Wednesday, 19 November 2014

The change up...

Jack and The Beanstalk to Aladdin

The rehearsals for Jack and The Beanstalk had commenced as soon as the auditions were over. Everyone had started to learn lines and perform on the stage, though with script still in hand. However, a couple of weeks in, we got the news of a change of pantomime. We were no longer doing Jack and The Beanstalk, and were now underway with the rehearsals of Aladdin. The actors were staying as nearest to equivalent to their original role that they had been cast as, but there were a few extra parts which was good as others could have another chance at auditioning for those parts. We had a time limit in which we had to learn the lines for the first act and another date was set for when we had to know the second act.

The reason for the sudden change in pantomime was the fact that we have an acting company in the same area as our college, that were doing the same pantomime as ourselves and we did not want to create any confusion for local people so we decided to make ours different, which is a good thing as not many people would want to see the same pantomime. This meant we would not be in direct competition with this particular acting group. On the other hand, this was difficult as we were now behind and had not got as much rehearsal time as we had started out with. Everyone was trying their hardest and we were getting on with it as best we could. Also, I am quite familiar with the pantomime and plot but to be on the safe side I looked up the *synopsis of the play.

As we have all stayed relatively the same, I was still playing the part of the evil character, in this case, Abanazar. This had come to be a challenge of mine as the character has a very male dominance about it and I had been asked to play the part as a woman. I was trying to use the same persona as I used for the evil character in the first panto, however,  it was proving difficult as they are two very different types of evil. The one before was a henchman and this was the only evil one in Aladdin. I was now making my new character more sarcastic, driven to win and overall disgusted in everything she sees. To portray this I had come up with a permanent scowl she will wear throughout the performance. She also clutches a prop of a creepy looking stick which she points at people she wishes to do damage to, this gives the dominance to the character as she points at most people.

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