Gymnasiearbete Djungelboken
During the last couple of months me and my class has been working with a big theatre production that is the last thing we are doing together as a class. We got the script last fall and get introduced to the play somewhere in October/November of 2016. At first the whole ensemble read the script together to get a grip of what the play was about. Then we got or roles and the dancers starting brainstorming on their ideas. The next phase was to get through the script as our characters and start to think how you where as a person and what relationship you got to the other characters.
We also talked about a lot of one of the most important parts, the meaning of the play. The script is based on the original scrip of The Jungelbook that we all are familiar with thanks to Disney. But in our show written by Alexander Mörk Eidem we are humans with animal features. For example, I played the snake Kaa but instead of being a sneak I was a curios teenager that played mind games with the other and where good at getting what I want. And in my body language I took in the soft and graceful movements of a snake. The play take place in Stockholm in a futuristic Segerlstorg. The year is 2117 and you can barely see the iconic floor on “plattan” anymore and the homeless people (the wolves) has taken over. When Mowgli comes after her parents has been killed by the human hating Sheere Khan she gets to live on the street with the homeless people and her parents are Baloo and Bagheera.
The play takes up questions that are important in our society today like class differences and racism.
So the first thing was to get to know what the script was about and to get to know our characters, we got more deeply in to them and analysed them. But to get a production out of it there is much to do beside rehearse for the premier.
We got divided in to different production groups and mine where the costume group. Our mission was to give all the characters a costume based on what that person has written about their character. Also it was to get clothes to the dancers. So there was a lot of work both on stage and of stage and we worked with this thing side by side together to reach our goal.
In the costume group there where a lot of thinking back and forward. Every costume needed to match the characters features. Everything from head to toe was important here. One character that I helped out to do the costume for was Tabaqui. She was a stressed out lawyer. So we were thinking classy but trash. The colour we choose for this character was grey, a basic colour that doesn’t drag attention to it. The shoes were also important, the final decision was a pair of boots witch a little heel on it. The shoes are very important for the character because it sets the way they walk.
Before we started to work with the actual script on stage we were doing a lot of different theatre exercises to get to know our character better. One exercise that we did was to find the animal in our character. First we tried to be 100% animal and how they will react to the other animals, then slowly we got more and more into human and only had a few percent left of the animal. So that was how we build up a character. That helped a lot and it was also very fun to do. This also helped to improve the character in to a whole person with feelings.
Do reach our goal we worked a lot. We stayed on the evening to get the stage ready, even though I was not in the group that helped the stage we were all there together as a class and helped out. We finished all the work that included sound, costume and stage before so that the last week could go to rehearsal, over and over again. Everybody was tired and sometimes it felt like it didn’t gave you anything to just go through it over and over again. But as we got closer to the premier date and you thought about your progress during this production you realized that all the hard work was worth it for the result was amazing.
We had our first meet with the audience the day before the premier for the classes under us in our programme in school. We were all excited and nervous and wondered what they would think about it. To meet an audience for the first time was so fun to see what they reacted on, to get applause and to give and take energy from them.
So after that meet we were more ready than ever to have the premier and show our family and friends. And just like expected the premier we had on the 28 of Abril on the evening was amazing. It was so fun and the audience was awesome. Everybody in the ensemble had so much energy and we gave everything. To take the applause after that show made me feel so proud of myself. Even though it was friends and family that where there and they would like me no matter what I knew that I have done and amazing work. The feeling after the premier was amazing and was hard to beat. After this we played for the school for a week and it had its ups and downs. We also learned how it was to play for an audience that had zero energy and didn’t gave us anything. It made our energy and mood low to. But after some peep talk from the teacher and each other we gave our best and had an amazing week. We started to play more with our roles and their envelopment was amazing. Everybody grow so much and on that Saturday we gave our all, did our roles and dances perfectly and most of all we had so much fun together as a class.
To sum this up, it has been stressful, a lot of work and sometimes you just wanted to stay at home but still it has been one of the best times of my life. I had so much fun doing this production and we came so much closer as a class. Everybody that saw the show has been super happy and really praised it, said it is one of the best school production ever and some people even came to more than one show just because they liked it so much.
So I am really proud of the result and I think that we did an amazing show!
Angelica Johansson Es14
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