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Writer's pictureNod At The Fox

PEA. First week of rehearsals

Day 1: 21/1/19 [Sam's entry]

This was the first ever rehearsal day of PEA. I’m not gonna lie to you it was very fun! We brought in a metric ton of bits and bobs. Anything we thought we might want to play around with, lights, juggling balls, half built puppets.


First thing first, as is always the best thing to do when beginning a creation progress for a new devised show, we performed it (an improvised version of course). We got some atmospheric music and lighting going and settled down the imaginary audience of kids (they were incredibly well behaved). And we did a highly… interesting one and a half hour version of PEA.


It’s like a devised family puppetry show's version of a read through, just with a few more random moments of being covered in a sheet of paper pretending to be a distressed shepherd.



Day 2: 22/1/19 [Eden's entry]


Making a puppetry show with only two people has been forcing us to find quick fixes and cheat ways to create certain images. For example, here is a cardboard cutout of Tiffany instead of the puppet, to create a clear image of her reading whilst we briefly recite the original story of the Princess and the Pea.


There are always times in the rehearsal day where you slightly descend into madness. If you can exploit these times with creativity, then you’re laughing. Today concluded with recording some strange noises for a tiny cardboard finger puppet show. Devised theatre makers might be able to relate to this, and they might not. I don’t really know what’s normal anymore.



Day 3: 23/1/19 [Sam's entry]

I’ve never actually made a proper puppet before. Actually, I think I might have made one at school once out of yogurt pots but I’m not going to lie it wasn’t very good all. But here you go, my first ever puppet in the flesh, white gaffer-tape flesh that is. It’s… well... its okay, but that’s fine at this point.



Whenever you’re embarking on a creative project which combines many forms of art such as music, writing, acting, puppetry, circus, holograms, magic, avian choreography (not all of these will be in PEA), you’re going to come across some challenges that you just can’t do yourself. That’s where partners and associates come in extremely handy. As you develop as an artist it is also really important to build your artistic network around you. We’ve got some really exciting designers lined up to try and turn the PEA scratch puppets into highly imaginative characters. I can’t wait to see what Tiffany here ends up like!



Day 4: 24/1/19 [Eden's entry]


Heard of a play in a day? Well we’re making a show in within a week. It’s not as catchy which is a shame. It’s day 4, and we’re performing a scratch of PEA. in 5 days time. Setting yourself this kind of pressure is very useful if you want to create a lot of content very quickly. However, even though we came into day 1 with the narrative already very fleshed out, we’ve still set ourselves quite a challenge here. Hence why hours have to be put in beyond the rehearsal room. Whether its improving our puppets, developing the sound design or writing script - that invested time becomes vital.


We made a load of random props today, with whatever was easily available. It’s tempting to add making a certain prop on to the long list of things to do - but we just thought, nip it in the bud, let’s make it now. Without this attitude, nothing will get done (especially not before the scratch next week!). For example earlier Sam quickly made some prototype bed-bugs, in the picture above. Bosch. Done. That was easy. We spent this morning recording their voices on Garageband and laughing an awful lot listening back to them after raising the pitch. You kind of had to be there for that one I guess.



Day 5: 25/1/19 [Sam's entry]

Well that was the end of our rehearsal week at Cambridge Junction and guess what... the show isn’t finished. Though it nearly is so we’re not too worried. The main thing that we aim to do is maximise the use of a rehearsal room/space. As an emerging company it can be really hard to find good affordable rehearsal space, so when you do you gotta use it to its full potential. That predominantly means if there is something you can do outside of a rehearsal space, don’t do it inside the rehearsal space or at least try not too (in our case: sound editing, prop making and line learning). Rehearsal weeks disappear faster than bunny in hats, as proven by this week. But we’re able to edit our sound and make our props this weekend before our showing next week, so hopefully all will be ready for the time of our scratch...




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