Sofagate – SOLVED! After a concerted effort by the group and a shrewd Facebook post by Lorraine we have found a perfect bargain sofa in Kings Langley no less! Andrew and Martin will be collecting it tomorrow which means our Beverley will have her lovely three piece suite ready for our first rehearsal in costume on Saturday night. Happy days are here again! (Exciting isn’t it?!)
Sofagate And so it is Friday morning and the sofagate saga continues. Last time I wrote this we were all ready with our bids on a fab leather suite on ebay determined to make it ours, but sadly fate was not on our side (and we reckon some dodgy dealings on behalf of the seller). Our higher bid than the winning one was not accepted on ebay and our dreams…
Furniture and Fags. Well we have just finished a VERY busy weekend preparing for Abigail’s Party, which opens in 10 days time. On Saturday we spent the evening rehearsing the whole production from start to finish, adding further props and food to get used to the action on stage, and yesterday we moved all our set and furniture into the community centre, followed by another rehearsal yesterday afternoon. Now, the…
SPOILER ALERT! If you have not seen Abigail’s Party and do not want to spoil the ending of the play DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER! Right – Spoiler alert indeed. As I mentioned last time, last night we tackled the tricky last scene of the play that we have been having so much trouble with. After having gone through it intensely a few times we have got a much better…
Behind the Scenes with Base Painting and Blocked Noses So this week we have been working behind the scenes to get Abigail’s Party ready for the stage. We had a full set of crew at rehearsals this week and boy, were they an unhealthy bunch! All of them (including one cast member) were coughing and sneezing and probably ought to have been at home with their feet up. The common…
Strange Dreams So we have all had those classic anxiety dreams in our lives – you know the ones, where you are trying to get to an important exam or meeting and just can’t manage to get there OK. If you are an actor you may be familiar with the dream about going on stage and not being able to remember your lines or what you are supposed to do.…
Learning lines So we are now three weeks into rehearsals and only two days away from our ‘books down’ date. For those of you not involved in theatre, ‘books down’ is the deadline the director sets for having learned all your lines so you can continue to rehearse without your scripts in your hands. ‘Three weeks of rehearsals and you haven’t learned your lines yet?’ I hear you say incredulously…
Finding Costumes The cast found their way to the costume studio on Sunday morning in search of suitable attire for the production. Those of you who know the KLP will be aware that we are lucky enough to have our own Studio space, built by the group themselves in the 1970’s which we use to build sets, store furniture and props and has it’s own Aladdin’s cave section dedicated to…
Getting in Character We had an interesting discussion at Saturdays rehearsal about our characters and how they felt about being at this awful drinks party. What was probably most interesting was the influence of the era on the characters lives and how that differs so much from what is expected of men and women today. Laurence is under pressure to provide for his social climbing wife who doesn’t work any…
So we have now all settled into rehearsals for Abigails Party and the first dilemmas are settling in. Characters are forming, lines are being learned but we have encountered a couple of dilemmas for the cast on stage – eating and smoking. We’ve all had to eat and drink on stage – indeed for our last production ‘Taming of the Shrew’ set in a modern day cafe we drank a…
