Once again we took the fatal walk from the college block to the Arts Theatre. After battling through annoying kids we were sure we would have a battle with our teacher. A battle is certainly what we got!
We all assembled in over the course of half an hour, that's usually what it takes to get the 'whole' class in. We were confidently saying, "It's got to be better than Shakespeare." How wrong could we be? For a change our class was in total silence, do you know how rare that is? Rare! That's what shock does, someone managed to stutter "West Side Story?" Whilst another finished the utterance, "but isn't that a musical?" Our teacher, unfazed, simply nodded. Someone let out a sigh of relief saying,"Oh but we're just acting it." As people regained the ability to speak, we managed to mumble, "Yeh are we?" We did not like the reply! "NO we are performing the musical as a musical." This time it was Mrs Press's turn to finish someone's sentence, "Yes you all have to sing and dance." The pain and suffering we had inflicted onto our two teachers over the past two years was going to be paid for. I'm sure they were thinking 'revenge is sweet!'
Auditions took place for our last group production. Most of us trying hard to be invisible so that we wouldn't be given a large singing part. Casting was slightly difficult. The play is about two rival gangs - mostly made up of boys. We have two boys in our class. The genre., musical. We have two singers in our class. The cast pretty large, our class? pretty small! All I'm saying is that quite a bit of doubling up occurred and a lot of hectic costume changes took place!
Rehearsals, er ... began. Oh I've missed something out, accents! We tried in vain to turn the characters into St.Heleners, unfortunately we weren't allowed and had to stick with American and Puerto Rican, not easy! Anton amused us all by bringing out Scottish, German and French.
With not a lot of us able to sing in tune or dance in time a lot of time was devoted to this. After being kicked in the face, banging into each other and doing the wrong steps we managed to bring it up to a decent level. With our dancing beginning to improve it was time to tackle the singing oh boy!
Miss Martin began with a vocal warm up, it pains me to remember. She must have been thinking, 'It's just because it's Monday morning.' when doing the same on a Monday afternoon I'm sure she had to think of another excuse. Over the hum of "we can't sing" Miss calmly replied, "everyone can sing" a few groaned, "but Miss I'm tone death" at the end of the lesson she stood in front of us looking very stressed compared to the beginning of the lesson and said, "Oh none of you can sing," she sighed and continued, "we've got a lot of work to do!" Her face was a picture, we all felt really sorry for her it can't have been easy.
The class worked really hard to get ready for 5th March. With everything sorted we had our traditional pizza dinner and got ready to perform to our unknowing audience.
We went out and did our best, even if that included a few slips and trips. The class did a great job and it's been brilliant to work with them. We all want to say a big thank you to Mrs Press and Miss Martin.