Much of our time was spent scrutinising scenes in order to attain the right effect from them. We often worked on scenes in small segments which involved stopping a scene if there was a problem, and then repeating from when we had stopped. This monotonous process meant that we knew the scenes intimately, and so when we came to re-run a scene we would know exactly what to be doing and when.
On several occasions, when not all members of the group were needed in a scene, they would stand to one side and ‘act as the director’. This allowed us to have guidance on our performance when we were away from our teacher, and also built confidence in our performance as the direction was often brutally honest!
Two methods that we found most useful when working on characterisation was the use of characters in hot-seated and improvised scenes. This enabled to look at our characters in a new context, and discover many things about them that were not explained during the scene. The major advantage to this method is that we were able to spend a longer time in character than their scenes allowed for, and so we could spend a longer time playing with ideas and making things work. When the character was brought back into the scene, they became far more three-dimensional.
One of the most major problems that we encountered when beginning a rehearsal was actually beginning a rehearsal! This was a result of a lack of forward planning, which left us trying to arrange a rehearsal a few days after the last one. The result of this was that we often could not remember the point that was reached at the end of the last meet, and so time was usually wasted in backtracking. The obvious and simple solution to this was the planning of the next rehearsal at the end of each meet, as this allowed us to have a clean and concise start to each rehearsal.
After a few weeks of regular structured rehearsals we reached a point where we actually had a tried and tested method to each rehearsal, and so we were able to come to each meet knowing would be expected of us, and also knowing how much work was probably going to be done. This helped greatly with the planning of rehearsals as time could be easily managed without too much wasted.
About a month before the performance, the play had reached the point where we were no longer bringing new ideas and concepts to the group, and we were able to get on with some intense and productive rehearsals. A basic idea of the finished play was ‘realised’ quite early on, which left us quite a long time to work on performance and design elements.
From previous performances we had developed a very mature and open rehearsal technique. This involved sharing very honest opinions of the work of other members of the group. This way of working meant that everyone was ready to be criticised on his or her work without taking offence. This proved to be highly effective as the honest work ethic allowed us to produce our best performances by taking on board the tips of others.
Some parts of the play fell into place much quicker than others and so not all scenes needed the same level of scrutiny as others. The mimed ‘War Spectacular’ scene, for example, worked very well from the first time we tried it, and only the tweaking of choreography was needed. However, our ‘Bar’ scene proved an absolute nightmare, and alone was given the most attention during rehearsals. Although a great amount of time was spent on this scene, we were aware not to allow other scenes to become neglected and so we consciously kept a constant rotation of scenes during rehearsals.
What proved to be one of our most useful rehearsals was when we had a friend watch. They had not seen any of our previous rehearsals and so everything that he was shown was fresh. This new perspective on our work allowed us highlight and concentrate on problems that we had not before noticed. From then on we stayed aware of the audience’s perception, and tried to look at the work objectively.
Our rehearsals took place in thee very different locations; the small, enclosed drama room, the large and airy youth centre hall, and the even larger school hall in which we would be having our final performance. This difference of location proved to be quite a serious problem as our work had very different intensities in each one. This problem, however, was out of our control. Our location of rehearsal was dependant on when the rehearsal was taking place, as the school hall was often in use during the school day, we were forced to use the drama room, and outside of school time we had to use the youth centre. It would have been preferable to use the school hall, and our lack of time rehearsing in this space may have lead to one of our most major performance problems; some of scenes lacked intensity and our use of space (or lack of it) was the cause of this.
Apart from these problems, our intense and structured rehearsal regime meant that we had very in-depth knowledge of our messages, and the actual performance. Although we took our time in finding our preferred working method, we eventually were able to structure productive rehearsals which focussed on the areas of our performance that needed the most attention.
