After the show, we talked a little about what we were proud of our performance and what we had wished to improve or change. I personally was very proud of the songs, since I was very nervous performing them. I am not very experienced singer, nor ukulele player, so performing 4-5 songs and songs in between the scenes was a challenge for me. I have only been playing the ukulele for a year, and done a performance with it once, and I have little experience in singing before this. I was also given the responsibility to lead some of the music rehearsals with the first years. Now, I can say was very proud of all of the musicians for their hard work and I feel we did pretty well during the performance. 

   What I would have wanted to improve was the relationships between Feste and the other characters, especially with Malvolio. I was so focused on getting the character of Sir Topas in the scene 4.2., that me and Michael didn't really have a play around what our characters could have done to interact with each other physically, perhaps creating a more comedic atmosphere and show Feste's resentment towards him. I would have also wanted to show the relationship with between Viola and Feste during the last scene, since they have had some banter earlier in the play, but I found it hard to do that with Sophia, since she wasn't really giving me anything back during the scene, so I gave up on this quite early on in the development.  

  I think something to work on for me would have also been diction, clarity and fluency of my lines. I can remember messing up on some of my lines, nothing major, but it could have affected the way the audience understood it. 

Music - Transitions between scenes

   On Monday 23rd, we were told that we would be having to play in between the individual scenes.  This came as a surprise, since most people didn't have their instruments with them that day and we were under a week away from the actual show. So, we started by looking at the each scene, what sort of scene they were and then tried to fit our already existing pieces of music from the play into those scenes to work on ones more people had their instruments with them. We decided to use already existing pieces of music was simply because we didn't have too much time to work on this, and so it would be easier to modify some music everyone already knows rather than try to come up with new music.
   On Wednesday we continued to work on these pieces of music and also recorded them(link). The constant worry was with so many songs, was that everyone had to learn them and memorize them in just couple of days AND fit each instrument together. So, on Thursday afternoon Helen came out to help us and cut the songs down to five different songs we would be playing on repeat.

1. Happy-Sing-Along
2. Drinking with us (instrumental version of Wind & The Rain)
3. Heta's Lullaby (ukulele and humming version of Come Away Death)
4. (a capella O mistress mine, no lyrics)
5. Hey Robin Jazz

   Of course there was a couple of times when we switched the order of these songs according to the scene before them, just to make them fit a little better, and one of the transitions was when I sang the song 'I am gone sir' at the end of act 4 scene 2. Having only these five songs to work on really made it easier for us all to make them sound good as a group, but also a lot simpler and clearer for the audience to not have a scramble of half-finished tunes. Everyone of the musician already knew four of the songs, and the fifth one(Happy-Sing-Along) was very simple to learn and only required the ukulele and some of the singer, it made it faster for us to learn all of the songs. On Friday we were just thrown into the run troughs and do the songs half-rehearsed. I think this really helped us to just get our focus in and learn the songs on the spot, and by the second run trough we had pretty much perfected the transitions between scenes.  We were also allowed to have music sheets with us during the performance to helps us remember the cues for the songs. 

   I have to say, I am very proud of all of the musicians. Creating the transitions came as such a surprise, but everyone took it so professionally and worked hard to make it happen. I also think this was a very good representation of what could happen in real life. Things come up and things have to be changed, cut or created last minute in theatre and we need to learn how to think on our feet or at least make the best of the situation and work with what we got. 

26th & 27th

   The day before and the show day were pretty much running and fine tuning scenes. On Thursday we had our technical rehearsals were we went over each scene and the light cues. We didn't have a run through that day. Still, me and Michael were able to show our scene to Siou and get some feedback on it before the show day. Since we finally were able to do it in the space, we decided not to use the canes for the prison, but have Michael stand below the stairs, since it had a sinister look and gave me the possibility to play above the stairs. These were notes we received from Siou:

• Slow down sir Topas
• be more like sir Topas, Less like Feste
• Fastness and running around makes my diction bad, find moments of stillness
• Talking too fast makes the audience miss the joke

   The next day I tried to make sure I found moments for sir Topas to just stand still and show more of the character to the audience. This did lose some of the hectic pace of the scene, but also gave me time to breathe and focus on what I was saying, rather than where I needed to be next. I also made sir Topas a little bit more calm in his talking to create a bigger contrast between him and Feste. This ended up working a lot better and I felt during the performance that I was able to relax during the scene, even if I still had to do some running around and keep the energy up. 

   Another scene we worked a lot during the Thursday was the last scene. A lot of it was to do with positioning on the new stage and bringing more of the lines to the audience. This is something I've been trying to work on especially, since Feste is a character that can break the 4th wall and even interact with the audience, more so than any of the other characters can. Siou also edited the part where Feste starts to read Malvolio's letter  as  a madman. So far, I have gone way over the top with this absolutely ridiculous voice, but Siou pointed it out to me, that I should bring it down a little bit, to give the audience the change to take on the joke and actually laugh at it. Even though what I was doing was funny, it could have been overwhelming in Shakespeare's language to the audience. I really got this on Friday after running the scene a couple of times. For me, being comedic and funny on purpose is a challenge and so I have tried to go a bit over on purpose, just so that I wouldn't be under performing. Sious notes have really taught me that it is important to look at the jokes and the funniness from the audience's point of view and give them time to understand it, but also bring balance to funniness and clearness(diction).