Final Major Projects

We wanted to avoid the big panto and a literal interpretation of the characters, like the lion being an actual lion and the tin man with face pain dressed as an actual man made of tin. We wanted to use the history of the book and the truth behind the story. This leads us to the idea of art deco and representing the people of the time if the book. For me, this was a lot more interesting to be a part of and to at in rather than a literal interpretation. The Scarecrow became a homeless man, the tin man in a striped suit and the lion as an American mobster and the witches flapper girls. This made our charters more real and as actors, we could relate to them a lot more, especially with myself I find panto and acting for children very difficult so I’m very happy I had a lot of freedom to experiment with my character. Personally, myself and Jade shore who played the wicked witch discussed how we would have our costumes with the suggestion of flapper girls we both wore flapper dresses hers ...

Over 5 days we had 10 shows and over 1000 school children watching our performances. As we got into the routine of show week everything seems to calm there were no more serious argument or disagreements and we made plans with each other between shows with is going out for dinner or ordering food into the theatre. The first few shows were very tiring being in the theatre at 8:30 in the morning and only having a short break between shows. This was the most difficult because we wanted each show to be performed at its best regardless of how tired we were all feeling. Regardless of how tired we all were the first 4 shows on Tuesday the 4th and Wednesday the 5the went really well and ran smoothly, despite all our worries the children loved the show. As the week progressed and we became more and more comfortable within the run of the show we as a cast started to improvise more and interact with the audience in unsorted ways. There were parts particularly when both Dorothy’s asked the aud...

During these next few posts, I'll be discussing the process of creating the show the Wizard of OZ performed from the 4th to the 8th of December. cast photo

Tec took place from Friday at 9am -5:30 and Monday 9-6:30 however on the Monday a majority of us stayed till at least 7:30 for an extra line run. On these days we faced a lot of issues the main one being the staging. Transferring the show from the studio to the Grange is always difficult, our studios are half the size and we have to imagine the different levels of the set we’ll be having. As well as this some the set wasn't finished so there was still workstation around the stage so we all had to be extra careful with safety. A few days leading up to being the in the garage a few of us helped with painting the set to help the techies and there are only a few of them on the course. We fixed the blocking issues by stop starting the dances a few times and reblocking where we all were. We also used our own common sense to spread ourselves out. Another issue we faced was the fast-paced of everything with only two days to tec the whole show with the actors we all had to work extra ha...

Our version of the Wizard of Oz was written by Miranda Parker and was set on Oldham rather than Kansas. This was a conscious decision because of our audience is from Oldham the story was more relatable, a lot of children from Oldham me being included grow up being told how Oldham isn't a good place to live and the government agree with multiple articles being published criticizing Oldham. However, to have a fairytale set in Oldham the main character being so real it really brings a true fairy tale to the school children of Oldham. We also use Oldham's reputation to our advantage with humor, there are a lot of jokes about the spelling with the scarecrow asking “What's OLD-HAM?’ as well as a lot of confused and disgusted looks at the name like when I play Glinda the lyrics to my song are “and OLDHAM (disgusted look)  she says is the name of the star” In the book there is a lot of symbolism representing the American social and political climate of the 1890s. This is has been...