Celebrating the past in the present...

Alice Narey is our guest blogger

Evening all! I hope you’ve had an excellent week off (for those who actually had their half term break this week) I have certainly had a busy week as this week was connections week for this year’s connections play Eclipse! (I am assuming you have already booked your tickets???) I should’ve put money on the chances of me writing this blog…but this is my connections blog done – until Kendal!

Day 1: As this is my first year of being in the cast of a connections play – luckily I managed to do the sound last year – I was anxious to start this week of rehearsals and the prospect of a 6 hour day of hard work was both exciting and frightening. For our first day we were accompanied by the play-in-a-day cast, listening to the Willy Wonka soundtrack while working was definitely amusing. This first day made me realise 2 things – to be able to perform eclipse to its highest standards we were going to have to work hard and that technically we all had 2 plays to learn as both cast and chorus. As scary as this seemed we all powered through the day after being warmed up and introduced to character work – running the play in quarters. This made me realise just how much energy we were going to have to put into this fantastic play. Focusing on the characters was extremely beneficial as we picked the text and our monologues apart to make everything more believable.

Day 2: After the first day I now felt prepared to start working on the chorus side of the play. This introduction was not as I expected. In order to play the chorus we had to take on our oppositions version of our character and had to stay in character through the entire play which was hard without words. As nerve racking as this sounded it turned out to be more beneficial as I thought, watching the play unfold as our character allowed us to discover what our character was actually feeling in the moment which was incredible. The chorus gives the play depth and allows us to represent the rituals that happen during the play. We also discovered smaller things that makes everything make sense. For example, the rubber duck was actually in the bag – I know this makes no sense to you right now but if you come to see it all will be revealed….

Day 3: This was a shorter day for unfortunate reasons but it turned out to be very useful, focusing mainly on character work - we all grouped up and worked on our timelines as characters. We had to be extremely thoughtful as we decided critical moments in their life and also how our characters were related and even discovering little secrets that would only slightly change the way we play our characters – it’s all very exciting, I’m looking forward to sharing and finding out secrets at Kendal. In addition to this, we were faced with the daunting task of finding the mass amount of weird and wonderful props in the play. I assure you, we did not look like an ordinary bunch of teenagers when asking around for these items…

Day 4: To start the day, we played a game to aid Tom and Dec who were tasked with playing Midnight who is profoundly blind. At first, as Sarah explained the game, I didn’t like the sound of it. However, we all closed our eyes and were told to try to keep them closed throughout the whole game. One by one we were led into a line and then we had to feel the back of the person in front. This turned out to not be as awkward as I expected as we were all fairly confident with each other. We were then lead away and were told to find our way back into the line. At this point I thought we had no chance at all of finding our way back, although I was pleasantly surprised. It didn’t take long for us to find our way back. We all learnt that Midnight relies largely on touch which we were not playing. When this was thought about in the play it made in so much more believable. Our first day in costume, with props, doing a full run of the play as both cast and character! Amazing, I know. (yet also terrifying) The thought of having to remember what happens next was weird…but we managed it! The costumes look so good – with the chorus version being monochrome. John and Sam definitely win for costume as it was identical as so effective. Being able to do a full run twice gave us a huge confidence boost as we realised that actually we do have a full play and it looks remarkable.

Day 5: As soon as the week had begun, the final day had arrived. It was a weird feeling as I walked into rehearsal knowing that after this we would definitely have a play worthy of an audience. I was not disappointed. After playing another game that allowed us to understand how Midnight feels when being led by different people. We then embarked on another 2 runs of our play, with a small audience! This time everything felt a lot more comfortable and confident as all the fine details had been corrected. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The great feedback boosted our confidence further. I am surprised at how much we all love this play and cannot wait to perform it next week! I don’t want to give away too much but you would be missing a treat if you didn’t come and see it.

So, with connections week over and only 3 more hours of rehearsals left before we perform – I cannot put into words how excited I am to perform this marvellous play. I would say that I hope your week was as good as mine…but I know it is impossible. The only question is, what happened to Lucy Lime?