I’ll start with a response to Johns comment. He asked me these questions,

1. What did you take from the Run?
2. How did you prepare yourself for it?
3. Did you enjoy it?

1. For me the run was a first time to see what has been happening in rehearsals, of course by reading the notes I will know but thats not like actually being in the room. Secondly it gives me a feel for the cast and directors way of working. Lastly I get a feel for the show. The more times anyone sees anything the better they will understand it. There is nothing worse than anyone turning up at a tech and not knowing what the hell is going on, let alone the stage management team.

2. I had already prepared my script, eg. Unboud it, put it in a folder, punched it, hole reinforced every page to save tearing and marked up all the scenes with stickies. I also made sure that I a note pad and pen. These are the most essential items for anyone attending a rehearsal. If you can’t write notes during a run then all you are doing is watching it as an audience member and unfortunately this usually means that the rehearsal will have no outcome for you. By this I mean, write things down to ask the Stage Manager or DSM, Director, Designer. Either what you have written down will eventually come to you or you will have something sensible to say when they ask you “How did you find that then?”.

3. Watching anything new is exciting, so I guess that means I enjoyed it. Having a script in front of you, following the lines just doesn’t have the edge of a live performance about it. You know what they are going to say but what are they going to do? This I suppose comes under the same heading as the first question. Maybe the second time I will enjoy it, who knows? It’s just about learning it, know what’s going on everywhere at any one time. Don’t let your mind slip as you will always have to be thinking and concentrating from that opening night until the curtain falls on the last bow.

I thought it would have been nice to answer these questions in this entry instead of in the comments section. I feel that I have added some valuable information for anyone who is either looking forward to there SM allocation and for those who are not. It’s really not all bad, I felt at first that I would rather have gone to the gallows than do it but we’re into the second week now and I am still enjoying it.

So today the pace picked up once again. I feel we made good progress today, but unfortuantely the designer failed to show again. For those who don’t know I shall explain…

Props list are made up by the stage management and design team. The designer should then provide “References” for all the props. These usually include pictures/drawings and a short description for that particular property. We are sadly lacking this and cannot make progress because, for example, there are loads of “Letter Racks” to chose from. We must then think about things such as, what is it made out of?, what colour should it be?, what size should it be?. This is where a reference is handy. Hopefully soon we can start to tick the things off which we have already gathered and then get the propping DONE. CAPS.

I also had my stage management tutorial with John today. We talked mainly about eLearning. Using tools such as Mahara and WordPress to further reflect on what we are learning. We chatted about surface learning and the documentation to back it up. Mahara really is great and he told me how he plans to work it into something spectacular when we graduate. The idea behind it is to add a link to your covering letter along with you C.V. This way the employer can look through all your work in as much detail as they like I suppose. Sometimes in an interview, a potential employer may be stuck with a particular time schedule. Say for example each candidate only gets a 45min slot. A lot of this time could be spent talking about you personally and are you suited to the job? Very little may be spent looking at you work. It gives the employer a chance to see your work,  at there own pace, at there own time for as long as they like. Say you are the first candidate of the day, the other 5 candidates after you during that day will be fresher in the minds of the interview panel. By allowing them access to your work they can be reminded of what you have done and what you are capable of bringing to that company.

I hope form this people can see that benefits of Mahara and will join with me in what could be a very interesting and futuristic way of seeing peoples work.

I’m gonna wrap up here and at some point start writing a lot more about Mahara. It’s awesome and people need to start realising that we are moving forward in this computer world where we now live. Imagine twenty years ago if someone thought that in 2009 every single C.V would be typed by a computer :O Gasp!!

Well once again that’s all from us here at ralphy89.wordpress.com

Until next time, I’m Craig Ralph,

You stay classy RSAMD.

Out.