We went through the whole of the big show with the roadies we have got in to help. We have Ruby, Mattia, Ben and Chloe to help with transitions and Keziah as my replacement. Edward has taken them through most of the transitions so they know what they are doing, we just need to go through the whole thing as a full run. Obviously I am not in this version so I sat in the audience and watched the full run of it and took notes throughout. My notes were as follows:

• Everyone too quiet in restaurant
• Keziah’s pronunciation of ‘Arid’
• Keziah needs to be more uncomfortable talking about her husband
• Too much chair noise on first transition
• Bed scene too quiet
• Bedroom scene lovely
• Good transition out of bed scene
• Sort out curtain at back once charlotte has gone through it
• Ryan needs to be rougher on the pull round of Keziah, looks too nice
• Good scene from Kez
• Ryan looks weird holding his dick at the start of the sex
• Ryan looking at Ed like he loves him on river bank
• Ryan had weird leg position lying down, looks uncomfortable
• Good volume on bank
• Ed’s head leaning back too far, can’t see his face
• Cut cartwheel line
• Ed look at him for a minute more from the back

A few days later we had our tech run of the little show. I took the lead on tech, telling Samater what we wanted and coming to the desk to double check the levels and that it was what we had envisioned for the show. Samater suggested in our dress run that we all be louder, as it was hard to hear us over the music.

In our class feedback they suggested that it be clearer that Ryan had pulled out of me and that I make a clearer facial expression of relief that he has finished. They were also confused why I was going back to him after he has just done that to me; clearly my intention of enjoying the rough treatment wasn’t coming across. I needed to go more for something like me feeling like I didn’t deserve anything better than this kind of treatment, or disgust that he doesn’t care about anything. I decided on disgust as I think the first option would take more time than I have to work on it.

As previously mentioned we are doing 2 separate shows. A smaller one on the December 5th that includes only the restaurant scene and the movement scene (with Marnie’s suicide cut out) and that’s it; only I am being assessed in this show as I am away having surgery the week of the full show. The following week the big show is happening which includes the restaurant scene, Charlotte and Ryan’s bedroom scene, the full movement scene, and a scene on the banks of the Seine with Ryan and Edward. I was advised that I would need extenuating circumstances to do the show on a date other than the official assessment date, so I spent a lot of time filling out forms and sending emails to the right people. And that because I was the only one who had extenuating circumstances the rest of the group would have to be assessed on the official date.  I was then told that extenuating circumstances are only necessary if I needed to do the show late, not early. But that information came back so late that by then we had planned two separate shows and spent time teaching Keziah the movement scene as we had chosen her to be my replacement in the restaurant and movement scene in the big show. If we had been told earlier we could have not spent a lot of time in rehearsals working out how to do each scene with two different sets, two different people and different tech, writing different tech specs. At this point it was to late to do the whole thing the week before. There isn’t time in the session, the roadies are coming the following week and my fellow actors didn’t feel prepared. Its a real shame because I could have played Marnie, the character I was playing originally.

We thought an interesting way to develop mine and Ryan’s characters at the same time would be to show them having sex on the stage.  We tried it as my original character of Annalisa being forced to have sex by Ryan’s character Paul. But it didn’t make sense that she was there with him having walked out of the dinner and added a much darker side to Paul that there was no evidence of in the script. Instead we decided that I could be more of a groupie and go there to have sex with him willingly but be cast off by Paul afterwards. This develops Paul and shows how he is falling into this band life of sex and drugs by having sex with and then kicking out all these girls that come to see him.

This scene was difficult for me. It was hard to work out how to realistically have sex on the stage, as obviously that is a very personal thing to do in front of your peers. I was forced to almost remove myself from that and think about it as a series of movements that looked realistic, rather than thinking about it as embarrassing or personal. Ryan and I worked really well together, using Edward and Charlotte as the audience and thinking about it almost clinically; how could we make the audience think that we were genuinely having sex on the stage. This meant some positions were better than others, what could I wear that would cover Ryan’s crotch to make it realistic, would we be making noise in this situation. We decided we wanted this whole movement scene to be an assault on the audience. We want to make them uncomfortable with really loud music, strong strobes and aggressive sex happening right in front of them. Because the song we chose is a punk- rock vibe we wanted it to be really loud which would make the audience uncomfortable, add the strobes and its an assault on all the senses for them. We realised that we wanted some noise for the sex but we would have to be nearly screaming for the audience to hear us over the music. So we searched for a porn track that had the noises we wanted then played that alongside the music. The nature of the track makes the audience uncomfortable and the volume adds to that.

Charlotte has joined the group as the other female character in the first scene. In order to get enough time on stage for that character we are going to add a movement scene after the first 2 scripted scene. This fleshes out all the characters, as we are obviously removing a lot of their development throughout the play by only performing some of the scenes. And also it gives the smaller female character enough time on stage to be assessed on.

Due to the regulations of the extenuating circumstances I require to do the performance a week early, we have been forced to make some changes. Instead of the whole group doing the show a week early, they instead are forced to do it twice. Once with me on Thursday 5th December and then again with a stand-in on the 12th with the rest of the group. Under these circumstances it made sense for Charlotte to take the larger part of Marnie as she will be there for both performances and for me to take the smaller one as it will be easier to teach that to a stand in than expect them to learn the bigger one.

19th November- We went to a small room and read through all the scenes we are doing. I am finding Annalisa very hard to work out, but I think reading the other scenes she is in could be helpful. I am currently reading her quite harsh but some of the things she is saying doesn’t really work with that tone so I’ll have to read through it and work out a better tone for her.

New Writing had a fairly easy start for me. I was approached by Edward and Ryan who said they had a couple of plays they were looking at and did I want to join them. I read the first play which was Birdland by Simon Stephens; an author I love as he wrote the stage version of ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time’. I was reading through and there were a few scenes which really stood out to me and I could see a through-line despite not all of the secnes being next to each oher. Ryan also suggested those scenes, although I didn’t know it at the time, so we all had a read and really liked it so that was that! I am playing Marnie, Ryan is playing Paul and Edward is playing Johnny. Due to my tonsillectomy in early December we are forced to do the show a week early which isn’t ideal but at least it gives us a bit of a push as we have less time than everyone else.