Actiontrack Diary 2013

The final entries from Ally Boyd Crotty describing the Actiontrack Showbuild, which came to a very successful conclusion on Saturday evening with the Western show The Good, the Bad and the Thirsty (left, the dress rehearsal) ...

Day Three:

Thursday 13th June - On our third day of Actiontrack, we began with more warmup games, and then gathered round in a circle and were given out a script. The Actiontrack crew has spent the night gathering all of our ideas and using the songs as inspiration to write a script with a western theme. There was a character for each person with individual names, and the only thing that wasn't ready was the title. We read through the story, line by line, and then were given out our parts after break-time. With props to make and lines to learn the real work had only just begun.

Day Four: 

Friday 14th June - Beginning our fourth day it was very strange to think that we were going to be performing the fully completed play the following day. We had so much to do! We started from scene one and worked our way through, after setting the stage out in a peculiar but clever way in the middle of the BSR. The characters twho weren't in the scenes that were being practised began making props such as signs, and some of the puppets we would be using during the show. A few of us also raided the costume room to try to source some Western costumes that could be used. At the end of the day soloists got to practise their songs also, and we learned some of the dances that would go with them. The last thing we did was choreograph our first scene - the bar room brawl. We used strobe lighting and each had groups to fight in, and had a particular fight choreographed in our groups to ensure no one would be hurt. We had one more day, and there was still a lot to be done!

Day Five:

Saturday 15th June - Even the start of the morning was hectic on the show-day. Everybody was running around frantically, learning lines, painting signs, choosing costumes... There was a lot to be done, and after we finished learning our last 3 dances, we went through the play from start to finish - which took us three hours. On watching the play, the Actiontrack crew knew the problem - lines had not been learnt. The shadow puppets and props were finished, and what was letting us down was our lines. They gave us 45 minutes to get our lines together and get changed into our costumes for our final dress rehearsal. Finishing just in time before the audience began to arrive, we went through the whole play, remembering our lines and our dances.

Performance:

At 8.15 the BSR was packed, and as we waited nervously in the Cadogan we were talked to by Nick before we began the performance. As we began, everything went well. No lines were forgotten, songs were sang, danced were danced and the shadow puppets and costumes were perfect. 

 

The whole week was extremely enjoyable, and it is certainly something I will not forget. The songs we sang have been circling insude my head ever since the performance. I would like to thank Nick and his team from Actiontrack for an amazing week!