Creating a production ( the process start to finish)
First is planning, the production team have to get the basics such as what to perform and hold auditions for the actors.
The actors need to have practiced their material thoroughly and make sure they are ready to perform in time and carefully choose an area that showcases their talent and abilities!
Be confident when you walk in, if you don’t have faith in yourself, the casting team most definitely wont.
Being on time to the audition is a big part, show you are reliable and are willing to play the role. Do research on the character and show your interested.
The most important, stay positive even if you don’t get the roll! Think of this as a way to build on your skills and get better. It isn’t the end. There is always bigger and better chances out there!
Rehearsals, The actors need to make sure they show up to auditions to practice their lines and movement
Again, Make sure your punctual to your rehearsals, this shows willingness and respect to the director, fellow actors and other crew members.
Make sure you arrive at the rehearsals with lines memorized. This saves everyone’s time and gives actors time to work on their performance rather than remembering their lines.
Being prepared is a very big deal, actors should be ready to go as soon as they get to their auditions. This could mean bringing set, props or costume into their rehearsals.
Last but not least, Stay focused and listen to any feedback the director gives you. Rehearsals may be long and tiring, but it’s worth it in the end. Any feedback the Director gives you may be hurtful but they only tell you to help improve YOUR skills and to make YOU a better actor.
Next up is the technical elements on the performance, This is a really important factor of the performance as anything could go wrong and mess up the entire performance. It’s always good to have multiple people learn the technical elements incase something happens or someone is absent. They need to learn about things like Lighting, Sound , set and stage directions.
Before starting the work on the technical elements, Make sure your ready and schedule it before as it could take longer then normal rehearsals and you may have to go over it multiple times as it is very complicated to learn.
Communication is key during technical run throughs as you need to make sure you’re all on the same page and you all know what you’re doing! This helps things run smoothly. This will not work if there’s a miscommunication between the director, stage manager and actors.
Make sure to test everything multiple times to make sure everything is right! If something goes wrong, you need to make sure you have a backup plan!!
Make sure you conduct a dress rehearsal! This help to make sure everyone has the costumes needed and it helps for timing as you need to know how long you have in between scene changes to get changed if needed!
DO NOT PANIC IF THINGS GO WRONG DURING THE REHEARSALS! It’s completely normal to get things wrong during the run throughs. This is the time to work on things and correct them. There’s a 99% chance things will go wrong the first time and that is totally fine. Its your first time of course it’s not gonna be perfect!
Make sure you put your safety first! Make sure everything is in the right place and secured there. Make sure the crew members and the actors are aware of any hazards around the set to keep themselves safe.
Make sure your being flexible and open minded. Technical rehearsals can be random and unpredictable and could need you to be quick thinkers and good at problem solving. You won’t agree with everything everyone says, and that’s okay! It’s completely normal to have your own opinions, However it is not okay to hate on other peoples input just because you don’t believe its right! Everyone has a right to give their own opinions!
Next up is preview shows, these are always a good idea to see if a smaller audience will like it first. This can help a lot of things like confidence for one, this is improved because your having the chance to perform in an audience where you can mess it up and you can get feedback from the audiences point of view first instead of being put straight onto the big stage in front of thousands.
Lighting- For lighting, we tried to get the perfect lighting to match each scene perfectly, For example, we used Green lighting in Bosemanns scenes as it represents the darkness and mystery within his cunning character, this also helps convey the message in Bosemanns songs as he sings about taking over the world and turning people against each other. Another example of the lighting matching scenes is when the princesses and other heroes within the story get captured bythe villains, they use red lighting in this scene. The red lighting symbols the danger the characters are in! we also used red in the prison scene, this symbolised the full scale riot as the red lights were flashing to show danger. Some scenes have more brighter lights, like when Stiltskin enters, we used bright flashing lights to make his entrance more dramatic and bigger.
Set- For set, we went with the stereotypical medieval village we see in most Disney movies and in the fairytales, this helped to paint the picture of being in the olden days when they had the houses they had thousands of years ago. We also pained a 4 sided box with 2 different signs for both the nightclub ‘love apple’ and ‘cinders chat show’. On each side we added elements from the original fairytales, for example we use a slipper and pumpkin on Cinderella’s sign as both the glass slipper and the pumpkin carriage were significant in the fairytales! or when we drew the apple on the ‘love apple;’ sign to represent the poisonous apple the evil queen gave Snow white to kill her. We used wooden boxes to create a bed that Red riding hood’s grandmother slept on, we also created huge prison bars for red riding hoods scene and the prison riot scene! To create the prison bars we drilled large grey tubes into wooden poles to give the trapped effect so we could cover downstage with them.
Props: For props, we used the props they would have used in the modern day fairytales, however we wanted to make it quite comedic, for example, we gave Red riding hood an axe and the huntsman a small pair of scissors and a tiny axe. And Faye’s character had a cocktail shaker and always had a glass of alcohol at hand to represent her alcoholic side. We also used things such as a huge book to represent the huge book of fairytales, the book was very important as it was used to bring back all the fairytale characters, without the book it wouldn’t have made sense as the audience would not understand how all the fairytales were being wrote down and it would give away that Carly is writing everything down on her phone. Connecting with the phone in Carly’s scenes, Mobiles were a very big part within this production as one of the play themes is based around technology and social media and how the phones and computers are taking over our generation. Without the main props, the performance would be confusing from an audience members perspective as they would have no idea what people are doing and why people are running around empty handed pretending to pass stuff around and use things. The props also helped us with characterization, For me having a glass helped me get into the character of Faye as I felt more into it with the prop, without the prop it was very bland and it without it I wasn’t encouraged to put in my best effort in the performance. However, with the glass I could clearly show the audience that i was an alcoholic and it made the character a lot more fun to play!
Costumes- Because the performance is set in modern day, we didn’t wanna use the original like costumes, so we made the costumes a mix of modern and classics. My character ,Faye, has a simple black blazer, black jeans and white shirt costume. This makes her look sophisticated and professional. when my character turns into the teacher, all we do is add glasses so she looks like the stereotypical English teacher. For my makeup look , I was able to do my own makeup as Faye’s roll wasn’t very big and my makeup was very similar to the makeup style we thought of for Faye! My makeup look consisted of a cat eye and a simple darker lip as this helped represent the secret evilness behind her role as the ‘foster mum’. Cinderella’s costume was a simple skin tight blue dress instead of the classic big puffy blue dress as that dress isn’t very modern. The color of the dress represents her bubbly and happy personality through out the entire performance, whereas the villains like Bosemann wear a dark suit with a red shirt, this could represent the evilness and darkness behind his character. As Will and Carly are only teenagers in secondary school, their costumes stay the same throughout the entire performance, their costumes are the basic uniforms that include a black pair of trousers and a skirt with a white shirt and a tie. Characters like Red riding hood and Stiltskin have multiple changes. Riding hood has multiple as their actor plays a school student so they have a uniform for that scene, then they have an orange jumpsuit to represent their prison scenes and then the original red cape for her flashback as red riding hood. Without the costumes resembling their characters in someway it would have made no sense and the audience may have believed that they were just named after the characters instead of actually being them. Also having costumes that corelate to the characters brings the performance to life as it makes it more realistic!
Dances- The dances were put together using simple moves as not everyone’s strong point was dancing. They tried to make the dances fit best as possible with the scenario they were in, for example in Cinderella and prince charming’s ballroom dance scene , they made it very elegant and classy as it represent romance and dancing with a royal! Another dance that fit well in the scene is red riding hoods dance to Surface pressure as this dance takes place behind the bars in the prison. In her dance, they use a lot of cannon moves which represent her being under so much pressure of having to be the tough one and having to lead the way for others as they follow what she does.
Songs- For songs, we tried to choose songs that fit well with the characters and scenes. A good example of this is ‘revolting children;’ as this clearly shows teens rebelling in school and causing havoc before the teacher shows up. Another example of this is when Bosemann sings ‘friends on the other side’ as this represents Bosemanns henchmen that are in disguise and how he secretly has eyes all over!