Friday Rehearsals

We had a really productive rehearsal on Friday, which helped us to get even further in the script. We had to do the scene where we make Ferdinand follow us with our singing. We all come on from different sides of the stage and start to walk in as other-worldly creatures. We have to come in to some music and do movements all across the stage, go up to the audience and look at them as if they're trespassers on our island  and explore the stage by crawling, running, pacing etc.

We had to use the research that we did on our spirits to develop these movements to make them more like our characters. For example, Marian is Juno, her goddess represents fertility and marriage. Her symbol is a peacock, so Marian is using the peacock as her animal to inspire her movements. I am Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, so all my movements are on the floor or quite low down to symbolise the earth and the fertility of the ground. Ceres story, which is in an earlier post on my blog, tells us that she is the reason that winter comes and everything dies, when her daughter is taken away from her and that spring comes when she is reunited with her. So I chose the animal of a door-mouse because I wanted something that symbolises her quick, sharpness in spring, which keeps her alive and healthy and her depression in the winter, which makes everything die and makes her go into hibernation.

Her sacred animal is a pig, so when we're rolling on the floor, I might use sniffing as her way of exploring the space and trying to figure out why they're there by sniffing the audience and staying low to the ground.

We sing and every other line of Ariel's song and repeat it three times, getting quieter each time and then sing the other song and sit around Ferdinand in set positions that relate to our character. We then one by one stand up around him and circle him and create wave-like movements around him to make it seem more like a fantasy.

We then all see Prospero enter and run away because he can use us how and when he likes, so we feel like he uses us and we're frightened of him.

The whole spirit section we ran worked really well and allowed us the time we needed to explore our characters and the meaning behind each movement we do across the stage. It is going to look really effective and give the audience a trance-like feeling. It will look really good when we're in our costumes and when we've got lighting and music too.