Week 1

Friday 4th January

In our first lesson working on the School Song, from Matilda, we focused on learning about the background and context information on the musical. We did this in order to have a clearer understanding of the piece we will be performing and the characters that we will need to embody.

The musical is based on Roald Dahls Matilda (1988) and was adapted as a musical by Dennis Kelly. Tim Minchin, famous comedian, created the music and lyrics and the musical was choreographed by Peter Darling. It opened in the West End on the 24th November 2011 at the Cambridge theatre. The musical follows 5-year-old Matilda. She is a smart girl who holds a love for books and has the power of telekinesis. She struggles with her family life at home and seeks the comfort from a school teacher, Miss Honey. The Genre is comedy and fantasy, which is what Roald Dahl intended Matilda to be.Matilda, on the surface, is a children’s book about powers and fantasy. However, as with most of Roald Dahls books, there is an underlying darkness to the story line. The musical includes other themes such as violence and good vs evil. These are darker themes that you wouldn’t often associate with a children’s story. However, Dahl wanted to make sure that showed the struggle of Matlidas life. "...the comedy's taken off to a different level, where it's a bit scary."-Tim Minchin

The choreography is less about dance and fluidity, but more movement and making sure that even the adults in the cast could be portrayed as childlike. Peter Darling used harsh and attacking motions in his choreography in order to try show the inner thoughts and frustrations of a child. After learning this, I knew that my target was to make sure that my movements held character and a large amount of energy.

 Monday 7th January

 In our first lesson working on “The school song” from Matilda, we started by doing some specific warm ups to help with our diction, such as tongue twisters. We did this as we were made aware that this song held a significant amount of words and that they were sung at a fast pace. We also did our basic warm ups such as sing on a scale in order to warm up effectively as the song was also in a high key. We used phrases such as "fa" and "la" up the C major scale.

As a class, we were then split up into two groups and were each assigned different rooms. We then decided on parts for each person in our group (big kids and little kids). We all learned the song with the backing track given. As a class, we learned up to the key change.

 As I was previously familiar with the song, I stepped forward to help lead my group into learning the song. The backing track that was provided proved a challenge as we weren't confident with the timings. Instead, we decided to use a karaoke version found on you tube for us to be able to follow along with the lyrics. We felt it most effective to learn the song in small sections at a time. We all soon felt comfortable with the timings and words and started to create a basic staging so that it would look more effective when we performed it to the other group. We used blocks to give us a height variation. The little kids stood in front of the blocks, whilst the big kids stood up on the blocks. This showed the social hierarchy between the two groups. I think my strength of today’s lesson was helping to teach my group the song in a way that worked best for everyone.

My short-term target for today’s lesson will be to learn my lines for me to be able to focus on my performance and the movement, therefore giving a more realistic performance. My long-term target for this lesson will be to try embodying the character as a big kid and to portray more emotion in my acting and overall performance.

 Tuesday 8th January

We started the lesson by doing a warm up that, as a class, we were already familiar with. This consisted of leg and foot movements, rolling of the arms and planks. This prepare us for the choreography that we would be learning in this lesson.  It’s also extremely important to warm up in order to reduce injury when dancing as warming up enables blood to flow into our muscles and prepare us for any challenging activity. It also reduces the pulling of muscles.

 We then moved onto a vocal warm up, including a tongue twister to prepare ourselves for the heavy volume of words that we would need to sing with clarity in The School song. We then sang through the whole song to warm up our voices further. We then began to establish who would be play the little kids and who would play the big kids. After being made aware of what part the big kids would play, I decided that I wanted to portray a big kid. This meant that i would be doing a larger bulk of the dancing and having to channel a rambunctious child with a lot of energy. The big kids then began learning the choreography. I first struggled as some movements were on difficult beats, but I am a quick learner so i manage to pick up the choreography fairly quickly.

 The challenge and long-term target for this lesson is to make sure that my movements are sharp and on the correct beats. I will do this by making sure I am confident with the timings of the song, so I know exactly when to come in. I also want to make sure that I don't lose character. I will do this by practising the dance in font of a mirror in order to see what facial expressions I do and create ones for moments when they are not as strong and defined. 

 Friday 11th Jan

In this lesson, the focus was to piece together the vocals with the movement we learnt in the previous lesson. I wasn't too worried as the movements were basic enough to not run out of breath. However, the challenge for me was to make sure each movement had character. We also then learnt the facial expressions that we needed to use throughout the piece. Big Kids needed to look menacing an intimidating. We did this by making our eyes wide and frowning. Little kids needed to look frightened and unsure, by looking around constantly out of fear and keeping a closed off stance. I made sure to put into practice the facial expressions that I had created in my spare time, which was my target from previous lessons. This allowed me to add my own expressions which meant that my character has some originality and would stand out in the group.

 I believe that I was successful in using my facial expressions and an intimidating stance in order to portray my character to the audience. I also think my vocals were still strong, despite adding in the movement. However, I still think I could improve on my breath control to make sure that I’m not losing energy towards the end.

My long-term target will be to work on my breath control so that I am able to keep a consistence vocal level, and I will do this by practising more breath control warm-ups such as inhaling and exhaling in counts of 10,8, and 4 , before every run through from no on to ensure that I have as much lung capacity as possible in order to not run out of breath. I will also put into practice my target from previous lessons in that I know the song well enough to figure out where I can take deep breaths in order to continue with confidence.