Hi, I am Georgia and I am a Senior at the Barnt Green Project. In the half term break, I decided to take part in the holiday workshop of Lockdown Lane which was taking place on Zoom, this obviously bought challenges as we weren’t face to face, but in the end, we performed a show to 50 audience members on Zoom.
On the first day, we all signed onto the meeting for our first rehearsal. We started by introducing ourselves to everyone, as there were people we had never met before, which allowed us to get to know people from all across the country. Then, we started discussing the basic outline of the story, before we got into small groups and started putting together some of the scenes with some dialogue. However, our first difficulty came when we started rehearsing one of the songs in the musical. As we were not face to face, there was a time delay between everyone, so if we all sang at the same time, it sounded like cats dying! In the end, we came to the conclusion that we would split the song into solos and sing a cappella. This was a fun part of the process, because everyone was learning together, so no matter how much experience different people had in musical theatre, we were all learning how to do it together.
On the second day, we finished devising the rest of the scenes and learnt the second song in the musical. This was really fun because we got to spend time together doing the things I have missed about not going to Star Project. I’ve really missed being around people who have the same passion as I do, and being able to put something together.
On the final day, we ran through the piece a few times, with costumes, props and music. This was really fun to do, because we had to find all of our props and costumes ourselves, as we couldn’t have any help. We also ran through our entrances and exits. At the beginning, we were unsure how we were going to do this as we weren’t in a theatre, so we couldn’t physically go backstage. Instead, we had to learn how to mute ourselves and turn of the camera, so no one could hear or see us. This was quite difficult as we had to remember to then unmute ourselves and make sure everything was working. We also had to learn to use virtual backgrounds, however, for a few people, including myself, this wouldn’t work, as we didn’t have a place with a plain background, so we had to think of other ways of doing it.
It was finally the performance and I was so nervous, which I didn’t expect, as we weren’t onstage, however, I still had the same adrenaline I get when I’m onstage which I loved because it just felt like I was back doing everything I love. The performance went really well, and everyone came out of it feeling so happy. I think I have gained so much from this experience as I now know that whatever happens in this world, we can all still be together doing the things that make us all happy. I really enjoyed this experience.
