In a previous rehearsal I had suggested that in the opening section, where we are perched in the coats after the audience came in, we should have a small riff of the ‘death song’ in a barbershop quartet style, so just through ‘ba, ba ba, ba ba baaaaa’s’ etc. Pip said she would go away and work on a small section to work with.

The Barbershop Oct-ette:

In the beginning of this rehearsal we spent time learning the Barbershop section that Pip had created outside of rehearsal. Pip lead this. We also experimented with free-styling over the top of it with whatever beat we wanted to bring in too. We then moved this into the coat and worked on this a bit as it was more difficult doing it without the piano and with the distractions of the coats. We finally managed to get the song down to a tee. We also agreed that we could experiment with this song section underplaying other scenes of the show, as a running theme song.

The Zoe Problem:

In today’s rehearsal we brought up the Zoe Problem again, by the end of this discussion we all came to the agreement that Zoe’s role was better the way it was before. One of Zoe’s problems with her role was that it did not develop… but the rest of us knew that this was a good thing, and that it did not need to develop. I suggested that if she wanted it to develop it should only develop in the fact that the costumes get worse and more pathetic as time goes on. She seemed to be more keen on this idea.

Run-through:

We also began to run through the material we had created to start getting it into our head.

The End Problem:

The rehearsal ended with a large discussion about the ending we are having so many problems with, we went around in circles a lot and could not agree on one thing. I feel like we need to get up and try things before we dismiss them as we may find other ways of doing them that do work. I also feel like some people were thinking about what they want rather than what works better for the piece. A number of the group are really keen on having an upbeat happy and fun ending, however(admittedly its just an opinion) this is not right for the show as it is not the ‘shift’ that this show desperately needs at this point. This is proving to be our