Thank you all so much for your support this year! Cinderella and the Musical Theatre class are all wrapped up for this school year. Keep an eye open on this page and on our social media for our show and show dates for the 2018/2019 school year!
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Take a look at a little bit of what you can expect when you come to see Cinderella at Thomas A. Stewart Secondary school December 14th-16th, 2017! As our opening nights gets closer our rehearsals get longer and this past Sunday rehearsal was the longest one yet! Some of started off the day at 10am painting the beautiful sets. While the rest of us arrived at noon for a full run thru and choreo cleaning. At five we had a break to relax and enjoy some yummy pizza together. When it was time for us to do our sitzprobe we headed up to the music room to meet our fantastic band for the first time! After three and a half hours of singing with the band we were all pretty tired, but happy that we finally got to sing with them, and we all headed home at 9:30. A sitzprobe is a seated rehearsal where we all sit and sing with the band to pay attention to detail because singing with the real thing can be really different from sing with a recording or an awesome pianist. The reason it took three and a half hours is because we went through every single song at least two or three times and some of our songs are very long. Despite being a long night we brought all the energy we had and we definitely brought it. “It went exceptionally well. It’s always very exciting to have the band and the cast together for the first time. My favorite moment is the very first song that the band plays that the cast gets to hear and how excited everyone gets because it’s pretty fun.” -Mrs.Tye Ms.Tye was right because after singing the first time with the band it gave us all a bunch of energy and we all sang the loudest we have ever sang before it truly was magical. We are extremely grateful for the band because they’re all volunteering their time from their busy lives to help us with our musical. A lot of the members of the band are actual professionals and are lead by the best conductor ever Mr.Jackson who has also been our amazing vocals teacher for our musical, along with Justin Hiscox who has been helping with the music and playing the piano for us since day 1. After hearing our singing at its best put with the band's amazing playing we all know that ‘It’s Possible’ that we are going to be putting on the best production of Cinderella yet.
Written by McKie Dummitt and Sophie Botting With only three weeks until our production opens, our whole show has been blocked, organized, and rehearsed. Now, we focus on cleaning, and talk more in depth about the intentions behind each movement our characters make or the lines that we have. This week, we began rehearsing full run throughs for the first time since the stumble through. During a run through, we work with both Ms Tye, our director, our music director, Mr Jackson, and musician Justin Hiscox. Running the musical from the top of act one to the very end of act two is exhilarating, and gives the cast a taste of how shows will run by helping us to orchestrate set changes, see what works, and what needs to be adjusted to make the final production seamless and fluent. Set changes are often first attempted in their entirety during the first run of the show, and we begin determining which people are available and needed to ensure each piece is brought on and off stage quickly and safely. When asked how she feels the set changes went, our stage manager Faith Morales said, “I think overall the set changes went exactly how they should on the first run through. There were definitely some things we need to polish. It’s great to have this it’s finally done and on stage so we can figure out our placements”. Each time we practice now, we will be making sure individuals can adequately complete each change and A run through is very helpful at this stage of the rehearsal process. We ran the show in full to understand the flow of each scene, get comfortable with our transitions, and work on putting all of the pieces together to formulate a professional-grade production. The significance of a run through is widely understood; Grace DeMara, our Cinderella, said, “I think the run through was very important to the progression of the musical, and gave us a great idea of what we are doing well and what we need to improve on. It can be a little discouraging when it doesn't go as smoothly as we hoped, but everyone was incredibly encouraging and understanding when things went wrong. I believe it helped us grow as a cast as well as brought us one step closer to putting on an amazing show!” This is a major step towards perfecting our musical and preparing for the upcoming shows with a full audience. After our run through our director, Sarah Tye, gathered the full cast to go over notes she had taken while watching our first run through. We sat in a circle as she gave us constructive criticism and we discussed what areas are our strongest and weakest to later improve upon. Tye commented on how we did well with characterization as well as our overall flow. In the upcoming weeks we plan to continue practicing singing while performing our dance numbers as well as smooth and polish any other patches Tye thinks are rough. Written by Alivia Buchan & Dhilan Maharaj The scene polish has started! We’ve made it through the first section of rehearsals, and are now well on our way to perfecting each and every scene, dance, and song we have worked on. Our cast has also begun moving out of the dance studio, and started to place our beautiful choreo up on stage. Off and on this week we have been receiving some new set pieces which look stunning framed on stage, and we are very excited about them. Things are falling nicely into place! All week, we have spent a great deal of effort into reviewing and perfecting songs with Mr. Jackson and Justin Hiscox. The elbow grease everyone puts into these musical numbers is outstanding! “I think the polishing is going great and that we are on track for the show, and if we can keep up the hard work, we can give the audience a show that will leave them wanting more and then some,” says Dalton Lain who plays a leading role as Sebastian in our production. Although we are doing fantastic, there are still some loose ends, but nothing that can't be fixed. Mainly just our choreography. It is very beautiful and we have spent a lot of time on it. Some pieces still need a tad bit more of work, but we are all pulling together to achieve this! Whenever we have time our cast it encouraged to step aside and put more practice into the dance numbers. Really we practice at all times. Even in the music room, we have been memorizing the dance routines while sitting and singing! It may look silly and we get some good laughs out of it, but it helps a lot! Overall, we have about a month till opening! New set pieces have arrived and are in the midst of being painted! The entire show is looking unreal and amazing. The progress has flown by so fast. Its honestly incredible how much progress has been made! By the time of show week it will be very interesting to see how this has all paid off! We can’t wait to see you there. If you are interested in coming to see our production of ‘Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella’, talk to one of our cast members or visit our online box office for ticket details. A month ago we had the opportunity to perform at the TAS 50th Anniversary Celebration Weekend! A group of our cast members sang the song "Ten Minutes Ago," a romantic number between Ella and Prince Topher. Now that the whole show is blocked, rehearsals have been more of a polishing process versus what we’ve done previously, which has given us the opportunity to really get down to the details of the scenes in the show. Every rehearsal is always better than the last, and we are all watching ourselves improve day by day. Everybody is doing their fair share of practicing on their own, and with the help of others to achieve their ultimate best. With the help of the director, Ms Tye, many of the leads (and chorus members!) have been doing everything in their power to really develop their character, and make them complex and three-dimensional. As well as this process, everybody is doing their fair share of work behind the scenes to improve the set and props, including painting and tracking props. Rehearsals have given us all time to really get into the musical, and become more enthusiastic about what is going to be our final product. Despite all of the amazing progress that is unfolding, there are a few barriers we are trying to break through. One thing we are all currently focusing on is dancing while still being able to project our voices. For us to achieve the goal of putting on a splendid musical, we have to put into consideration how loud we are, and if it is going to work how we would like it to. “The individual talents are merging to create an incredible show,” says Alivia Buchan, chorus member and Understudy for Gabrielle, Projecting and singing is skill we all need to continue working on. Adding the elements of dancing and acting while singing can make it much more difficult to focus and maintain volume, but our awesome stage managers and teachers are helping us improve.” We also are doing our best to be loud and proud while acting, as our music class daily mantra is “Always Louder!” from Mr. Jackson. We hope that everything goes according to plan, and are all very enthused about continuing to rehearse and improve our skills. At this point, we are all antsy about getting to perform and hope to put on an amazing performance.
Written by Chelsea Macklin and Taylor Mosher :-) Well, it finally happened. Our first stumble through of the show, and only 6 more weeks until the real deal. What is a stumble through, you may ask? A stumble through is when the cast rehearses an entire play for the first time, without interruption, so the director can get a sense of what is working and what is not. The actors know some of their lines and their blocking, but since it is the first time the entire cast has performed the show start to finish, it is always a little messy. It may be a train-wreck, but it is a valuable part of the rehearsal process. Pictured above: Grace Demara (Ella), and Kaia Douglas (Marie), going through a scene in our stumble through. Stumble through's can definitely be messy, but they aren't all entirely bad. Some highlights of our stumble through include things such as, the way characters managed to interact with each other well. We also have improved on much of our big choreography, and everyone is starting to get into the swing of things, with their characterization and their lines. We also have begun to manage our transitions between scenes really well, though we still have a lot to get done over the next six weeks, we are very excited! When asked about the positives of our stumble through, Dalton Lain, who plays Sebastian, told us this. "I think overall we stayed in character well, and set changes were well done for our first try. We could improve our blocking and choreo to match the stage better for some songs and scenes but it is all things that need to be ironed out through more practice, so I think it went great." Despite all the good, we did have some hiccups. Our big set pieces are going to be a challenge to maneuver, but we are more than eager to figure out how it's going to be done. We also had some forgetfulness, but that can easily be fixed with a little practice and memorization. We also had some trouble focusing on our vocals and dance moves at the same time, and so of course, as always, that equals more practice, practice, practice! All of our little hiccups, can be fixed with practice, and despite them, we had an amazing first stumble through. When asked about his thoughts on the stumble through, Dylan Macdonald, who plays Prince Topher, had this to say. "Blocking was good for the most part, scenes we've blocked in the past slipped the minds of a few. The projection of singing and moving needs more practice, but I'm confident we'll get it. Scene changes took a FEW seconds longer than they should have, but we'll be able to work out the kinks once people know where they need to go." We hope to see you for the real show in December! Tickets are sale now, through a cast member, or through our online box office. We can't wait to have you at our magical production of 'Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella'! Written by: Grace Hatherly (chorus) and Emily Reed (Madame) Pictured above: Sophie Botting, Dhilan Maharaj, Grace Hatherly (back row) Chelsea Macklin, Nicole Craymer, Miranda Steiginga, Alivia Buchan, Faith Guest, Grace Demara (third row) Dalton Lain, Hayden Henderson, Amelia Hansen, Ms. Kim Driscoll, Kaia Douglas, Aria Rustage, Emily Reed (second row) Dylan Macdonald, Maggie Grant, Waverly Porter, Gretel Kaune, Taylor Mosher
Our Box Office is NOW OPEN! Visit our BOX OFFICE page for details on how you can purchase tickets!
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AuthorOur blog and website is managed by T.A.S. Musical Theatre staff and students. Guest writers are also welcome - contact us if you'd like to contribute. Archives
January 2018
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