and the plan was to be finished by Wednesday for two dress runs. As rehearsal in the grange started on the Monday we all used discipline and patients to finish the finish the first act. It was slow going at first but we where all excited as the show with all its aspects where finally coming together. The tec crew who had come into some rehearsals had already spent hours plotting the lights and with the help of the actors the set looked amazing. I think that as a cast the atmosphere from being in the studio changed dramatically from the atmosphere of the studio, it was more professional but also there was an air of suspense as it came close to the opening show. We spent Monday in the theatre 9am to 4:30 pm a full day of running tec and organising the dressing rooms. A few of the second years including my self chose to have dressing room three a place where the majority of us have always been for every show we've been in. There where unspoken rules of the dressing that we all agreed to follow...

.Ask to sit in other people dressing room during down time
.Clean up after yourself
.Respect privacy
.Respect the rules of the grange.
Those of us in dressing rook three we brought in bunting and personal object to really make the space our own and to have a fun and relaxed environment. Some of the best memories i have with the cast happened in tec week and in our dressing room. We sang, relaxed and worked together in that room as the majority of us always have. There are always little moments and jokes that are just kept for the cast and crew and this was where a lot of those moments happened.
We where told by the tec students that when the actors where nor required on stage we had to stay in our dressing rooms or in the foyer for health and safety reason which we all completely understand, Foe example if someone is working at height and if there is an issue we dot have the training or safety equipment to deal with that situation. We all respected these rules as we knew it was for our own safty and they where taken seriously.

In this rehearsal we pretty much ran the first act starting and stopping to work with light, sound and mics as we went on. For me as my character features heavily in the first act wasn't as slow going as is was for some other people felt. Even though we where all on stage through out the show I felt that we as a cast didn't put in as much effort as we could have. I think this was because if the stopping and starring but we did handle the situation well considering how easy it could have been for us to lose our concentration. At the end of the rehearsal we did sit down together a spoke of our issues which i feel was a great way for us work though our problem together. We all felt that we had a place to talk and that no judgment would be help for what we said. As well as place fro us as a cast to discus we also had night from out direct on out performances, she told us about the problems for spacing coming from the studio to the grange. Even though we all knew what we where meant to be doing it didn't feel secure enough which definitely changed the atmosphere of the rehearsal, and i feel that this was one of the reasons that people didn't put all their effort in. Another issue was lines we where increasingly becoming more and more worried about some people who didn't know their lines fully. However we didn't want to put to much pressure on those people but in a way we knew we had to. However with a good conversation and hard work we did all try to help each other and be supportive. It was quite frustrating for me personally as i felt confident with my lines but when other people don't it makes me doubt what i know. This issue was faced head on and even though they could have been a bit better for the first show you could clearly see how hard people have worked. We walked away fro that rehearsal knowing how much work we had to do but also more prepared for the rest of the week, it had suddenly all become real and the realization of how close the show was which both scared and excited us.

Day Two:

on this day things became a little more complicated because there was exams on so we missed a lot of the cast but also because the second act was more technical than the first, we tried the best we could with who we had but it did prove difficult. The day felt a lot longer compared to the first day i felt that we where more and more stressed with the show looming so closely. The basis's of the day has the same structure as the day before with us staggering through the act an stopping and starting when we needed to. It was obvious that the second act was less rehearsed than the first because the lines where unrehearsed and the confidence we had slowly started to disappear at certain points. As the day went on we found, ourselves having to relock some the scene due to spacing and where the lights where placed. With building the windmill this also proved challenging as there was specific way that it had to be built but as people where missing we couldn't rehearse in the right order that we would normally have been in. This caused us to have to come back to the scene later n the day, when the full cast was in. I found this day less challenging than the first as i was in the chorus and didn't play a particular character which meant that i could experiment more with my characterisation and movement while being a hen. We also found that as we had only performed forward to one bay we had forgotten the other side bays where the audience was also sitting. This required us to move around some scene where we had originally all just faced forward. At the end the day we then again all gathered around for our note on our performance and some of the same issues came up like lines, spacing but also the way we speak to each other, as i mentioned before some of us where starting to snap at each other un-intentionally as i am guilt myself, but after us all speaking to each other we left the theatre that day still a little anxious for the dress run bur also a little more prepared. There was still a lot of work before the show was ready for an audience to see, i went home that night and read through my script and recapped everything id done so that id be ready for the next day.