I’m starting my third week of rehearsals today. So far we’ve had one week of music calls (rehearsals where the conductor gets to put us through our paces) and one week of production calls (when the director gets to put us in our places!) We also had the benefit of having the composer (Jonathan Dove) and librettist (Alasdair Middleton) for the first week, so any questions about speeds or possible word or note changes that came up could be dealt with directly. It was a good week. Apart from Mary Plazas (the Blue Fairy) who was still working in Australia, everyone was there and it was good to put some new faces to the names we’d got on our cast lists. There are some brilliant cameo roles in the piece, some taken by chorus members, and it’s really interesting to hear what people are doing with them. Some of them like the Cricket, Pigeon and Owl Doctor - to name but three - require a little bit of animal mimicry, and it was a lot of fun watching and listening to their “voices” being tried out for the first time! At the end of the music week we sang through the whole piece without stopping, which was a great feeling. Not only did we know we’d got a great piece on our hands, but I for one was very relieved to have sung through it all feeling like I could go on and sing another show (as I’m going to have to do just that a few times during the run).
Week Two began with what we call a model showing, where traditionally the whole cast and creative team come together for the 1st time en masse and crowd round a small box inside which there is a scaled down version of the set. This time though we were much more hi-tech and we had a power point presentation projected onto a large white screen, while Francis O’Connor (the designer) and Martin Duncan (the director) took us through the show scene by scene and costume by costume. We also introduced ourselves and got to meet the rest of the chorus and the dancers. I think by the end of it everyone was really excited about what we were about to embark on!
When we got into production rehearsals I was so impressed by how prepared Martin and his team were. All directors work differently but it was really great to feel like I could just concentrate on what I had to do, without having to come up with too many ideas myself. Sometimes as a singer you feel like you should be getting a credit in the programme for direction too! Not so in this case – hurrah! It’s also been really nice to do lots of rhythmic movements and dancing. So often in opera one is told not to move with the music, or walk on the beat, but in this show it’s practically a requirement! It’s keeping me fit too, I’m sure, as I have to do lots of running around the stage. There are also lots of little tricks to make some of the magic things in the show work. I can’t tell you about them though – you’ll just have to come to the show and see if you can work them out!
Anyway, it’s nearly time for rehearsals to start this morning, so I’d better go and warm up. Bye for now. Vicky x
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