Rehearsal Week

Next month, for the third year production, our year is putting on Arcadia. The play is directed by Annabel Scholes – a Theatre / Media lecturer who directed The Lion King when it came to Australia in 2003. Our year formed a company, taking on all the roles the show required. The show is on in the Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre on the 4th, 5th and 6th of June.

Arcadia is a play by Tom Stoppard. As it turns out, he is possibly the greatest playwright of his generation. This is an enormous claim and I didn’t believe it until I read the play - my goodness the man can write.

I am playing the role of Septimus Hodge, which is a crazy bit of casting since I am a lady and Septimus is very much the Mr Darcy of the piece. In spite of this, I am pretty pleased with being the one to play him because Septimus is very cool. If you can, picture Dylan Moran in a period costume having verbal slinging matches with similarly attired Navy Captains and Romantic Poets. Septimus is also an immense shagger. This is a mixed victory since it means I pash Emma, my housemate. On stage.

Rehearsal week was at the end of April, before class started this term. What happens during this period is that the company gathers together and works as hard as they can to get as much done as possible. The design team presented their set model and started constructing it. The marketing team got a poster design made to their brief by a Sydney Graphic Designer; developed a press kit, including media releases and sponsorship letters; and sent invitations to local school groups. Our costume designer and lighting designer produced drawings of their plans and presented them to us. While all this was going on, the cast rehearsed with the help of the Director, Assistant Directors, Stage Manager and Head of Props.

The rehearsals were intensive and run to a tight schedule. We discussed what was going on in each scene; what was being revealed about our characters; how to best represent these things on stage. Rehearsals went from 10am until 6pm each day and by the end we could do a full run of the show without scripts in hand. We presented this to the rest of the company on Friday afternoon.

We are now only four weeks out from production week, which means four weeks until we perform in the Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre. Everything is going swimmingly, it’s all very funny and we have gorgeous costumes props to play with.

Have a look at the video from the rehearsal week. I’ll keep you posted as we get closer to the BIG date.

ARCADIA rehearsals

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Lipsync Photo Gallery

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Lipsync 2009

Third year Theatre/Media students have an assignment called ‘Indoor Event’ where we work as a team to put on a show – from ‘Bump In’ to ‘Bump Out’ – all in a 24 hour period. Ours was Tuesday night; we put on Lipsync 2009 in the Unibar and it was so much fun.

Lipsync is a Bathurst Campus tradition, resembling a talent quest, a bar night and possibly just a platform for class clowns everywhere. Communications students in their first year have an assignment where they get into small groups and devise a performance, lipsyncing along to a song of their choice.

It doesn’t sound much like work, and it isn’t, but the trick is to come up with an innovative twist to your performance. The message you send in your song needs to be clever and funny, and you compete with all the other groups to have yours performed at Lipsync night. Only ten groups make it in on the night, then a winner is chosen – best of the best.

While the first years are the ones performing their acts, the third years are the ones who run the show from beginning to end, and in every capacity. Our year divides up into departments – Set, Lights, Sound, Marketing, Audio Visual and Multi Media, Stage Management, Production Management, Master of Ceremonies – and plan how the night will run.

I worked in the marketing department. We designed posters and put them up around campus, we advertised in chalk on the pavements, we talked to people about the event, we organised buses to take people to downtown pubs afterwards, and on the night we sold tickets and ushered everyone inside.

Tuesday – the day of the show – all hands were on deck from 7.30am until about 10.30pm. Bump In involves moving everything you need into the venue and setting up for the show. The stage had to be erected and dressed, lights rigged, focused and plotted, AV and sound had to be rigged, and everything needed to be rehearsed.

We had a technical rehearsal in the early afternoon where the Lipsync groups came in and performed their pieces for us. We tested the sound and lights, and the Stage Managers practiced moving props and set pieces on and off stage.

We had four or five cameras, which we used for a live-feed projection on two screens on either side of the stage, so that was rehearsed as well.

We decided as a year that the theme for the evening should be “Baywatch”. We decorated everything in Baywatch paraphernalia and our MC’s were dressed as well-known characters and performed skits throughout the night.

We had around 370 people come to see the show. By all accounts a fun night was had by all – the winning team used Linkin Park’s song In The End and their performance was all about enemas. Gettit? People got naked on stage too. It was a bit of a riot. There were standing ovations and screaming and shouting.

Once the show was over, we had to Bump Out. As you may be able to guess, this means removing everything from the venue and packing it away. All thirty of us third years worked like Trojans and an hour and forty-five minutes later we were at the pub. That’s teamwork.

Welcome

Hello, I’m Penny and I’m doing a BA - Communications (Theatre / Media). I’m in my third year at the moment and I love it.

In third year you get thrown in the deep end with the productions and events the course puts on. At the moment we are furiously preparing for Lipsync 2009 which will be held in the Uni Bar next Tuesday. I am working on the marketing for this event.

In June I will be appearing as Septimus Hodge in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia in the Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre. This is very exciting – it’s my first professional production. At the end of the year I will be producing my own major work – a comedy show to be filmed in the television studios on campus in front of a live audience. All very crazy.

Welcome to my blog I will do my very best to make it interesting.