Finally the time has come where we can start to rehearse for the musical!! Almost every person in the year was thinking just that on the 9th of January 2017. Throughout the Christmas Holidays I watched the Beauty and the Beast movie, listened to the songs numerous times and read the script. In the musicalI I will be playing the part of a ‘Silly Girl’, and I am also a Cupcake. I am in many of the songs in the musical including ‘Belle’, ‘Be our Guest’, ‘Human Again’ and many more songs! Therefore I made it my priority to familiarize myself with the tunes and words to the songs during the Christmas Holiday. I think I started to annoy my family a little as I continuously belted out ‘Be Our Guest’ around the house! The 'Silly Girls' in Beauty and the Beast! The weeks following announcement of our TY Musical, I built up a lot of excitement and expectation for the musical rehearsals. On the 9th of January 2017, all the principal parts (which I am amazed I am part of!) gathered in the Junior School Hall, for our first musical rehearsal! We all felt a little nervous but most of all thrilled that the musical was about to begin. I was beyond curious to discover what our first rehearsal would be like! The purpose of our first rehearsal was to introduce us to the musical and allow us to get a sense and idea how the musical goes. We all sat restlessly in a circle and sang the opening number of the musical, which is ‘Belle’, together. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of people that knew the songs and that people were pumped and enthusiastic about the musical! We were immediately given lines within the first song, I was given the lines of the ‘Aristocratic Lady’ which I was pleased with! We flew through the songs, simply singing them together, or in the case of a solo song only the soloist, and getting to grips with the musical and mainly getting used to singing as a group! I am not alone when I say our first day of rehearsals was exciting and enjoyable! I am really looking forward to the next 5 weeks of rehearsals, but mainly I am looking forward to performing the musical on stage on the 14th of February until the 16th… The first week was extremely fun and eventful! We learned the routines to almost all the songs in the musical, which is quite an achievement in such a short space of time. The way it works is that each Form learns a separate dance on their own. This means that Form A learned the routine to the opening number, which is ‘Belle’, this makes all the students in Form A villagers or a baker, butcher, bookseller and any other type of people you would expect to find in a small French provincial town. Then Form B are doing the dancing and singing in the song ‘Gaston’ which is set in a bar. These students are also villagers, and this dance is very exciting as it involves ‘pretend fighting’ which is fun to act with your partner! Form C are in the biggest number in the show, which is ‘Be Our Guest’. This means the students are all objects, from shiny spoons, flowing and flirty napkins, to salt and pepper and also cupcakes and knifes and cake stands and what not! Finally Form D, the form I am in, learned the dance routine to the song ‘Human Again’. So far, I personally find this dance the most challenging as it is a waltz and requires almost perfect timing and coordination with your partner. In order for this dance to be a success, you must work together with your partner! It has been an amazing, slightly hectic and mainly exciting week. We have progressed much further than I had expected. This week we have mainly focused on the dances, next week we will be working on the singing aspect of the musical too! This week was equally fun and exhilarating! We got the chance to the dances we learned last week, we also learned new dances and finished the routines to all the songs in the musical which is a great accomplishment! All we need to do now is simply polish and perfect the dances in the next few weeks, as we basically know all the routines to the songs already. Furthermore, we concentrated on learning the songs, since it is a musical that we are performing, and not a play, it is obviously beyond vital we work together as a year and sing the songs as best we can with as much volume and enthusiasm as possible! We spent time learning the harmonies to the songs. The soprano line in the songs ‘Be Our Guest’ and ‘Human Again’ are especially high, and I have discovered it is quite challenging to hit a C# while dancing! I was amazed at the amount of hidden talent in our year, particularly with the boys. I was not aware many of the boys could sing, or for that matter, enjoyed singing, until this year! I believe everybody was incredibly impressed when they heard Marc sing his solo for the first time! This is a perfect example of how beneficial TY is, as it allows us to excel in other areas such as singing and acting instead of just nurturing our academic studies. It is starting to get very serious now, with the show less than 2 weeks away! Although the rehearsals this week were a bit more intense and demanding they were still enjoyable and full of laughter. The first week we focused on dancing, the second we dedicated some time to singing, this week we aimed to improve our acting and diction. Throughout the week we went through various scenes that do not include much singing or dancing, and perfected the acting of the characters. We hope to make our musical as believable and as captivating as we can, in order to achieve this we must practice long and hard! For example there is a scene where all the ‘Silly Girls’ gather around Gaston, and we must act deeply hurt and very sad as Gaston is about to propose to Belle. This means we no longer have a chance of marrying him, which is why the scene opens with us dramatically crying and sobbing. This week we practiced different methods to make the scene more believable and realistic. It was very fun and fascinating! In addition we learned a whole new song and routine, called ‘The Mob Song’. This song is full of anger and fear. We perform this song when Gaston announces there is a beast in our village, and we must kill him before he kills us! An insight into the Mob Song (the movie 1992) For the songs ‘Be Our Guest’ and ‘Human Again’ we combined the two forms in both songs, meaning there will be double the amount of people on stage during these songs. It is a little more difficult rehearsing a dance in a crowded room, especially the waltz! However it has a big overall impact as having more people dancing on stage looks more grand and impressive. The most entertaining aspect of this week was when they were rehearing the wolf scenes. There are a total of 2 wolf scenes in the musical, one where the wolves attack Maurice (Dillon) in the beginning, and one where they attack Belle and then the Beast eventually saves Belle from the wolves! It was lots of fun and very amusing to watch them practice the wolves dramatically attacking Dillon, and then Dillon dodging them all with such speed and strength! The scene involves hand-stands and head butting, back flips and punches! It was a busy but exciting week of rehearsals, and so far the musical is looking great. Only a few more weeks to go... The Wolves! This week was very eventful and saw to the steady progress and improvement of our musical! We managed to put the entire musical together, prior to this week we focused on learning and mastering individual dances, songs and scenes, however it's no good knowing a series of scenes without putting them together to form a musical! At this point there was no room for mistakes, and the cast had no excuse not to know their words. As you can imagine it was a little hectic and frustrating during rehearsals at times, when someone forgot their words, or came on stage too late! But that’s what rehearsals are for, they are a sort of stepping stone to the more important performances in front of an audience. They are there to highlight small errors and mistakes within the musical and to fix them as much as possible! It was beyond thrilling and exciting witnessing the musical come together, to watch the scenes smoothly(at times a little less smoothly!) flow into the next scene. On Thursday we were to perform the musical in its entirety as a whole year. We all sat in the Halla Nua on Thursday morning, fidgeting with excitement, and went through ‘Beauty and the Beast’ from start to finish, with a pianist accompanying us. We learned that in the live performances, there was to be a band accompanying us! It was a little unfortunate timing for our first full rehearsal, as both Belle and Lumiere were not present. Aisling said their lines, mimicking their accents! The show must, after all, go on! After the rehearsal on Thursday, I think everyone could agree there was quite a bit of work still to be done, but taking into consideration that two of our principal characters weren’t there and it was our first run-through, it wasn’t bad at all! Then on Friday afternoon, all the ‘Silly Girls’ went to the Boardroom and we went through all the numbers in the musical, that we sing in. As we all have microphones, Mrs Olohan wanted to ensure we knew our words, harmonies and the songs perfectly! After a while we were joined by the fifth year music students. They were to accompany us in the pit, to enhance the volume of the songs and to help project the words more clearly (as they wouldn’t be dancing at the same time as singing!). The singing went well, it was a little harder for the fifth years as they hadn’t practiced the songs before and we had already 4 week of rehearsals, but it was lots of fun and went very well! Only one week left….. The final week of rehearsals has finally arrived!! To be honest I was incredibly eager and energized to perform our musical, that we have put so much work into, but on the other hand I was a bit nervous and worried that we wouldn’t be able to pull it off, or that we hadn’t practiced enough! There were also high expectation for our musical as we had a good reputation of being a very musical year with a lot of potential, and in addition the school had put a lot of money, time and effort into our musical so it was very important that we do it justice. We were about to find out this week of we could do it! Last week Darcy and I gave Aisling and Mrs Olohan a list of all the costume measurements from the boys and girls in our year. We spent some time making a chart of which costumes each person needed, and the sizes required. We were told that the costumes should arrive on Monday the 6th of February…The moment I stepped into school on Monday I could feel the excitement pumping at the thought of seeing all the costumes and props, and the stage set too! So when all the fourth year girls were called from class to go to the Junior School Hall, I can safely say all our hearts were thumping. As I entered the Junior School Hall I was in awe at the sight of the mountain of costumes, neatly spread around the hall. They were truly spectacular, better than we could have hoped for! I had briefly seen the set last week, but now as I stood gazing at it I fully appreciated how much work had gone into to, and how professional it looked! The costumes, set, microphones, props, professional choreographer and stage manager etc. it all seemed so professional! We immediately got to try on our costumes. I was very lucky as the I got three costume changes! The first costume I tried on was my ‘Silly Girl’ outfit, I really liked it and it fit perfectly. All the ‘Silly Girls’ looked very funny wearing almost identical, colourful frocks! Then we tried on our ‘Cupcake’ costume. We were quite surprise when we were given our ‘Cupcake’ costume, as we had imagined a massive circular shaped costume with a cupcake design and possibly a cherry on our heads, but our costume could not have been more different! We wore white tutus with a silver wig and a silver cardigan! Maybe we were vanilla cupcakes, with white frosting?! Unfortunately as I tried on my tutu, it didn’t seem to fit! I grew a little anxious and worried that I wouldn’t have a costume. I asked a few others to try on my costume, and if it fit them we could swap, but it didn’t fit anyone else either. I think it was a size 2! There weren’t any spares so I just had to wait and see if they could alter my costume before Friday. Lastly, which also happens to be my favourite costume, we tried on our ball gowns for the Finale. They were gorgeous, and it felt as if we had all gone back in time! Sometimes I wish people still wore big ball gowns to parties! With all the costumes tried on, and sorted we spent the following days doing dress rehearsals, getting our makeup done by a professional makeup artist, and practicing the songs with the band. The first dress rehearsal went well, it felt strange performing on stage with lights blinding you and with quick and oftentimes hectic costume changes! It took a bit of time to figure out who would be bringing which prop on stage, but it got sorted very quickly! On Thursday we spent the morning going through the songs with the band. It was the first time I neared the introduction, read by Oliver, with the music. It sounded very mystical and magical! Once the band was happy and comfortable with the songs in the musical, all there was left to do was go through the musical one last time before our live dress rehearsal on Friday! On Friday morning, the 10th of February, in the Junior School one would find the place buzzing, with students dashing in and out of changing rooms, some with layers and layers of makeup caked on their faces, others wearing bizarre looking costumes, you would find musicians warming up in the pit and Grainne, the stage manager, searching for all the props, there would be Peter and Chris helping people put on their microphones and…as you can see it was quite hectic but incredibly exciting! The dress rehearsal, which the 3rd years and the 6th years got the chance to watch went quite well! It was definitely daunting and a bit scary performing in front of an audience for the very first time, and we were still a little rusty at times. However I must say, they were a great audience! They laughed at all the right moments, and joined in with some of the songs. It is always uplifting when the audience seem to be enjoying the musical as much as you are, it makes one feel they are doing an alright job after all! On Friday it was only a dress rehearsal, I can’t imagine what it will be like next week performing! If I had a great time this week, and felt a little scared before going on stage, next week I’ll have a spectacular week and I’ll feel terrified and bursting with adrenaline before setting foot on the stage… Five whole weeks of rehearsals done and dusted, now all there is left to do is sing, dance and act our hearts out on stage next week!
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