Her Majesty's Theatre

At PQA (Pauline Quirk Academy), we do end of term projects; I have already done a big project such as a film premier which highlighted what we do in film and television classes. Last term we did a musical theatre project which we performed at Her Majesty's Theatre! This was great experience and a lot of fun.

The whole of the academy were involved but we did separate performances and then a finale at the end together. We also shared the night with 3 other PQA academy's from different locations.

We had prepared for our performances for over 9 weeks and I choreographed the whole finale scene which meant that I worked for the afternoon academy as well as I had to teach the afternoon academy the same routines. This was hard work but a lot of fun as I got to know a few more people from the afternoon and it was good experience to be able to teach two whole academy's my choreography.

I also got involved with the media side of the performance too as I edited the music and put it all together for our performance. I learned how to do this in a B-TEC Performing Arts lesson and I was able to do it again at home. I personally didn't find it challenging as I knew the basics and so it was fairly easy as I knew timings etc.

The performances that I was in were from Legally Blonde the musical and Rent. Only my age group were involved in these. (14-17yr olds) It was just the girls that were involved in the legally blonde song and as a group we were involved in a song from Rent.

In the legally blonde song I played the bossy girl who told everyone what to do. We did the song OMG. In the song we are all excited because we think that El is about to get engaged which means we acted very stereotypical girly Americans. This was my favourite performance to do as I got to be with my friends, wear pink and sing solo in front of loads of people in the audience, which Pauline Quirk herself was in.

The other performance was called Rent and it was the complete opposite to Legally Blonde because we were poor and scruffy and negative. It was a very powerful performance and I enjoyed performing it as we all had loads of energy and therefore the outcome was brilliant.

I had a good night performing at Her Majesty's Theatre and I won't forget it! Great experience for me and I loved every second of it.

Stomp

On 25th September, as a birthday treat, I went to London to go see STOMP with my family. I searched on YouTube for some videos as I hadn't got a clue what it was about. Once seeing these videos, my excitement of going grew.

Stomp is about a group of people using common household objects to make a variety of sounds and then creating a spectacular rhythm. The group of people (10 at most) split up the show into scenes.  Each scene had a different object in it and every actor used this object differently. For example, in one scene, they were using pipes, however, individually they all had their own length of pipe, this created different sounds and when they hit the pipe to the ground with force at different times in a specific on going rhythm it sounded astonishing this was because they were putting a lot of energy into the performance.

The people that were involved didn't just use objects as we soon found out, some had tap shoes on however we didn't notice at first as they camouflaged in to what everyone else was wearing. There was an incredibly funny element to the show as well as the group of people were actors too and there were 3 men in particular which were really funny. They made us laugh by pulling faces and making funny noises and taking the mic out of each other. They also interacted with the audience which was great, for example, one guy would clap twice and get us to repeat it, and then later on in the show he's do it and we wouldn't do it right therefore he would look down in shame and we laughed.

A highlight was the scene where they used newspapers to create sounds and rhythms. The reason why it was my favourite was because the actors were making funny movements, faces and sounds. One actor in particular stood out for me because he was trying to make another guy laugh when the other guy was trying to be serious. Another reason why it was funny was because this actor was very muscular and tall compared to the other one who was small and had no muscle.

There were many objects that were used such as; pots, plungers, brooms, sinks, bins, dust pans, wooden sticks, huge water butts, metal bins and lids, chairs, newspapers, cups, basketballs, black pipes, lighters for light effect and clicking sounds, they clapped their hands and even used dust to add noise when they tapped their feet. In the sink scene they used water to add to the effect, for example when they tapped the cup it created different sounds as the water came out of the cup. Creating a rhythm by using these objects must have been very hard and complicated, however they all had their own individual rhythm which didn't look hard at all, however the outcome fo them all coming together sounds brilliant!

The scenery was incredible. They had different types of lids, bins and pipes all over the set, even up high which 2 men interacted with. These men were muscular and probably had to be as they were hitting very big bins right at the top of the set and they were on a harness for safety obviously and so that they could swing to another part of the set to use different objects that entwine with the rhythm.

Another highlight of my evening was that my dad's chair gave way several times which made us and a few members of the audience laugh which added to the humour of the night.

Overall watching the show was a lovely experience, was entertaining for all the family and I fully enjoyed the comedy moments that they put into the show. This show was very different from any other show; the objects that people throw away I wouldn't even think twice about to make sounds with it. These factors is what I believe made a 10 out of 10 show and I would recommend this show to anyone at any age as it was appropriate and entertaining for everyone.