Plymouth Performance

Rehearsing for performance of an extract from Roots at The Barbican Theatre, Plymouth, June 26th, as part of the Refugee Week programme (all captions written by Heather and Flo!)

Here we all are preparinig for the performance, look at our lovely little faces!


The opening scene - 'ancient as the earth, wise as the sun' - Jaye powers up, ready to fly off!	'As the night wore on, a small fire appeared under the moon's eye.' - A very, very small fire by the looks of things!	'Because, my child, I see something in your eyes; I see life and that life must be protected' - Yes we see the life too, Dan . Well done!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's Jaye again!	Here are the minions, and is it just us or is there a distant look in their eyes?	Eva defends herself - 'There is illness about and I'm the one to cure it!' - * Points at all MED members *

My Experience of the Plymouth Performance – by Flo Wood

We all met at 11a at 12:00 in the morning on Sunday, and then travelled to Plymouth. When we arrived we were led through lots of corridors into the theatre. It was pretty dark in there and there was a big stage with a black curtain behind it. We all went straight onto the stage and looked up at the huge glaring lights. Although the theatre wasn't that big, it was a change from the space we normally work in at 11a. They gave us our backstage passes and we went into the dressing rooms. There were big mirrors that we admired ourselves in for a while – I mean we hadn't all been to a big theatre like that together before, so we chose to make the most of it! Then we went back onto the stage and had a technical rehearsal. There was a lot of standing around and listening to the technical man talking to the man doing lighting through his headset. But it was interesting to see how a tech rehearsal worked. After some experiments with the lights everyone agreed on a blue light fir when the wolves were onstage to create the mystical surreal feeling that night time has, and a warm red light for the other scenes that were set in the day time.

We then moved into the rehearsal room where we could go through the six scenes that Dan had chosen for us to show the Plymouth audience. I thought these scenes were chosen well, because they summed up what the play was about but didn't give away the ending. We ran through the scenes several times and were then given some comments about how we could improve what we had done. For a quick break we went outside, and in the middle of Plymouth we made a human pyramid and spelt out MED theatre with our bodies! Then we went back inside and it was almost time to go on. I ran though my lines over and over in my head, I was so nervous and scared I'd mess up. I did calm down a bit when we warmed up with some simple voice exercises.

Finally it was time to go on - we went backstage and I was so scared. The next twenty minutes were a huge blur. We were suddenly on stage and walking around as wolves, but it felt great! We were all supporting each other, for example when I forgot my lines Heather backed me up and kept me going. The thing I enjoyed most about the Plymouth performance was the real buzz when I went on stage - it's electric and makes you feel great. It was properly the best performance we'd done of the scenes, we worked really well. However it was hard to ignore the screaming baby and people constantly coming and going from the theatre. In a way these distractions kept us even more focused and we got through it without any major slip-ups. Hopefully the rest of the play will go just as smoothly when we perform all of it in July. I loved performing in Plymouth because it's a completely different atmosphere compared to the places where we normally perform, and it was a good experience for all of us.