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January 14, 2021

  Thursday, January 14th. One of the last days of our musical theatre J-Term, and definitely the busiest one. For a day full of recording, re-recording, and re-re-recording, there is surprisingly not too much to talk about without repeating myself a couple times.  Because Patricia wasn’t available for filming on Wednesday, and Jack wouldn’t be available for filming on Friday, we needed to film 8 out of the 10 scenes and re-record 1 song over the course of Thursday. Despite being a Thursday, we walked into the classroom like it was a Friday and we had a half day- completely unfocused and not ready to work. Unfortunately for Ms. Bowman and Mr. Lowery, it took all morning to rally us and finish filming scene 8. Mr. Lowery, with smart thinking, wrote down a listed plan of our day on the board to keep us on track. I’m personally a very big fan of lists, plans, and listed plans, so this helped me out a lot. Finishing that first task gave everyone in the room a sense of satisfaction that we w
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January 13, 2021

  Today we finally started filming! We began the day by blocking and filming some smaller scenes. We worked on finessing the character details in these scenes and solidifying lines. Unfortunately, we were missing a cast member so this limited what we were able to record, but overall we got quite a bit done. While Mr. Lowery and Ms. Bowman were off teaching their classes at the middle school we blocked one of the larger and more complicated scenes. After lunch, when the teachers had returned, we showed them our work and with the help of a few notes completed the blocking for the scene. We then worked on recording the opening and finale songs. We also finalized the choreography for the finale number. After taking several takes of the finale song and running over the finale choreography multiple times we were all exhausted. We decided to end the work for the day there and sat down to watch another musical. Although many of us requested to watch Mamma Mia! and Barbie: The Princess and the
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January 12, 2021

Today the troupe of actors in the musical theater J-term started by working on vocals with Ms. Watson. We warmed up and ran through the three songs (right next-door to the commons was full of students who heard undoubtedly heard our beautiful voices). After Ms. Watson left, we ran through the choreography for the opening number and then began to work on choreographing the remaining two numbers, which were the comedy villain number and the finale. It’s hard to describe exactly what is going on in these scenes without spoiling the show, but let’s just say it was a very interesting and (of course) fun process. Ms. Bowman and Mr. Lowery first gave us a designated amount of time (an hour or so) to put together blocking and choreography for the villain number. During this time, we put our heads together and constructed the scene, focusing on theatrical elements like dancing, props, and performance as well as technical things like where and when to enter and exit and all that jazz. It was rea
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January 11, 2021

  Today was started with finishing the lyrics of the opening number by adding in Mrs. Sparkly Clean’s solo. With the opening number completed, we moved on to a zoom call with Ms. Watson to practice the actual vocals for the songs in the show. We mostly focused on the solos in the opening number before we ran out of time for the call. After the call we had lunch. during this time I (Patricia) started hiding small plastic infants around the classroom, most of which ended up on top of a picture frame. We also tried to get a few on top of the door jam but alas, I was too short to reach it and so were the other people trying. I ended up getting one on top, but that was it. After lunch and the baby hiding parade thingy then came back and started to work on the choreography on the opening number as well. I guess you could say that we worked on the opening number a lot today. After we proposed the choreo to Ms. Bowman and Mr. Lowery, we split into groups to work on the choreo for other scenes
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January 7, 2021

  We started off the day strong- watching the musical movie, Dreamgirls (2006 ), featuring famous actors such as Beyoncé Knowles, Jennifer Hudson, Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy.  This film followed three young girls, Effie White, Deena Jones and Lorrell Robinson. Together they make up the Dreamgirls. In the first scene, they enter and perform in a talent singing show,  singing a song that Effie’s brother wrote, and although they lose, they meet Curtis Taylor, a car salesman who becomes their manager. He gets the girls their first job- singing backup for the famous singer James Early. Following there, we watch as the girls’ careers progress, how they grow individually and how they handle every conflict and problem that life throws their ways. It was a great movie, although, we agreed, it contained a bit too many montages. We enjoyed it nonetheless.  From there, we went to lunch, and from there we began to write the songs for our own mini-musical. We had already decided the plot for o
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January 8, 2021

  We started off today watching an original cast recording of Into the Woods , a show that takes well-known fairytales and places them all in the same world with an interconnected storyline. In the first act, you see these common musicals play out relatively normally: Cinderella goes to the ball and leaves her shoe and the prince uses it to find her, little red riding hood brings goods to her grandmother but gets tricked and eaten by a wolf but then saved, Rapunzel is held captive by a witch but is saved by a prince jack gets magic beans that make a beanstalk which he climbs to find a giant which he robs… you know, the usual. There is a difference in that there is an additional set of characters that ties all the other stories together, the baker and his wife who are on a quest to break a curse so they could have a child. Even with this change though act one plays out as a fairly standard fairytale. The weird part comes in at act two. At the end of the first act we see the characters l
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January 6, 2021

  Today We started off the day with everyone presenting the musical that they researched for homework yesterday. We shared a synopsis of the plot, as well as identifying characteristics of each musical and what era of Broadway it fits into. We talked about songs in our musicals and explained their purpose in the show. We also watched a video called “The Musical Episode” where we learned about the fundamentals of what a musical is and how they differ from other art mediums. Songs are used in musicals to create emotional connections between characters and the audience. Music is also used in musicals as a way to communicate things that people would typically not talk about through song. The video talked about how music can be a very powerful tool in a staged production but it needs to be used well. Adding songs to performances can make them have a much larger impact on the audience or they could just annoy the audience. It is important to not have the actors simply burst into dance at ran
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