Rent Day 5 - Staging the Opening (Tune up #1, Mom calls, Tune up #2, Rent)

Today we staged the whole opening to Rent on the stage, we started by improvising the opening up until "how we gonna pay?" in Rent. After seeing how everyone looks and play's their part we worked together to alter how we are blocking them. So we moved Meg (Mark's Mom) into the gap in the wall behind the apron of the stage and we can just spotlight her so we just see her upper half as she rattles on to the answering machine. We moved Collins from the stage entirely, he walks up the isle in the audience where he is mugged and left on the steps of the stage. I (Benny) was moved from the back of the stage, where I put myself, to the front, left apron for my phone call with Mark and Rodger. We then choreographed the rest of the number we have Meg, Dan and Dom as more of backup dancers than their specific characters, Freya is Joanne when she needs to be but when she isn't she is another backup dancer. Collins does his part from the steps in which he was left after his mugging and Benny walks down the right side of the audience to do my bit off the stage but to the right of the audience. When we were creating the dance break Tom remembered seeing the dance break in American Idiot and wanted to incorporate the run, hop turn thing that they do because the music has that similar feel to it.


Look closely at the dance break (when the girls come on)

Also during the dance break we had the idea of Rodger rocking out on his guitar while Mark films it. However we wanted a live feed of Marks filming to be played on a screen on the left side of the stage. We thought it would look cool to have Rodger in a kind of concert with lights and stuff as he stands on his table with the back up dancers behind him. After we got the whole song choreographed, I felt the piece looks really good we just need to remember it for next lesson and learn our parts.