Peter and the Wolf BLOCKING 12

In our after school rehearsal, we worked with the OCL for the first time. This was our first rehearsal where the piece looks like a final performance. We had 3 total run-throughs in this session, with one being before the orchestra arrived. We didn't have our full costumes on at this point, as it was just a warm-up rehearsal to guarantee our narrator knew his whole script and we all knew the blocking.

We were missing the bassoon as the musician was caught in traffic. This didn't seem to be a big issue as the other musicians were able to work around it.

Mrs Williams was there for this rehearsal, meaning she could give her advice and change things that she thought could be improved. She decided we should try and block the procession again. The previous choice was to go into the audience and interact with the audience, however this leaves the stage slightly dull. It also means everyones focus will be in different places. At the end of our last run-through, we were told to improvise the procession. In tomorrows rehearsals, we will block this properly and choose what bits we liked from our improvised version.

The pace was slightly different with the orchestra in comparison to the tracks we have been using, we means we need to take slightly longer for each section of movement. This could be a benefit as tomorrow we might work on adding some more movement as we know we have time.

The one scene we hadn't blocked was during the procession, where Peter and the bird have a few bars of music to signify their friendship. Originally we had been rehearsing with this being a solo short performance from the bird, however we felt it would be best for Peter to come back on stage for it. In our first run-through, we completely improvised this scene to see if we could get any ideas from it. We started doing a hand-shake and felt we should develop that. We spent a few minutes devising a hand-shake to do during that section. After comments from the audience, we decided to scrap this idea. This was because we are clapping every time we hit each others hands, therefore it distracts from the music as they aren't in beat together. We were trying out the handshake in a run-through and they music dragged on a bit longer than we had anticipated, so we improvised some more. I began to do some silly looking ballet moves to create a comic effect, and this was something Mrs Trono chose to continue looking at. The idea of Peter doing silly dance moves fits the character quite well, as he is a silly and high energy child. He is always smiling and laughing, therefore a dance around with the bird fits well, even if he is doing the moves poorly. In tomorrow's rehearsal, this scene will be completely blocked, with as much dance and activity as possible.