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Yasmin is our guest blogger this week...
At Black company we have been rehearsing for our production of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ which we will be performing at Netherton Working Men’s Club on Monday and Tuesday 8th and 9th June.
The play is so much fun and rehearsals have been really enjoyable. The script is a real challenge because its so action packed and we constantly have to be on our toes because there’s always something happening. This means that when we get it right, the scene we’re working on is great and when we drop the ball it can be a bit of a disaster!
The best way to describe the play in my opinion is a pantomime with dashes of integrity. There are characters such as mine and Rachel’s (Beauty’s horrible sisters) that are utterly ridiculous and then there is Beauty and Witch who are a calm and meaningful presence in the play. I think the variety of characters and their purpose in the play creates a fun and interesting balance which will draw audience members in from the very beginning.
Playing the character of Veronique has been an interesting challenge for me. She is a horrible person who takes joy in making her sister Beauty’s life as hellish as possible. The biggest difficulty for me as an actor is making sure she is as outrageous as the script implies without going too far with it. What I realised in this week’s rehearsal is that its important to find a balance between letting the character loose to go wild and be free and making sure all of the technical aspects of the performance are in place. By this I mean making sure I can move around the stage this way when in costume, not hurting my voice, making sure I haven’t positioned myself selfishly on stage and ensuring I have a good chemistry with the other actors on stage. I think with a character such as Veronique, its easy to become a very selfish and self indulgent actor and so these other factors need to be carefully considered.
We’re getting to that point in rehearsals where there are only a couple of weeks to go and we all need to kick things up a gear! Things are definitely falling into place and I think in a couple of weeks when lines are 100% learnt, all of our costumes are in place and we are in our venue the show is going to be brilliant! I can’t wait!

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