WHERE LOYALTIES LIE26 Final performance

Our piece was written as a comedy, meaning our intention was to make the audience laugh. This was achieved very well, with the audience finding a lot of the intended comedic points funny. Along with
 that, they found certain areas funny that we had not written with that intention. This was because we had based our characters on stereotypes. Despite being teenagers, we still managed to get the audience to identify with our characters. The moment where Emma portrayed a character that loves drinking. This was done when she downed her drink and said, "wow that's a lot of gin". Many people in the audience felt this moment was identifiable. Along with this, we used pauses, one liners, music, costumes and monologues. Amelie played the stereotype of a hippie, which was a source of comedy as she was playing the character very well.

Along with portraying comedy, we had a message to deliver. Linking to the name of the piece, we wanted the audience to understand the issues of friendship and consider everyones emotions in a situation like the one performed. The contrast between naturalistic comedy and the non-naturalistic serious moments meant that the audience could experience moments that have meaning and moments that were lighter. After audience feedback, the sadder ending fitted the piece well as it was very impactful. Along with that, there were some very funny moments, including the interactions between Silvana and Seths character.

We utilised the whole stage and very rarely had static scenes, meaning the audience wasn't able to zone out. We did this to hold their attention. This was an important step because we knew our piece was complicated, therefore if the audience weren't engaged, they would miss plot points. The music and physical theatre also helped to engage them.

Overall, the performance went very successfully and we felt the message and style was portrayed well.

WHERE LOYALTIES LIE25

First of all, we had 2 and a half hours to work in a relatively decent sized space before traveling over to the performance venue. We had planned to do a run through in this time however one of our cast members turned up late so it meant we couldn't. Instead, we tidied up the sound and lighting cue sheets.

We had the opportunity to do our final dress rehearsal in the actual performance space. This meant we could nail the sound and lighting cues as we were able to work with the technicians. It also meant that we could familiarise ourselves with the backstage area, the dressing room and the timing we had to do everything (e.g. go from one side of the wings to the other, how long we had to put our set on stage).

This is very useful to do for all productions as it means the performance day will go a lot smoother, which not only benefits your group but it benefits all the other groups performing as it means you aren't getting in their way.

We needed to look at how the spacing is different in this space compared to our stage at our school. This is why our run through in this space had a few pauses. Some other things we had to change or look out for include:

• Projecting so that everyone in the audience could hear
• watching out for the amplifiers 
• Staying in the light
• Speaking over music

WHERE LOYALTIES LIE24 Dress rehearsal

DRESS REHEARSAL

Today we did a dress rehearsal in front of a few staff members and a few students. This went very well and we got some very good reviews and feedback.

REHEARSAL

At the end of the day, we did some touching up of some scenes that weren't that clean, including:

• Mirrored chair duet 
• Hugo and Amelie train scene 
• Louis, Tristan and James fight 
• Enhancing Seth's character and the comedic value of it 

RUN THROUGH

We then did a full run through to see if we could apply these new changes to the performance. It worked very well and we feel very well prepared for our performance.

WHERE LOYALTIES LIE23 Clean run-through

Here is a clip of our complete run-through



This was our first rehearsal in costume. The issues were:

• It was a small space
• Not all lines were learnt
• Not all transitions were smooth
• Didn't warm up so too tired at beginning
• Like the overlapping lines but need to look at the way they say them
• Need a transition between fragmented monologue to the mirrored chair duet
• Need to include the relationship between Jane and Dave in fragmented monologue and include Dave's jealousy
• Need the boys to react more to Meredith and Jane's monologues
• Need to show that the boys have been up all night
• Then need to show the passage of time from 7am to Jane coming into the bar
• Laurent saying 'she doesn't have friends'
• Laurent and Charles need more energy in their voice
• Scene 9 and 10 need help
• Charles hair in eyes
• Could have the Brighton folk in the brother's bar - Marie planning the wedding
• Fred puts the music on because joke didn't make sense
• Need a scene between Dave telling Harry about Meredith cheating to Harry telling Meredith to get up 
• Possibly have yoga with Marie and Meredith planning wedding
• Charles react more to the speech to Marie
• Have music playing after everyone says Happy Engagement - plays - all awkward and silent with "I think I wanna marry you" playing - Fred turns it off

Here is another run-through we did later on

This went a lot smoother and the space was a lot better as it is a similar size to the one that we will be performing on.

WHERE LOYALTIES LIE22 run through and sound cues

We started this rehearsal with a standard warm-up of splat. This was simply to bring energy levels up and get us focused for when we start working on our piece. I main focus today was to get as many run-throughs as possible so that we can familiarise ourselves with the order of scenes and the transitions. It was a relatively successful run-through however we would still like it to be smoother. We adjusted the movement in the epilogue slightly, as it is now slower. This allows us to put more emphasis on each movement and it will fit the music better.

After this, myself and Emma worked on creating the sound cue sheet and match it with the script.

WHERE LOYALTIES LIE21 half a run-through

Today, we started with another focus game called the 'counting game'. In this game, you begin with pairing up and counting to 4. The challenging part is you have to say 1 number each, meaning you have to get into a rhythm and focus. Then you replace the numbers with certain movements (i.e 1 becomes a clap). This helped us focus and we had a laugh at the same time.

After the game, we began a full run-through. We never finished this run-through however it was still useful because it meant we were familiarising ourselves with the start.