In the initial rehearsals of 'Driving in my car' myself and Megan weren't involved in the rehearsal process as we were working on the production of 'Baggy Trousers'. However, as you can see from the video above the movements were very basic and didn't require much thought as we took inspiration from 'We Will Rock You's performance of 'Headlong' which was positioned and structured in the same way. We kept this formation and structure for a few weeks to form a basic choreography until we did a run with the whole of the instrumental accompaniment. After we had done this we found that we looked awkward and didn't know how to interact with one another and sat there not doing anything. We tried changing this up by falling left and right and forward exaggerating our arm and leg movements. This was done by extending our arms and legs to make it more visually engaging as well as to create dynamics. For example, long extended arms and long elevated legs etc. However we felt that we could only do this a few times before it got boring and predictable for the audience.
We then had a rehearsal dedicated to working on the movement of 'Driving in my car' as it needed to be more energetic and involve more physical theatre if needs be to make it visually more interesting as well as more interesting for us as performers. This included adding character motifs and actions. For example, myself and Megan would emphasise disgusted expressions as our characters hated the idea of the car and are absolutely appalled by the fact we had to get in. We showed this through facial expressions as well as crossing our arms and shaking our heads. We also added in a bit of physical movement where we moved seats with each other in order to use one of the instrumentals effectively. we all found this enjoyable and almost created a sense of pace within the song so it didn't drag visually.
When we got to doing a few runs in rehearsals in the rehearsal space we found that we couldn't remember some parts of the choreography due to it being very similar to one another. This also then meant that we found it difficult to count the instrumental for when we would have to come back in again to sing. A critique we were giving by peers were that we were too stationary and we needed to move around more for it to be more lively - as if we were in a car. We thought about it and remembered that we had some tires in the workshop. We got six tyres and placed them in 3 rows of two and di the routine like we had done with the chairs. By doing so we found instant problems. They moved around a lot more than we thought and they fell over if we stood up quickly and left them - which is what we would have to do in order to change seats. We tried it out a few times but decided as a group that this wasn't do-able if we wanted to do a strong confident performance. Unfortunately we all loved this idea and didn't like the idea of not moving. However, we didn't know how to move about the space without breaking the idea that we were inside a car.
In a later rehearsal one of our directors suggested the idea that we walk around the space with them. At first we thought that this idea was a little strange and might just look awkward. However, Naomi suggested that Harry should shout 'round a bout' so that we all walk in a circle - giving it context but also giving us a reason to move around that makes sense. We originally did this silently which made it very awkward. Gradually the more times we ran the choreography we got more confident with adlibbing random things throughout the instrumental. For example, I would say things like "Why are we here" "This is ridiculous" and "I can't believe we got in here with you". My adlibbing improved greater in performance than in rehearsal as usually I would be trying to think too much into rather than letting it come naturally. So in performance I was more relaxed meaning I spoke more and appeared more confident like my character was. We also decided in this rehearsal that we needed to change our formation due to the fact the 'car' looked more like a 'tank' at this particular stage. Therefore, we decided to have two tyres at the front and four at the back to symbolise the front seating and back seating of a car.
During the final instrumental there was originally a star wars related instrumental and a titanic one where Joe and Sarah do the Titanic pose. We decided to shorten this down as we felt it was too long for pace we also felt it was sort of unnecessary and a little random in terms of context. Therefore, we cut this to just the titanic instrumental. Instead of Joe and Sarah doing the pose we changed it to Emmo and Lewis as we felt that this would contain more comedic value and also we thought logically of why would the driver do the pose whilst driving. We constructed this by myself and Megan pushing two tyres together for Harry to stand on and Andy would stand behind Harry to give him support. At the end of the song the car breaks down. To show this during the little instrumental at the end we all wobbled on our tyres and fall when Joe sings 'God I love this car!'. To start with this wasn't a popular idea among the group as we were worried we were going to hurt ourselves but after attempting it a few times we were all comfortable with this idea.
My personal problem I had to overcome was my confidence with using the tyres. At first I didn't want to use them as I didn't feel safe sitting on them and moving around. I didn't want to fall over which meant my body posture was very tense which made it difficult to move and act more as my character than myself. I overcame this by practicing putting all my weight on the tyres and moving a little bit at a time. Then gradually increasing my movement seeing how much I could move before it was even likely that I could fall over. This gave me confidence and made me feel like I had control over the tyre more. This then resulted in a more adventurous confident performance of 'Driving in my car' on both performance days.
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