[Rehearsals]
It had been a crazy busy week here in Manchester and although reading week was supposed to be about catching up with uni work, deadlines and, believe it or not, reading, I have been involved in more acting projects in this past week than ever before!
As indicated in my last post, I was part of a theatre company called 'MIPP', otherwise known as 'Make it Public Productions' (twitter - @MIPPManchester), which is a new theatre group here in Manchester. The aims are 'to create theatre everywhere and anywhere', and for the past month, we had been working towards two productions, 'The Night of Neon' and now this.
Last Wednesday (30/10/2013) I was involved in yet another production for MIPP which was held at the Bury Fusilier Museum(Twitter - @FusilierMuseum). The piece was for the museum's 'Family Day', which is centred around inspiring children to come and visit the museum and possibly get a little more knowledge about what the museum has to offer, not just in terms of historical knowledge but also the creative outlets available. The pieces we created followed a general theme of Past, Present and Future and used a total of 5 actors, myself included, to devise 9 separate pieces of theatre inspired around the museum's past, present and future.
At the very beginning of the process, we were given some source material (namely memories and anecdotes from people who were involved with the museum) and then those stories were then narrowed in to 9 titles, each of which were delegated to us to devise some theatre which is not only suitable for but also engaging to children.
Needless to say this was rather difficult for me, as I- a true Londoner through and through, had only visited the museum a handful of times before being told to bring these stories to life. The titles I was given were 'Lowry Taught Here' (Past), 'When I grow up' (Future) and 'What the building will become' (Future). We worked in pairs to create the pieces and were also given 3 wooden blocks each, which we could use either as staging or as props.
The Museum was very very loud, which created a huge problem as we then had to shout our lines in order for them to get heard by the children, which therefore made the first piece ('Lowry Taught Here') not just inaudible and therefore confusing for the audience, but also, I felt, more than a little boring, due to the very textual based nature of the piece. The next two were slightly more abstract and involved music for the second one (we weaved the song 'Wavin' Flag' through the piece to help the fluidity of the scene changes) and a lot more physical theatre for the third one, using the wooden blocks to help illustrate our ideas of what the building could potentially become.
Two other members of the company also provided music every twenty minutes, some of which were covers (including 'You Got the Love' by Florence and the Machine, 'Don't Look Back in Anger' by Oasis and 'Here Comes the Sun' by the Beatles) as well as some original songs. They sang acoustic duets of the versions and I can honestly say they are both amazing musicians and singers and it was absolutely wonderful to hear them sing. Overall, I feel that the performance went quite well and, although I felt slightly under prepared for the task at hand at times, the Museum was generally very supportive, MIPP were very enthusiastic and most of the audience (especially the children :) ) seemed to really enjoy the performance.
So, that has been my Reading Week so far! Now that those two performances are done, I believe that will be all I'm doing with MIPP (for the time being at least) and although I will miss working with the group and the projects, I am almost glad that I can calm down a little and just focus on my usual mix of Uni and CYAC!
Until next time~
