25th sep - rachel

Today we did speedruns of Act 1 and 2. By doing these it will improve our understanding of the narrative, characters and space. Working with our two separate casts, we quickly scanned the scripts and picked out specific lines to say in each scene with a small choreographed movement. For example, me and Sophie (who plays Maureen) sang the last lines of 'Take Me Or Leave Me', exiting on opposite sides. This clearly showed the significant mood and conflict as this is the scene when the couple split.

After doing this, what we gained from this acitivity was:

• we understood the main points in the plot - As the speedruns lasted only around 5 minutes, we had to be able to display the entire storyline in physical bullet points. So highlighting these to make it as clear as possible also helped us learn about it further. For example some main points were Maureen and Joanne breaking up, Angel's death, Mimi dying etc.
• we understood he number of songs - another thing we gathered from the script was that the musical has very little dialogue, made up largely of solos, ensembles and duets. 
• we understood the importance of the songs - learning the number of songs that are included in the musical, led us to understand how important the songs really are. The songs tell the story through the lyrics.

We then discussed and mapped the staging space, including where the audience will be, where we will be allowed the enter/exit, any obstructions such as the scaffolding and other set design.