My roles for 'Hope In The Enchanted Forest'

As part of our independent theatre company, we have to assign each other roles as part of the production team to help create our piece. We decided on the roles as a company and there were so many that we need to include in our tour, I wasn't sure if I wanted to challenge myself by picking something I haven't experienced before or stay safe, so I opted for both. The three roles that I was most interested in were sound, movement director and writer. A sound technician produces and creates sound for the performance by following a series of cues and mixes sounds, voices and sound effects and can re-record the sound if needed. I wanted to put myself forward for sound because I know how different sound would be working for theatre instead of camera and I wanted to challenge myself by putting my camera knowledge into our touring production. A writer envisions the piece and write the dialogue and scenes for the piece. They write to convey emotion, envision the setting and atmosphere of the show and start to create the world that the story is set in. I also wanted to challenge myself with writing because I love writing screenplays, but I struggle to put this work into writing for theatre as I don't really understand much about writing plays or dialogue for the stage, so I would like to work with some of the actors who are more developed in theatre to broaden my skills. A movement director helps to produce any dance or movement elements in the show. They also teach it to the performers and clean and refine it when needed later on. I love dance and I feel that is one of my strongest skills outside of acting and I would really enjoy teaching some movement to the rest of the company and I think some form of dance would add more magic to the piece. After a long time deciding and looking at which roles would be best for me, I decided that I would like to become a writer and a movement director, as I felt that with the amount of time, I am onstage, it would be unmanageable.

Movement Director

As movement directors, myself and Grace decided on using choreography to introduce the fairies to add some magic to the production. We wanted it to be primarily ballet with some lyrical aspects to keep it light and on its toes, and Grace found a wonderful piece of music that adds to the fairy tale aspect of the piece. We kept it simple with moves where there isn't much use of the legs so it wouldn't be too complex for the non - dancers in the company, we needed to keep it as static as possible, so the fairies have enough room and don't feel too closed in if the school halls or quite small. I really enjoyed choreographing the first section where the girls were in sync, but I felt like there needed to be some individuality to each of the fairies and we can have each of them introduce themselves in their own way during the dance. I thought that each of the girls could have a move to represent their character, e.g., Mia has a flowing move to represent water. We then looked at the choreography and decided that we needed to add in some levels, so we wanted to end the piece with each of the fairies on their own levels, so we had Mia on the floor, Chloe bended down in the middle and Grace standing tall. After talking to Mia about her knee and deciding Grace should move forward, we reached a decision where Chloe would go into the splits in the middle and Grace and Mia either side stretching their arms, I really liked this ending position and I'm grateful we decided on this compromise. This dance was a lot of fun to create and watching the girls perform with so much energy was wonderful to see after a morning of hard work.

We also choreographed the finale dance where we wanted to have lots of energy and make sure the kids could get involved after sitting on the floor for a long time. We decided on a fun, upbeat Christmas song called 'Step into Christmas' and we used a lot of moves that everyone felt comfortable with, and we thought freestyling in character would be great to keep the kids immersed in this world and get them rally involved, we wanted it to be a great, uplifting ending to such a energetic show and the only downside was having to create the dance on the spot. however, I enjoyed getting everyone involved and seeing everyone's ideas which I wish we did more of in the first dance, but it's something I can take with me for the next process where we get to choreograph.

Writer

As part of the writing team for this project, I helped to create the initial script where we set out the beats that every actor needed to hit with a structured beginning, middle and end rather than a full written script as we couldn't write that yet as we were still in the development stage. This way we had room to improvise around what we say and play and experiment more in these early days, and it gave the directors a chance to see what worked and what needed more development before we went ahead and wrote the final draft. When the time came to writing the full script, we needed a lot of input from the other actors as some of the scenes we weren't sure of what the actors wanted to keep inside the script and we didn't want to include any ideas or moments that they didn't want to take outside of the rehearsal room, like the moments with Zac and Layla inside the lair as their scenes are very focused on improvisation. We were also thinking that some of the moments could be subject to change as the children for each school could react differently and enjoy different moments so we wrote it to make sure there's room for improvisation with each school. I was worried how I would feel writing this script as I haven't had any experience writing for theatre before and I knew the format would be very different to the writing I've previously done, but I felt very comfortable with this job and having Matt and Grace who are used to writing for theatre made things much easier and we worked very well together as a team to create a great script that every actor got to be a part of.

I really enjoyed both of these jobs as they gave me the chance to explore and broaden my knowledge on two of my biggest passions and work with an incredible team of people to add some wonderful elements to a show I'm very passionate about and I can't wait to finally take this show on tour for the schools to enjoy!