Set
An image taken during a rehearsal of Act 1, Scene 3. This photograph features fifteen actors playing students, including my self at the far left, and one standing in to read the lines of the teacher.
Act 1, Scene 3 (pictured in figure 1) takes place in a highschool classroom, the set team decided on the simple yet effective approach of placing multiple chairs facing toward the teacher, Miss Laveau, at the back of the stage. The placement of the chairs was symbolic of the students’ unawareness of the audience, literally turning their back to them, whereas Stiltskin and the Grimm Twins are able to turn around and look at the audience as well as talk to them directly. This to me represents their involvement in the story and their power over the villainous forces throughout. Miss Laveau also faces the audience, which shows she is aware of the truth to the tale, however not enough awareness to fully interact with the audience like the protagonists/heroes can, representing how her power is not nearly as powerful of the “good guys” which is later proven in her defeat.
Lighting
For lighting, we would keep bright, neutral lights for a majority of the show in order to A, ensure the stage was bright enough to be seen from all points in the audience so that nothing was obscured, and B, set a sense of normality so that when the lights were used to change the atmosphere it would actually make an impact, whereas if they were constantly changing for nothing, it wouldn’t add anything to the scene when a change was needed and would lower the immersivity. The most notable, and in my opinion greatest, usage of lighting was for the jailhouse scene, in which myself and the rest of the dwarves came in through the audience and stormed the stage, inciting a riot within the prison. For this scene, a flashing, red light was used in order to replicate security alarms as it was paired with a loud siren and a warning message stating that the prison had gone into lockdown.
Sound
The show we were given was originally a musical, however it was a jukebox musical that used pop songs of different variety. Part of our job was to compile a list of songs from musicals that we thought could be used and handed off to the second years to decide on the final decision. We decided on these songs, in chronological order:
Act 1
- Revolting Children (Matilda) Scene 1, leading into Scene 2
- Friends on The Other Side (Princesses and the Frog) Scene 3
- Helpless (Hamilton)- Take a Chance on Me (Mamma Mia) Scene 4
- New Girl in Town (Hairspray) Scene 6
- All in This Together (High School Musical) Scene 6
Act 2
- Jailhouse Rock (All Shook Up) Scene 1
- Surface Pressure (Encanto) Scene 1
- Waving Through a Window (Dear Evan Hanson) Scene 3
- Alive (Jekyll and Hyde) Scene 4
- Gold (Instrumental) Scene 5
- We Go Together (Grease) Scene 6
We used the instrumentals of said songs and gave the singers either a headset or a hand held microphone, apart from a select few performers who would have to use their voice to reach the audience.
Costume
My costume for the third scene of the first act was rather basic and simplistic; I could not find my white button up, so as a last resort I decided to wear a white-collared dress with a blue plaid skirt overtop of it to emulate a school uniform.
The costume I wore for my dwarf Frankie consisted of an oversized, plain red shirt, black shorts and a red bandana. This was chosen to vaguely-resemble a more streetwear-type style of fashion as the dwarves in this play tend to run entirely on street-smarts and informalities. Opposed to the more well-known version of the seven dwarves from Disney’s “Snow White And The Seven Dwarves”, they do not wear gnome-like clothing. This is because we are of course all humans varying in shape and size. Therefore we must accommodate for the fact that we cannot replicate the same look of “friendly creature copy and pasted multiple times with varying differences to differentiate one another” that Grumpy, Dopey, Happy, Doc, Sneezy, Sleepy and Bashful have going for them. So, for this, we went with the simple yet effective option of a plain, block colored shirt to maintain a similar silhouette between us whilst also being able to differentiate between one another without relying on our actors’ own differences in appearances. This would have been easy to do, but only relying on the differences between characters via their actor’s actual look is difficult to do in a show with multi-roling as actors playing different characters themselves must only rely on costume; this is why costumes are important.
Props
The props used by myself and the fellow dwarves consist of swords, used as weapons to defend themselves from threats (as well as to MAKE the threats) and the other main props used were silicone limbs (hands, feet, fingers, a whole human head, etc.) which were used to further immerse the audience into the belief that as our characters had claimed, they had just fought a horde of trolls and won.
Pictured above is a PROP (I plead the fifth) dismembered foot, made of silicone produced by the media makeup department.
This is the ALSO PROP (DO NOT SUE) dismembered hand we used, also made by the media makeup department using silicone. This is the limb that my character, Frankie, was designated with holding.
Marketing
Displayed in figure 4 is the poster used for the Grimm Life performance, showing off all of the main characters.
We also printed off programmes for our audience, which on the back held QR codes in which the audience was given the option to send feedback regarding our performance. The second years were able to use this feedback to reflect on what we did well and what required improvement.