Introduction
In this portfolio I will be critically reflecting on the creative process of our 3 performance projects but primarily “Wonderful Town.” This was a collaborative production which sprouted from original ideas of how we can make this unique, inspiring and captivating whilst working as a company along with the musical directors and mainly managing the production and directing side of things ourselves. The concept was never to have a perfect or finished piece, but a showing of what we could potentially create through snippets including songs and scenes from a musical. Initially the company was given 4 different musicals as options including “Mary Poppins” “A spoonful of Sherman” and “Steel pier.” As a company we decided a voting system would work best to ensure the fairest choice for everyone was made, after two votes “Wonderful town” was the unanimous choice.
Assistant directing
For this production I really wanted to take on another role as well as performer so I put myself forward for assistant director. I have previous experience with directing shows in my undergrad so I wanted to expand my knowledge and experience. When directing scenes I found something I could improve on for future reference was planning the process of the day better such as exactly what scenes to tackle and precise ideas for every character. Although I did have a plan of action for every day I feel next time I have learned to be more specific with my exact intention for each scene and what I want to come through to the audience through my staging. I could do this by communicating with musical directors more to share a plan of action for the day and split up our time more evenly to prevent one area becoming more important or prioritised over another. Unfortunately I do feel this happened in this project as I feel some songs were prioritized over scenes leaving other songs to get not nearly the same amount of attention, however I have chosen to see it as a learning curve. For future reference I would sit down with an MD and create a specific schedule for rehearsal days and use our time more wisely, for example if an individual is working on a solo song we can prioritise scenes that don’t include that individual so we are constantly being productive. Something I felt I did very well as assistant director was giving each character purposeful movements and placements on a diagonal to show status and spacing knowledge of a stage. As I researched “playing the diagonal” Mroczka (2013) states when you play the horizontal instead of the diagonal it automatically ruins the illusion that the stage represents an imaginary world. By lining up with the rows of the audience or the four edges of the stage it shows your character is no longer in that imaginary world. Furthermore Reynolds (2019) states Playing the diagonal is also a great way to portray status on stage by having main characters in that scene down stage centre, this subconsciously tells the audience to pay more attention to this character.
Style and genre
I was very enthusiastic to start work on this musical as the main reason I wanted to choose this show was of the stunning music genres within it. “Wonderful town” is a 1930s based musical with elements of jazz, swing and conga. Learning these different types of dance style was new to me and although it was challenging at first I thoroughly enjoyed it as when I think of musical theatre I always imagine the beautiful traditional 1930s jazz style and dance ensembles on stage and I felt like I was living my dream. (See rehearsal video below) An idea I had that I would love to use in an all Irish cast of this show or a majority that had the skill set would be to incorporate Irish dancing into this show. I feel it’s the perfect show for this as it has several numbers such as “darlin Eileen” containing Irish folk music, as most musicals don’t see this as a popular genre. This obviously didn’t come into fruition on this version but I included some hinting choreography in “darlin Eileen” including skips and linking in a circle also known as ceilidh dancing which stems from Gaelic culture predominantly Irish and Scottish historically.
Wrong note rag
“Wrong note rag” was one of my songs that I shared with Winnie which we performed as a duet. As the music is written by composer Leonard Bernstein I found the rhythms complex, emotional and high energy. Bernstein’s music gives us the performers the opportunity to be wildly expressive and physical (Abbott 2020). Wrong note rag is the perfect example of this, the upbeat jazz makes anyone listening want to break out into dance. While we were singing this chaotic and repetitive song we had an outrageous dance ensemble number which was very jazz based including moves such as the Charleston. At first I found the various different fast paced movements challenging especially as every pair was doing different steps at the same time, however to combat this we threw ourselves into the chaos as that was the look we were going for. Once we abandoned a “perfect mindset” the song came together with the movements and we found enjoyment in the song which I feel came through in the performance. I drew inspiration from a couple of different versions I saw of “Wrong note rag” including the original premiere on Broadway in 1953 starring Rosalind Russell as Ruth and Edie Adams as Eileen. (Attached below) I believe there’s a certain kind of magic with 1950s recordings of Broadway musicals. I feel the black and white footage, House of Foxy states (2026) the traditional long dress including what was known as a “bias cut” which was a 45 degree angle cut on dresses as well as the natural beauty of the women of this time has an energy of its own. When creating our own version of “Wonderful town” and wanting to stay true to its origins of the 1930s I tried to capture the essence of this in our performance of wrong note rag by not modernising anything including our dress style and dance moves. Winnie and I, choreographed by Kaz, used traditional 1930s style jazz dance moves including the Charleston. We wore maxi length skirts and curled our hair in the style of the 1930s as pin curls and ringlets were popular at this time. (vintage dancer 2018)
https://youtu.be/TpK0Z2rmFpY?si=rGdYa9wvgnTXq6nv
At the start of this project I outlined some core aims and goals for myself, I wanted to
- Work as a company to create outstanding ensemble work
- Have more experience with Jazz style dancing
- Develop my experience in directing especially amongst piers
Challenges faced
As a company I feel we had our difficulties at times as a lot of bigger groups do. It’s very easy to get the professional relationship and the personal relationship lines blurred when we spend so much time together. As a company it is important to work together as a team for the sake of the piece however this can be difficult when we bring our personal lives and problems into the rehearsal space. As assistant director of the piece I felt at times it was my responsibility to remind people of this, and although we may not all be good friends outside of rehearsals when we are in a rehearsal space we all treat eachother with respect, kindness and fairness. To combat this before any scene work or blocking of scenes I was directing I decided it would be beneficial to play some team bonding games and exercises to get everyone’s attention back in the space and focused on the main goal which was creating a piece of theatre as a company. I led games such as counting to 20 as a team without talking over eachother. This game helps ground everyone, centre focus and created an energy shift in the room centering around listening and trusting eachother which is beneficial for any scenes with several characters. I also led another game which included throwing a ball and saying classmates names in a circle in various orders and patterns to promote concentration and communicating with people in the class we might not usually communicate with. I feel these games helped before going into scene work and I found them beneficial to leave any preservations at the door and focus on the work we are doing, I would continue this practice in any future assistant directing positions so everyone feels heard and important in the space.
Solo song
One of the solo songs I was given to sing was “It’s love reprise.” This song is out of my usual vocal range as a mezzo. “It’s love” is a legit song and at first I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to sing it to the standard I would want and feel satisfied with. I decided in order to sing this song to the best of my ability and push myself out of my comfort zone I need to do a note bash and spend as much time as possible on it with an MD. I asked Julian one of the musical directors on the project to help me with this song. As a team Julian and I worked on this song in a practice room until I felt more comfortable with it. (See audio recording of rehearsal below) We decided to change the key slightly which made it still a challenge but more realistic so that I still feel it would show me off in the best possible light. Unfortunately as the project went on because of lack of organisation on many peoples parts some songs were neglected and not sang through enough or at all. Julian and I rehearsed this song at the very beginning of the rehearsal process and did not have time to rehearse it again at any stage through the rest of rehearsals and as there were other lines and characters in this song we did not have time to work together or stage this song resulting in it being cut from the final performance. I was disappointed that this happened as I had worked hard independently and in my 1:1 singing lessons to get this song in a place I felt confident with however we made the call as a team it was the best decision for everyone. In future reference what I have learned from this is again about making sure every song is evenly distributed for time allowances so that one song does not have priority over others, this is a schedule that needs to be in place before actual rehearsals start which I feel is where we went wrong in this scenario.
Other performance projects
I think the biggest difference in “wonderful town” and our other performance projects such as “Final act” and “Our house” was that for “Our house” we had MA directors working with us so we could focus more on bringing offers to the rehearsal space but knowing we were primarily in the hands of directors we knew and trusted. As much as I did enjoy taking on the role of AD for “wonderful town” it did mean myself and people who took on other roles such as Dance captain and Choreographer had more on our plates than others in the class. Although this was a rewarding feeling and a new experience to learn from it did feel different and more stressful that any other performance project because of this. However on the other hand during “Final act” I took over as director of our piece because of some unforeseen circumstances. So I did have previous experience being both director and performer however “Final act” had no scene work and was primarily songs so I was directing the staging of 3 songs as apposed to several scenes and songs for “Wonderful town,” therefore the amounts of work were vastly different.
Techniques
A technique that I found useful for the physicalization of my characters in certain scenes was the Laban efforts. These efforts help me get out of my head and into my body more. During one of my scenes where I played “Valenti” I decided to come into the scene with a sense of “wringing.” I decided this was the best effort to suit my intention because my character was frustrated and irritated during this scene as he felt his workers were lazy. To portray a sense of ringing I entered the stage tense and jittery by clenching my fists, walking with tension in my body, and portraying sharp and direct movements. Due to the multi-rolling in this piece I wanted to make a clear and concise separation between my characters on stage as we had no costume/prop to identify this so it had to come through in our physicalization and movements of each character. I feel this played well on stage as it was clear to the audience when I was playing Eileen and when I was playing Valenti. These characters however I felt were easier to differentiate than others as when I played Eileen I played her very airy and free flowing. I did this by using a sense of float for Eileen which is a stark contrast to ringing for Valenti, because of these efforts I was able to physicalise movements I associate with “wringing” and “floating” to embody the emotions and how I viewed these characters in my head. The Laban Efforts is something I have used throughout my undergrad training and will continue to use in the future as I feel it is effective for a variety of characters in different shows.
Conclusion
To conclude, the overall experience of “Wonderful town” was challenging but rewarding. The first couple of weeks of rehearsals I feel were not beneficial to the overall performance as we were rehearsing songs as a group that in the end result were solos or duos so a lot of the cast spent weeks perfecting songs they were not apart of. The actual audition process I also felt could have been time better spent, as the company auditioned for roles they wanted however we ended up with a split cast and multi-rolling. Furthermore we waited for the cast list to be released for longer than we anticipated, this could have been due to various reasons but either way we could not start working or blocking scenes or songs as we did not know which characters were being played by who. The company faced its internal struggles during this process due to things outside and inside of the course, most days we were able to leave our struggles and opinions at the door, be civil with each other and work together as a company prioritising our piece and our passions, however there were some rehearsals we all felt were challenging because of attitudes in the room, energy’s directed towards certain people causing negative vibrations in the space and general manners including talking over others and power trips. I understand that this is a natural occurrence as not everyone in a rehearsal space will always get on however I feel it is important to put certain feeling aside and work as a cohort, I feel for the majority of this process we did this relatively well. As for my assistant directing experience of this project I have learned for future reference to plan my schedule with the rest of the creative team as it’s important to balance all aspects of the piece. It was difficult at times to get the attention of my peers and direct them but I got past this very quickly and my cohort were always respectful and up for trying new things during the process which I was very appreciative for. Overall I was proud of the direction I gave and how it played out on stage, I thought the finished product worked well. Certain practitioners and techniques really helped me along this process, centreing around the ability to get out of my head and into my body, these are practises I will use in future projects that I have gained from classes this semester. “Wonderful Town” as our final performance project piece was a perfect concept for our company as there was a lot of range between singing, dancing, acting abilities and the technical/production side. I feel if we used our time more wisely and did not have other project overlapping this would have been a more clear and concise version of what we performed however I think we captured the style and personality of this piece perfectly and all had fun during our final performance as the material speaks for itself-it’s a fun and energetic piece that I would love to work on again in the future.
Bibliography
Abbott, GA, (2020), The music of Leonard Bernstein, [online], available from The Music of Leonard Bernstein accessed April 2026
Mroczka, PM, (2013), Geometry can help them be more effective on stage, [online], available from Working with Student Actors: Geometry Can Help Them be More Effective On Stage – Broadway Educators accessed April 2026
Reynolds, MR, (2019), stage directions, playing he diagonal, and singing between 10 & 2 [online] available from https://foundfyourvoice.com/2019/10/14/stage-directions-playing-the-diagonal
House of foxy, (2026), 1930s fashion overview, [online] available from 1930s Vintage Style Guide | Women’s Retro Fashion | House of Foxy
Vintage dancer, (2026), 1930s hairstyles for long hair, [online] available from 1930s Hairstyles for Long Hair
Word count including bibliography: 2918
