The Girl and the Fox- Week 3: 'Casting and Introducing the Village.'

A quick blog entry this week as it's a bit manic on our end. We had an exciting week with the Chameleons this week as we both cast and commenced work on the show! Given the slightly shorter term this time we decided to dive right in, opposed to our usual format of casting at the end of the session. The story of the Girl is filled with a number of colourful characters, puppets, objects and creatures which our group will be bringing to life over the next seven weeks.

The first part of the session was dedicated to taking the cast through their characters and where they fit into the story. Then, once all the serious talk was done we thought it would be best to play some games to get everyone warmed up. Lots of running games this week to balance out the intense sitting of the rehearsal's first twenty minutes.

Then it was straight into scene one; revisiting the story of The Girl and reminding ourselves of how it begins. We open in a village and our aim was to make the village feel as alive as possible. The Chameleons had to form different parts of the village, showing us what kind of people lived there and what activities they get up to each day. Some great ideas from the group about how to put this on stage and the village feels very rich indeed. Within this we were also introduced to The Girl's friends and explored the quirks that make them individual and unique from one another.

With our Narrators we explored what kind of characters they could be, and how would impact their telling of the story. The narrator is such an important character, especially in a story such as this one. Finding where in the world of the play they slot in is always a good challenge and there were some really creative ideas from the cast about what they should be.

Finally we were introduced to Kova; the father of The Girl. Kova appears throughout the play to tell stories, as is his passion. Developing his relationship with the villagers was also good fun, as we wanted to emphasise the kind aspect of the character, which The Girl admires so much. Making this clear in the acting is vital to presenting the character on stage.

As stated, a much shorter post this week. Next week we will be continuing work on the play and using some cool puppetry elements to bring the next phase of the adventure to life. Until then, have a nice week everyone.