Wizard Of Oz Week One

This week marked our first week working on The Wizard Of Oz. We started off by looking at the script, to see what we wanted to do with it, what sort of spin on it we wanted to have. Firstly, we tackled the munchkin scenes, we thought these would be the hardest to complete correctly. The show needs a lot of energy throughout so we need to make sure that the ensemble cast had the energy to set the tone for the rest of the play. In our first couple of days, we were looking at staging and how we would move and what we would do during the munchkin scenes. This was a task in and of itself, we both needed to look at home and amazed by the proceedings all at the same time.

Kelly thought that we weren’t letting ourselves go enough in our munchkin characters. Therefore, she tasked us with thinking about our individual munchkin characters, what jobs do they do? Who is this character? How do they fit in to the land of Oz? For example, I decided that my munchkin was going to be an apple picker, others in the cast decided to be a teacher or a stay-at-home parent. We were to walk around in our characters and interact with each other so that we wouldn’t be embarrassed. Only then would we be able to let go.

Once this task was completed and everyone felt more confident, we looked at the scene itself. We planned out what each of us would be doing when ‘Dorothy’ first came to munchkin land, everyone needed to react as if they were shocked and amazed about this strange new creature in our land. Our ensemble cast got into character and reacted accordingly and then adjust with some direction from Kelly. In the end the scene didn’t feel or look like a mess and was quite organised.

Following on from this our teacher Kane helped us to further develop our munchkin characters. He did so by putting all of us in a circle and asking what our characters names and jobs were and what they were like as people. After this this were put into groups to further flesh out our answers and then give this information to Kane. This was a vital part in our preparation for The Wizard Of Oz, as actors our age can have the ability to let go if we are per say a larger character but not all of us understand that also needs to happen when we play smaller parts. Such as the munchkins. The smaller and ensemble roles plays as much of a vital role in the play as any named characters because they set the tone for both the play and the world the play lives in.

At the end of the week Kelly took those of us who had managed to land a main part and start to work on those characters. I was lucky to have the part of the ‘Tinman’, the part I had auditioned for. We worked through the scenes in which all of our characters were introduced. In my own scene we planned out how my movement would work and how that would work in the other introduction scenes in terms of blocking.