Act 1 Aladdin Rehearsal Process

A few weeks ago, Chloe filmed mine and Jovan's first scene in act 1.

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By Chloe filming our scene, it helps me see how my character of Aladdin comes across to the audience.

When we first started blocking Aladdin, I played him as a very happy, kind and lovely boy, but that started not to show anymore and I got told on Thursday I am playing Aladdin as a bit like 'Jack the lad', I had noticed that was starting to come through and was given in feedback that I need to play Aladdin more happy and smiley again, and so I changed my tone of voice and made myself sound a lot more caring and softer in my voice, I smiled a lot more and was told it's a better improvement by Becky and Chloe.

Over the weekend I read through the script and kept practicing my voice to help improve and stop getting into the habit of performing Aladdin as 'Jack the lad'.

On 1st December me and Jovan went into a room to go through our first scene to try and improve it and make it much better and involve the audience more. We found this hard because we was alone and did not have anyone tell us if what we was doing was not working so we didn't have the reassurance that what we was doing was good enough. But on the following Wednesday, the main characters were called in to go through the script and improve scenes. Me and Jovan had to do our scene and we had a lot of feedback, there is a line when Jovan has to say 'how many times have I told you not to eat so much junk food?' And he has to pretend to shove junk food in my face and I have to be disgusted but Ella told me to look away and make a face and noise, then do another move holding my tummy and make a squeal. Most of the scene Jovan got help but some of the feedback she was giving related to me and the rest of the cast too such as using hands when I am talking to articulate my movement and voice more, and sometimes use aside comments to the audience to get there attention and interest. 

On 4th December we did a run of Act 1. We was told that this was our best run we have done so far as the energy levels were excellent, everything was so much more tidy but a few more scenes had to be cleared up and we was told that some scenes still have loads of potential to be so much more better. After that we felt so much better about the first act. Ella had only wrote fourteen notes and the majority were positive, she had said that she was watching us so much she didn't really have time to write notes.

Me and Nathan really had to work on our first scene together which happens at the end of act 1. We did a video for before and after so that we could see the difference we made just by putting a bit more work into it.

before:

and after:

On 8th December we started off by doing a run of act 1, if I'm honest I knew my energy was lacking and I don't know why but I had no energy and I didn't feel like I was doing good but I was well aware that I was not doing my best.

We did another run of act 1 later that day with the set up on stage for the first time, it was very different because we had to change a lot of entrances and exits because of the set and there was not as much space as we had before. Ella stopped us in scenes that was not going as well which was good because it meant we was cleaning up and fixing scenes that needed a lot of work.

Me and Kj had to work on our first scene in the cave:

Before: 

And after: 

The second video was an idea we had, mainly when I try to interrupt her but I was also told that I came across to angry and mean so I am going to work on that.