Our Final Production
My class has been working on a project for a couple of months that has been our last work together before we graduate. The project was in form of a show that included both theater and dance and the theme of it was “The Jungle Book”. The script was a new version of the story and it was made by Alexander Mörk Eidem. The main difference from the original story was that it no longer took place in an Indian jungle, but in a dystopic Stockholm. It was also now more about different society problems like racism, poverty and class distinctions for example. And the animals were no longer animals, the different “animals” illustrated different groups in the society. The main theme in this production was alienation and the importance of finding belonging.
We started the whole project with reading the script and trying to come up with ideas for dances for example. Later on, the dancers of the show started to create visions of the dances and chose songs that would fit. When the visions and the songs were picked we choreographed the dances and learned the ones that our teachers had made. Not only did we have to learn and know the dances, we also had to work very much with expressions and kind of playing theater whilst dancing.
Those who worked with theater went through the script, got selected roles and started to work with them. The dancers and the actors worked privately, so we did not quite know what the others were doing. It was not until we were ready to put the whole show together that we all started to work together and got to see what we all had been working on.
It was not only the creative work that was going to be made, so we also worked in different groups with marketing, costumes, scenography, multimedia and makeup.
My participation has been in the marketing group where I worked with getting sponsoring, the poster and marketing on social media for example. It required a lot of planning to make everything done in time in this group, but it worked really well and I felt that we collaborated nicely.
I was also a dancer in the show and little bit of an actress since I had a few lines. I participated in eight dances, and they all had very different styles. That included jazz, street dance and modern dance. As an actress I only had three lines, and they all were in the same scene. Even though I only said a few things, I had to play theater just by standing there and react on everything else that happened. I also worked as a scene-shifter where I mostly replaced a big stair from scene to scene. Last but not least I was a walker-on in a couple of scenes, which was also necessary for the show.
To reach the result on stage, I worked really hard. I practiced and grinded on the dances very much, until they were as good as they could be. To reach a good result on the dances as a group, we filmed them and then looked at them and studied what could be improved. Then we tried again, and got better and more synced.
In the theater, we also practiced repeatedly to get the lines, the acts and reactions to come naturally. The teachers took notes during the time we practiced everything, so we got to know what we could improve.
To reach the result with everything else, we worked hard to get sponsored so that the stage and the clothes above all could be as good as possible. We called all companies we could come up with and asked if they wanted to buy advertisements so that we could buy everything we needed.
We finally, after many weeks of practice and hard work, reached the date of the premiere. An audience was now there and gave us reactions and applauds. This was the part we all had been looking for the most and it was then the real fun began. We were now ready to show what we had been working on for such a long time and it was when the audience was there we all performed our best, and we really showed what we got.
The different audiences we had, reacted differently and some were more generous with laughter and applauds. How the audience reacted affected us on stage. The audiences who gave us good and much reaction also made us perform better since we got extra energy and a kick from it. One of the days we had an audience that gave us almost no reactions, no applauds and they practically did not wanted to be there (that was the feeling we got on stage anyhow). I noticed on everyone when I got backstage that it affected us very much, in a negative way. Everyone felt that they did not want to continue since we got no kind of appreciation for our work. Even though I also felt like that for a while, I did not give in. I wanted to do better and continue to show them that we are good and that we did not care about what they thought. The show must go on, as you say.
The result was very good. The dances felt good, and the costumes and the makeup. The scene was also very cool and when I watched my classmates from the side of the stage, I thought that they were fantastic. From what I heard, everyone agreed with me. I am very proud of my contribution and of us as a class, that we made it! I think we all are very proud of what we accomplished and that the result was so good. It is something to be proud of, indeed!
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