Photo: Shadow Girl takes over… Again!

Tuesday marked the first day of the final week of rehearsals for Shadow Girl – the city streets. We were incredibly fortunate to have been spending the day at the wonderfully creative spaces at Z-arts (@Z_arts_mcr). Here’s what we got up to…

Our programmes are finished! With Lizzie Finlay’s illustrations looking amazing, Chrissy is thrilled and cannot wait to share them with our audience in Manchester. Enough fawning over our glossy programmes, we’ve got a show to rehearse!

We were once again working towards a dress rehearsal to be performed in and around Hulme Park in the afternoon. But first, a different kind of rehearsal…

Throughout and beyond the Shadow Girl rehearsals we have been depositing skills and techniques in our ‘actor’s toolboxes’ (a metaphorical space that we have created which houses all of our transferable acting skills). Our new skill I hear you ask? Textured travelling – we even managed alliteration! It describes the process of creating movements through the body in reaction to the different textures encountered during our performances. We had to become incredibly focused and immerse ourselves in the performance world – a world, we found, that adapts time, objects and people: inspiring beautiful shapes, movement and fun. This skill was found during the ‘site recce’ – a pre-performance run-through that explores the opportunities and risks found in our particular type of site-specific street theatre.

We enjoyed discovering and exploring the new performance area, albeit finding it incredibly bizarre not wearing our   costumes – an altogether different experience. We were raring to go following our recce, excited to peel on our costumes following lunch.

The dress rehearsal went ahead without a hitch, ahem… unless you count one of the motorized vehicles breaking down mid performance! We certainly styled it out. It went so well that we gathered small audiences watching our work, transforming our dress rehearsal into a preview show for the lucky ones who saw us.

Tuesday’s rehearsal was very useful as it replicates closely the structure of the approaching performance, helping us to understand better how to manage our energy on the day. Mastering exactly when to gather our energy and release it and when to become mindful, recharge and save it.

As if all our hard work wasn’t enough, Chrissy and Kelly took over Salford’s airwaves on Salford City Radio 94.4 (@SalfordCRadio), even managing to drop a few beats too! If you missed their interview, catch it here: http://podcast.canstream.co.uk/scr/index.php?id=53342 (find them at 26.51 minutes in).

Written by Imogen Barton Wells

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