act 1 scene 1 and 2

So today we showed Andy all the scene's we've done so far and he gave us back a lot of feedback and things we could do just to make the show even better.

Scene 1:

The first scene is where Mina and Lucy are talking about Jonathon and other things. Overall Andy said that this scene is pretty good, however, it just needs some polishing up. Like for instance, to two actresses who play Mina and Lucy need to think about their blocking on the stage and they also need to get more confident with their lines so the can act without their scripts.
Some of the blocking they should focus on is Mina's entrance, because at the moment Mina is standing in front of Lucy, when Lucy is looking in the mirror, thinking about who she should marry. I think Mina should just say her first line- "Catch her death!" when she first walks onto stage, because that makes Lucy turn around to face her then they are not blocking one another, also by doing this, it will show who's in charge, because the audience should know that Mina is like a mother to Lucy because it helps explain why Lucy is the way she is.

The chorus also need to stop taking away the focus from the actual scene, too. Because even though it's good what we're doing, it's like we're creating a scene of our own, when we're meant to be complimenting what's actually going on, on the stage between Mina and Lucy. So what we need to do is tone it right down and stay looking at Mina and Lucy so then the audience's focus will be on them, too. It is hard though, because we're meant to be crazy, and we want to show the audience that we're crazy without stealing all of the limelight. However, what we did to solve this, is instead of all of the crazy coming out of our mouths, we put it into our body and face so the audience can see we're crazy without us having to be really loud.



Scene 2:

This next scene was so much fun to do, because all of the chorus could be as loud and as crazy as they wanted to be. It was the first Renfield scene, it starts off with him saying/singing "I once knew a woman who swallowed a fly.." the actress who did this first tried saying it normally-(still crazy) but then she added a little tune, which sounded a lot better because this line is a like a nursery rhyme. The line after that "Perhaps she'll die, perhaps she won't die" was said in a very fast, in a questioning type of way. I thought it worked really well with the first line being sung, almost and then the next line questioning what's going to happen to this woman next.
Andy said the line "To die or not to die, that is the question" is a quote from Hamlet, so the actress had to bring out her Shakespearian in a crazy manner.

Part of the chorus work for this scene is to shout out or just say crazy words at random, there were some words that we had to say together, too. such as "Bed-lam", we had to shout this out all together and we also had to repeat the words "screw Lucy's".

When Renfield says "time to get yourself into something warm and double-breasted in a whorehouse, my son", it is aimed at Seward because he's making a joke about sex and Seward not getting any-(we find that in the next scene).

When Renfield starts getting agitated by Seward not listening and calls him a "bastard", the chorus have to repeat that and shout it.