When I Grow Up

The opening for our Variety Show was "When I Grow Up" from the musical "Matilda". The song is sung by the children who are daydreaming about all the possible things that they can do once they're grown up and so we had to use characterisation to achieve the same in our performance.

We began by learning the vocals and to push ourselves as an ensemble we learnt the lyrics in a three-part-harmony. This arrangement of vocals meant that we had to be able to work as individual isolated groups as well as an ensemble.

To progress our vocals during rehearsals we began to sing as if we were young children, this included softening the tone of our voices and sounding more child-like in the way we sung.

After we had learnt the vocals we had a dance session where we worked in groups of three to create one set of eight of choreography that represented children playing to be performed during the opening of the song. Ruth, Michael and I decided to recreate a game of tug and war and showing the friendly roughness children play with.

As rehearsals went on our groupings changed to larger groups and the choreography was to be performed in the middle of the song to match with the verses. Ruth, Michael, Miguel and I decided to alter the choreography to a movement similar to "ring-a-ring-a-roses".

We were then taught choreography that we were to do as a whole group. I found this choreography easy to learn but due to its syncopated timing I had to run through it countless times to ensure I was confident with the timing. As I was fairly confident with the timing I was asked to run through the timing with those who were unsure.

An issue we had with this number was our placement on stage as we had a tendency to clump into groups rather than fill the space. I tried whenever possible to fill any empty spaces.

Towards the end of the song there was about 30 seconds of music where we could improvise scenarios and this was a great opportunity to add characterisation to our performances, such as large movements and being light on our feet.

During our show run we had an issue with timing in the opening of the song where everyone was coming into the first verse at different times. We worked quickly to correct the slight mistake and covered it fairly well.

This number opened the show so it was important that it was full of energy and set the atmosphere for the rest of the show, it wasn't possible to go on stage with anything less than 100% energy.