Final few weeks
We have just less than three weeks up until it is performance day. On the 28th April we had a feedback session with Refract. We performed our working progress to each other; this was really helpful to find what stage we are at and what we can do to work to our final performance. After we had our feedback session, Tamsyn arranged a meeting. I think we all seemed to panic and there was no reason to. As two separate theatre companies, we had very different styles of work. We needed to realise that we are not anything like Refract and they were at a stage of nearly finishing their performance. We, however, had a long way to go but we were on the right track.
All our ideas are coming together. As a theatre company there is often miscommunication. I found a book ‘How to Start Your Own Theatre Company’ by Reginald Nelson, David Schwimmer and they state “The most common reasons that new [theater] companies fold are a lack of serious artistic focus and fiscal mismanagement” (Nelson, Schwimmer, 2010). We often lacked the focus we needed which was often a risk for us making progress in rehearsals. However, we were determining to work hard to maintain a successful performance.
Later in the week, we consisted to work together get a strong opening. We had a numerous of ideas for our open song. This set us back on time. However, our final decision was to perform as children. A book called ‘Acting Skills for Life’ by Ron Cameron, he states “Whether or not you realise it, you have already acquired a number of acting skills from the time you were a child” (Cameron, 1994). We often did workshops in rehearsal which allowed us to get into the characters age. When it came to acting like children, we thought back to when we were younger ourselves. Like Ron states as a child you develop a character, it is the character that is inside of you.
These past two weeks have been extremely stressful for us. But we have finally managed to get a show together and for these past few days we have dedicated our time to constant run through to prepare us for show day.
Ideas for our opening song. 
Photos by Oliver Samuals (2015)
Work cited
Cameron, R. (1994) Acting Skills for Life. Canadian Catalogue Publication Data.
Nelson R. and Schwimmer, S. (2010) How to Start Your Own Theater Company. Chicago review press.
Samuals, O. (2015) Rehearsal process.