'Connections' Weeks One and Two

Once we had our roles handed out, we wasted no time in getting ready to put on two shows. It was a shame that some of us didn't get the roles we had worked for but that's the acting life. You can’t get everything you want; this is of course true for life in general as well. Nevertheless, we still had a chance to put on our version of the show, we may not perform at Sunderland, but I was still thankful Kelly gave us the opportunity to perform our own amazing show. 

Our director was Morgan in this piece, which excited me as he is new to directing and I was looking forward to working with him and seeing what ideas he would have. To be able to work under Morgan would be a good new experience, seeing how other directors work is great as in a school setting it is usually the same directors and I had full trust in him that he would make this play the best it could possibly be.

The first week we began by starting chronologically from scene one, running through mine and Charley’s first scene. There wasn’t much to do in that particular scene, but we did learn that we needed to play the first scene with more depth. Due to this Charley and I decided to discuss what we had been doing before and why our performance felt so tense. We talked about the relationship between the brother and sister, how hard it had been for them over the years with all the drama in their lives from when they were thirteen to now. ‘Zafer’ having cancer being just one aspect of this and we tried to show that in this first scene.  The rest of the week comprised of the rest of the cast rehearsing their parts. As I was only in the rest of the play near the end, for the rest of the time I took this opportunity to try and understand my character more thoroughly and read through the lines. As well as this, I also helped read in for some characters who had to swap in and out with the other cast. 

Week two came around and people were staring to get a little worried, we didn’t have long before the show was meant to be on, and we didn’t feel we had done enough. We dug down and went through as many scenes as possible and getting them locked in. To do this we had to focus on our other cast and spreading that energy from the other actors. It is crucial to show the contrast in the characters, then vs now. It was important that we highlight the young and innocent side of the characters as children and how the tragic events that had happened to them that day changed their lives. How years later they are still haunted by it. We had to focus and show how our characters are being haunted in their older selves’ scenes, especially when they mention that ‘Tom Joy’ is out. Everyone is panicking and thinking that everything could be 'Tom Joy', from 'V's' car going missing to the knocking outside. Even when my character ‘Zafer’ hears he’s out, he has a full-blown panic attack. It is obvious that the past has traumatised these kids for years and they haven’t got over it yet. When it came doing my scenes it was fun getting up and joining in. Eventually we ran through a couple of those, and Morgan seemed very happy with how we were performing. The only changes involved a couple of tips and different movement choices. Things were going well.