I’ve had such a busy and tiring week, but it’s all been worth it. Yesterday was the actual performance and despite a few problems with the sound, I think it went really well.
Every day was an early start and a late finish – and for someone who hasn’t had to get up at any particular time for a few months, the first few days were challenging. We’d get up, wash and have breakfast, then head over to Gissing to rehearse all day with the kids.
Rehearsal days usually started with a game, and then a voice warm up. We’d then pick some scenes to go through and work on those. The kids knew their lines already (well, most did) so we didn’t have to worry about that, rehearsal was mostly about learning where to stand and how to act, as well as choreography for the dance sections.
We also had some related but not performance related activities, such as learning how to do your makeup for the stage, and preparing some of the props for the stage. This was where I came in. I was mostly there to supervise, but sometimes I got a bit more hands on.
Firstly we made a stained glass window for the abbey scenes. Sami had already found a door, painted it black and drew the design on to the panes of glass. We add the guttering before the kids got their hands on it, so all they had to do was to paint it pretty colours! I think it turned out really well, even if we did run out of blue paint and needed to use yellow instead.
Sami had also made some plant pots and columns for the garden scenes. For these, the kids painted a base coat of an off-white, then stippled on some texture using sponges and varying shades of brown. Sami added some plastic flowers to them, and I glued on some plastic ivy leaves. Both of these additions really helped, I think.
The kids painted the columns the same way, but the grey they used was a bit too dar, so they softened this with more white. Later on, myself, Sami and Steve added some white and grey lines to make the columns looked ridged.
The days usually ended with another game, just to calm everyone down – things sometimes got a bit emotional and high-pressure as we had so little time to get the performance ready – and get out of performance mode.
The end of the day for the kids wasn’t the end of the day for us. Once we were back home and fed, more costumes needed to be adjusted, programs made or props sorted.
On the day of the show I was a nervous wreck, so you can imagine how Sami felt being in charge. I was running around making sure everyone was sorted, and then letting the parents in to the lobby. Once everyone as in, I dashed back stage where I was put in charge of the quick-change area. Here I had to help some of the kids out of and then in to their costumes, sometimes in as little as 30 seconds!
Before I knew it, the performance was over. From back stage I could hear the roar of applause, and given the feedback I heard from the parents and carers during the interval I knew it had been a success.
I am so very proud of everyone who worked on the performance, and I’m really glad to have taken part – even though I was absolutely exhausted afterwards to the point of talking absolute gibberish even though I thought what I was making sense!
I received a number of thank you gifts from the kids including a beautiful bunch of flowers and two signed cards. I’ve also kept a copy of the program and a ticket. These will go in my keepsake box which I use to store memories from past events. I have allsorts of items in it such as tickets from gigs, letters from friends etc.