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The Jenkintown High School Theater Arts Program is dedicated to nurturing and developing the talents of the Jenkintown High School student body and providing a safe and creative environment where the artists can cultivate their craft within a supportive and caring community.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

J's Notes. . . . . . . . .

Alright, y'all, posting notes now ... didn't want to post them last night in case you had homework ... and I didn't want to post them today for fear they'd distract you from school work. However, they're here now and hopefully they'll be fresh in your mind for today's run!
Anyway, last night's run ... awesome ... plenty of energy, lots of good moments popping up.
1 - Dan ... pick up your physical pace on your first entrance for the intro to the play. Energy is always a good thing when staring out.
2 - Dan ... Excellent on the that pager line ... first time it really read ... nice mixture of humor and sarcasm.
3 - Dan ... I, myself, am a sucker when it comes to wanting to make an audience applaud ... so much so that I'll start clapping myself to get them to start to clap ... you can find moments to do that, I think ... y'know, when appropriate.
4 - Kayleigh ... First speech ... heh heh, slow down, remember it's not a race. Think of your verbs ... think of your adjectives.
5 - Kayleigh ... "Let's find out shall we." can be a little more glib, a little more tongue in cheek ... in other words ... you don't have to play it so seriously. Remember ... have fun with it. You, of course, think you know more about Shakespeare than the audience at this point in the show.
6 - Charlie ... for some reason the offended "Hey!" from "ecce homo" still isn't working ... with Lys' permission, I think we could maybe change it to "What?!" or "What's an ecce homo?" I don't know ... but stick with "Hey!" for tonight. See if we can still make it work.
7 - Kayleigh ... remember with that "No!" when Charlie asks to sit down ... remember your chastising him ... like I said the other day ... like saying "No!" to a dog who keeps getting up on the furniture when they're not allowed to. Heh heh ...
8 - Dan ... I think, again, you can cue applause when Charlie comes up ... or even right after Kayleigh's speech ... you pick.
9 - Charlie ... good improv ... make sure to stay away from them "Uh's" we talked about. Also, when you talk about Harvey the musical, I just wanna see this cause I think it'd be funny ... come up w/a fake title of a fake song from Harvey the musical. Also, the line you came up with last night ... "I don't understand half of what he says." KEEP THAT. SO FUNNY.
10 - Dan ... once Charlie is done ... I think you can cue applause again.
11 - Kayleigh ... you found some really good moments in the opening speech before Romeo and Juliet ... "gristle" and "blubber" ... GOOD ... see if you can find what you found there in the beginning of the speech with "unsightly fat."
12 - Dan/Charlie ... I like when you two play off the cuff with each other ... but yesterday's prologue was a little "meeeeeeh" ... sorry, don't mean to sound like a jerk ... keep it tight, keep it efficient ... the one ad-lib that really works in that and the only one I think you should keep is "lives/life" and "That's dumb." You don't have to keep adding to it. Less is more, here.
13 - The "Samsung" joke was kinda lost last night. Should we keep it or cut it?
14 - Kayleigh ... as soon as Dan and Michael start to leave, you can start your Benvolio lines to the audience. I really play up the formality of the Shakespeare ... it could use a little more bigness and ridiculousness.
15 - Dan ... good, you took my note on falling the other way ... just so we can see your face more, you can even hang your head off the stage so we can see you better. Overall, you're Romeo was awesome last night. Definitely a dozen steps in the right direction.
16 - Charlie ... you can start setting up when Dan is saying "Is she a Capulet?" ... so, in other words make your exit and come directly back out with a proper chair to stand on.
17 - Charlie ... do not fall of the chair ... the gag just isn't reading ... remember to stay up there and it's "but love" that brings you down from off the chair.
18 - Charlie/Dan ... something about the "But love" scene ... just felt off ... let's see if we can bring some sort of freshness to it this evening.
19 - Charlie ... that whole "Second base ... " adlib ... I don't wanna sound like a jerk ... but, meh, I don't like it. Lys, you may disagree, and that's totally cool, but that's just me. It kinda just stops the action.
20 - Dan ... again, your Romeo was totally on point last night. The more hammy, the better. Excellent work.
21 - Dan ... there was a moment last night when you went up to check the book for something ... I actually thought that was kinda funny ... totally up to you, Lys, if you wanna keep it.
22 - Charlie ... don't hesitate before you vomit, heh heh, just vomit ... and once you're done vomiting, run back on stage ... you were doing some great stuff when you got back on stage, but run, don't walk back to it.
23 - Othello Rappers ... overall, very nice ... just remember to find your operatives ... your operative words ... your important words ... she was PURE, she was CLEAN, she was VIRGINAL,too ... so why'd you have to go and make her face turn BLUE ... it's TRUE ... yeah? Still, overall, nice.
Like Lys said ... now is the time to focus ... reeeeeeally focus ... and now is the time to start getting off book. I can't support her enough on those two statements.
Also, I'd like to take this time to talk about the adding of bits to the play ... I like added bits ... when appropriate ... but less is always more. This goes w/the language we choose to use in them as well. Shock and awe is "meh" to me. It's totally played out. There's nothing clever about cursing when it isn't necessary when it comes to this particular show. Any fool can spout out a curse word in a scene and it doesn't impress me. IMO, somebody curses in an improv when they don't have anything else to say ... now, I think y'all are a lot more talented than that. Cleverness and the timing of a joke is much more apt to get applause on stage ... using arbitrary expletives, though? Nah, not so much. Think about it. Good? Good.
Anyway, that's all I got. Again, some good stuff last night ... looking forward to seeing even better stuff tonight. Please be on time ... cause we got a lot of work to do and weekdays are always much shorter than weekends. 2 hours seems like a lot of time, but it really isn't, ya feel me? Right on. See ya later on this evening.
  • Lys:
    So wonderful to see all these notes...thank you so much J for taking the time and care. Yes...Charlie needs to more responsive to Kayleigh's "ecce homo"--it was better today-but Charlie could be even stronger in his response. I think Dan checking the book is excellent-I love when K does that as well. ENERGY!!!! This is such a physical and fast paced show-we have to make sure that it doesn't drag-even when we rehearse, the energy has to be up. We are in training-you have to keep raising the bar-so by show time you are physically ready for the run. Think about what you are going to wear. Cheerleaders-you must get your costumes-all cast members need to think about what they would like to wear and begin the search. Rap Folks-please review the words that J would like emphasized-be clear in your delivery-this will we clean up Saturday.
     
     

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