Acting #5 - This is Where It Could All Go Wrong...

Unfortunately, in this session we didn’t get as much rehearsal time as everyone else due to COVID-19 isolation circumstances, so we had a brief read through and discussion about costume. The read through went well, and minus the new parts that we added the week prior, all of us were off-script with our lines, and our accents had come on far greater than we had anticipated. It was really hard to get the feel of the piece from behind a computer screen, but it went well nonetheless.

We also had a discussion about costume, and what each of us would wear. For me, the obvious choice would have been the orange prison jumpsuit, much like this one from Legally Blonde The Musical, specifically from the number ‘Whipped into Shape’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyqLN3wtPTw

However, as none of us have an orange jumpsuit to hand, I had decided that I should wear grey joggers and a grey hoodie, so it’s simple but still obvious that I’m in prison - especially when you compare my outfit with the other two. Kimberly is the sister who wanted to be at Thanksgiving with Caroline, and so we suggested that Saskia should actually make the effort making her the most glamorous out of the three of us; whereas Hayley doesn’t want to be there and so we suggested Faye shouldn’t really make as much effort.

We want to make it as obvious as possible to our audience that Hayley and Caroline don’t get on, and so by showing that Hayley didn’t want to make the effort in her outfit was important.

When we’d started this project, it was always in the back of our minds that I would be in handcuffs, as it was a death row prison, however it meant that from the beginning I would have to have rehearsed as if I had handcuffs on, so I would have to have brought a belt or a piece of fabric to loop around my wrists so I wasn’t using them.

As it happened, I didn’t ever rehearse with anything looped around my wrists, and as someone who talks with their hands a great deal in everyday life, it would have made it much harder so close to the assessment to perform with my wrists tied.