Building A Strong Collaborative Community: Princess Shayna Musical

5. Students Plan, Compose & Connect Emotions to Music & Lyrics: Princess Shayna Musical

Yesterday, I sent out my March BrainBuzz Newsletter and was delighted to receive copious congratulations and lovely inquiries about attending the Princess Shayna Musical in May.

Now, I am eager to share this 6th Journal entry/blog post from Kim Woycke, the “Blue Brain“ Director Extraordinaire of the Princess Shayna Musical.

Last Friday evening, was filled with Orange Brain Excitement as I watched the cast warmly welcome Aidra, a new cast member, stage and synchronize several scenes and continue to build a strong collaborative community! I know you will enjoy reading about Kim’s directing skills and the cast’s creativity.

“Once again we had another wonderful rehearsal this week.  I am pleased to announce that we had another new cast member join our group!  The actors welcomed our newest member easily, and we are excited for Aidra to join our group!  Also, we were excited that Sheila joined us for our rehearsal yet again.  I know that the cast members always love having her in the room to ask questions or chime in details about the characters or the ideas of the book.

This week we started off our rehearsal creating a sense of unity and community within our cast.  We started with a counting exercise, that allows us to begin to think, feel and act as one.  It is important as actors on stage that we are aware of our surroundings, and are working to be in-sync with our fellow cast-mates.  The more synchronized and aware we can be onstage, the better we will be at creating art.  With that in mind, we worked on a counting challenge exercise.  

For this exercise, I asked each of our actors to find a space on the floor, and to lay on their backs with their eyes closed.  I then instructed them to begin to count (starting at 1).  The only other instruction for this exercise is only one voice may speak at a time.  Anytime that two actors said the same number, we started back at one. This exercise develops our senses, patience and teamwork.  I am pleased to say that our cast reached a record of 16!  We will work to strengthen our unity as the weeks progress, and hopefully will set a new record in a coming week.

After this quick exercise, we spent some time reviewing the scenes that we have already blocked.  It was important for us to take a little time and to reflect on the work that we have created, as well as fine-tune the scenes and work to add in cast members that were absent on the day we originally blocked the scene. The scenes looked great!  We have a really nice, interesting beginning to our show.  I could tell that the actors were proud of the material they created, and that they have been working hard to develop interesting character traits and personalities.

Although we didn’t spend much time creating any new material this week, it was still very rewarding as we really were able to see how the work that we have done so far fits together to build a play.  It is nice to be able to reflect on our work, and to continue to allow the material to grow and develop.  We were able to find a few special moments to add into the work, to really allow it to be clear and powerful.

Time just flew by with the review.  With the few remaining minutes we began to work on Scene 6.  We will finish this scene up next week.”

4. Students Create Their Own Kingdom of Kindness – Princess Shayna Musical

3.  Auditions, Rehearsal, Casting & Music – Princess Shayna Musical

2. Diabetes, An Actress & A Royal Wizard – Princess Shayna Musical

1. Princess Shayna: A New & Original Children’s Musical

Sarah Spundah the Silver Spider wants to encourage you to subscribe to Sheila’s blog and her BrainBuzz Newsletter if you enjoyed reading this Princess Shayna Musical blog post and want to reading more.

Sarah Spundah also says, “Don’t forget, 10% of the royalties from the sale of Sheila’s books is allocated to JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) .”

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