During the second rehearsal of the drama play, we focused on the first scene of the play where the entire cast is present. I worked with three other IGCSE students to create a movement piece that we would perform while the main characters of the scene got into place.
One of the challenges I faced were that since they were in IGCSE they haven’t gone through most of the lessons I’ve already learned, such as how to do lifts and counterbalances. So we were somewhat limited in what our options were, however, this was easily overcome by me just explaining the concepts to them.
The other challenge we faced, and we didn’t manage to actually overcome, was that our movement piece didn’t match the tempo of the music that is going to be used for the scene. We weren’t aware that we had to match an upbeat rhythm for our piece and our piece mainly fit a slower pace; we used a lot of balancing and small pauses rather than a lot of movement. We were thinking of creating a new movement piece that fit the music outside of rehearsals. However, we didn’t manage to exchange contact details and it’s probable that we won’t see each other again until the next full cast rehearsal. So I think we will have to keep our movement piece, unless we manage to create a new piece during the few times we meet each other again near the actual day of performance.
Another problem we ran into was keeping in time with the second half of the music, where we are supposed to drop the “luggage” or the prop and fall down. We kept on missing the last beat and falling too late. We tried to count the beats and go in time, but we somehow managed to miscount almost all the time. The only thing we can do is keep on trying to get in time and hopefully, with enough practice, we’ll manage to get it right.
Collaboration was very important to the creation of the end product. We all had to work together and provide input on what we could do. While it is possible to go make a piece without the input of one person, the outcome would not have been as unique as it ended up. We also needed everyone to work together to make the whole piece work as every member was necessary to make the movement piece flow easily.
To be a better team player, I should try to be more flexible with how our movement piece is going, and where/when we become to stuck on an idea that isn’t fitting in, try to get the group to move onto something that fits better rather than becoming fixated on forcing the concept to work with our piece. To help keep in time to the music, I could try to count out loud so that everyone is on the same rhythm until we get the hang of it and no longer need a verbal counter.
