Rehearsals

We rehearsed and refined each small part of the show until we knew them well enough to slowly put them all together. Our first proper run through was the week before the week of our performance. Different parts of the show took a different amount of time, but I think the scenes between A,B,C and D were the most difficult because they were longer lines that we had to learn and some people had monologues. We had quite a few other things to be learning outside of theatre workshop too, so that made it harder. Also, we didn't have permanent roles so we wore placards instead to identify who we were meant to be. For example, I had "Old Lady 2" and "A". These were worn to remind the audience that they were watching a performance where we were portraying the characters, not being the characters which is something that is very strict in brechtian theatre.

The Songs
There were two songs that we had to learn for Blondie and these were "Vote Me" and "Here Comes the Prime Minister". We weren't even learning the words to the real songs, we had another version to sing that both Sarah and Lee Ryan had written themselves. I think it's fair to say that we aren't a very gifted strand when it comes to learning and singing songs because the Songs were the last things that we learnt properly. Vote Me was the opening song to the show and Tian started it off by being carried into the middle of the stage and slut dropping on the table before having his own little verse. Then we came in and sung the rest of the song with him. The he crowd-surfed and that is how we took him off stage. Then the "Who Did You Vote For?" parts began.
Here Comes The Prime Minister was a rap and I think we learnt this quicker. The staging was four groups at one corner each facing the audience and each of the blondie's moved anti-clockwise through the groups and we did a sequence of very basic movement inspired by the lyrics of the song. Even though these movements were simple and easy, we found it hard to remember when one move was when. But this all came together as well, and we loved it when we understood it.

The Scenes
Our people in power scenes were easy to remember because we were the ones who made these and personally, this is the part that I enjoyed performing the most because I found myself absolutely hilarious. We had to modify a few bits though. For example: when George Bush (Jack) calls me (Mr Iraq), we decided to have a ringtone and I would have a tiny tantrum because I don't know how to answer my phone. Then I find out it's a slide. I was inspired by adults who can't use smartphonesfor that part. During the phonecall, I had a bad signal and was walking around to find \a good spot, I settled for standing on a chair in an awkward position before saying "Come get bitch" when George announced war on Iraq for the oil. We decided it would be good to have a part where our actions were narrated because it's brechtian theatre and we felt that our scene wasn't brechtian enough, so Jack and Katie narrated the part where me and Charlie get killed by the American Soldiers.
The "Who did you vote for?" parts were short but they needed consistency, precision and a lot of energy because the transitions needed to be quick but neat. We didn't have any props for this part, so those who weren't speaking were objects or people in the background. The lines for this part were short so we learnt them in no time. It was what came next that we found difficult. These scenes were short and fast-paced  so we were a bit everywhere when we had to make the next scene. Sarah solved this by spending about 15 minutes walking through it with us until we were crystal clear about the order.
Finally, our A B C D scenes. These were the hardest and the most naturalistic parts we had to play. As I earlier mentioned, these  were the parts where we had longer lines and we had to be se3rious instead of exaggerating and over-doing our characterisation. This proved the most difficult part for me as well because I kept on forgetting my lines or getting half way through a paragraph and forgetting what came next. I was good in terms of characterisation but lines were an issue. Luckily I sorted this out by the second to last rehearsal.