Variety Presentation

What is variety

Variety is defined as mix of things to create something else. Within the context of a performance or a show, it can be described as a lot of different types of acts such as music acts, stand up comedy or even magic all compiled together to make a show. There are lots of famous types of variety shows. For example, the most famous in the UK is The Royal Variety Performance where lots of various acts including comedians such as Laurel and Hardy in 1947, music infused acts such as The Blue Man Group in 2005 and more famous music artists including the Beatles, Diana Ross, Take That and N-Dubz.

uMac Demarco – The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon

This was a musical performance by musician Mac Demarco on the variety talk show ‘The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon’. I found this act to be very entertaining whilst also showing variety because as well as just performing the song, they engaged with comedy by laughing whilst performing and dancing in an odd but amusing way. The skills that were needed for this performance were things such as a good stage presence and the power to keep the audience fully captivated at all times. He does this by moving about and adding humour the song that they performed. Other skills include the obvious things such as singing and being able to reach the higher notes in the song.

Bo Burnham

Bo Burnham is an American actor musician comedian who has performed at multiple variety shows such as Comedy Central Presents and Stand Up Showdown.

The Skills that he needed to do this performance are things such as keeping the audience entertained at all times by using his humour and mixing up the act. For example, adding in the element of music into his shows helps keep it fresh and entertaining because it means that the audience can experience different things through out the show.

SEALIGHT THEATRE

The Sealight Theatre is a very good performance space because it can be used for diverse and various acts. An example of this is holding musical performances such as gigs, shows and acting theatre. Another good things is the that the theatre has is the lighting and sound system allowing us to use effects during shows. Another attribute the theatre has is the ability to put away the seating rig allowing more space for any type of performance. It can also add more availability for a potential audience.

It also allows use of the box office for when we put on shows such as Rent, The Wiz or more recently Our House. It also helps having a workshop and costume cupboard near by.

BAR 42

Bar 42 is a music venue of the sea front in Worthing. It’s a very good venue because as well as having very good tech such as lighting and sound, it also is very easy and simple to use the equipment which is provided. Although you can choose to bring your own equipment such as amps, you can choose to use the ones that they have which are also very good.

Another good thing about this venue is that it is a social hub for a lot of the younger people who live in Worthing and therefore if you are a local band looking for an audience then you will potentially pick up a lot of followers from playing at this venue.

OUR HOUSE LEAD UP AND PERFORMENCE

Week 1
In the first week of prep for the show we looked at our Character Traits for the roles which we had been given for the show.




Is your character funny?
Yes, I think Joe is funny because he is witty and quick on the ball when it comes to jokes and understands what makes his friends laugh. His humour also comes from being with his too mates Joe and Emmo. They all compliment each other with their comedy and bounce off each other.


Do you have any real friends?
Yeah Joe does have real friends within Emmo and Lewis, they stand by him in times of need and always lend and hand if he is trouble. He also has a good relationship with Sarah but some parts are quite rocky.


Do you hold a grudge?
Joe holds multiple grudges which are realised and created in the play for example from the start, he has one against his dad for leaving him when he was a child. Another is against Reecey for killing his mum.


Do you make irrational/stupid choices?
Yes he does especially as bad Joe. Throughout the show when it is his bad life he makes constant bad choices without thinking about them and it all leads to worse things for him until the ending when his mother is killed in a fire which was consequently created by Joes bad decision making


He is careless and not too bright however he has the nest intention at heart and tries to help out as best as he can.


Does you have a secret agenda?
Not an obvious agenda and a set target but he does try to impress people when he's with them whether its through talking or accomplishing tasks.


Park Scene
In the park scenario, I originally made a few friends within Naomi, Andy and Harry but then Andy accidently stood on my pet tortoise called Philip, THEN, Valencia's character came over and punted poor little dead Philip and his shell came off. This then escalated into me, Harry and Andy trying to put Philip the tortoise back together. Reecey killed my tortoise e.g. my mum (mad metaphors).













Week 2
This week we looked at another performance company's version of our house and how they performed the first musical number of act 2 'Wings of a Dove'. This meant analysing things such as actions and dynamics of their performance and looking at things that we could also potentially use in ours.
Actions - what specifically you do
Jumping/dancing about in the style of a party
Walking about
Spinning around
Skipping
Kicks
High fiving (happy gestures)
Kangaroo Jumping
Piggy Backs



Dynamics - How you do the action
Sharp movements on the step  motions
Energetic movements
sloppy and relaxed to show character
All people on the stage are friendly to each other and look like a big family.


I feel like I contributed to this class by adding in the ideas from the compiled lists above and sharing this with the rest of the class in ways that we could integrate them into a potential musical sequence.






Week 3
Our House Dance Routine 
Today we started to devise he dance routine for the song Our House. I think it went really because we all contributed towards the dance in the duets section. I feel I also contributed because I helped create some of the dance moves and steps for the piece. I think we could have improved in the part where we run between each other not that it was bad but it could be smoother.

Basic understanding of the movement
Lots of good energy towards the dance







Week 4
Today we started choreographing baggy trousers. This song revolves around the theme of being in a school in a class of naughty children. We started by watching some other versions of it and a previous one that some people in our class had performed and we built them up around that.
WWW
The energy and the dynamics of the piece was good because we all looked like we were in a class and the characteristics were good.
We used various levels such as sitting and running along chairs.






Week 5
We had about an hour in individual groups to stage and choreograph a song from our house. We got given driving in my car.

I think our rehearsal was quite good because we all took it seriously and all have ideas into how the scene should be performed. For example the way the car is set up and where people sit, the motions we make in the car such as moving side to side to show the car going round corners. Once we had rehearsed it we performed it to the other group in the class. Overall it went we because we all stayed in character and acted really well even if sometimes we forgot lines or movements. One way olive contributed to the scene was by singing the song because in the show it is done by Joe which is my character.  Another way was by coming up with choreography.






https://www.facebook.com/katdavis.danceteacher/videos/g.887548368056757/668653296641522/?type=2&theater
















Rehearsal Process

SCENE 1
My first scene as Joe is when he gets introduced to the audience in a scene where he comes home to talk to his mum about Sarah. We approached in various ways such as having him come down from the audience or from the rafters but then decided to have me come on from the wings to find Kath (Vicki) on a sofa in the centre of the stage. After some dialogue between in we went into the first musical number 'Our House'. So we devised a dance to go with the song using spacing, levels e.g. on the scaffolding and synchronised choreography. During this dance apart from the group sequences, I as joe would just walk around chatting to people. One things we uncounted within the majority of the musical numbers was that people struggled to do the dance and sing at the same time. To tackle this, we had individual sessions on the singing and the movement which would hopefully then help us. 

This video shows the character development, research and inspirations for the way i played the role of Joe.

Criteria 4

Rehearsal 1
Today me and Andy joined up as a pair for our variety performance in a few weeks. We have come to the conclusion that we want to do a musical performence based number but we havent we yet decided how we would like to perform it. We have so far discussed about doing a covering a few songs by bands such as 'The Libertines' and 'The Stone Roses' but we have yet to come to a conclusion.

Rehearsal 2
In this rehearsal we have came to the conclusion that we want to do an acoutsic cover of the comedy song "4 Chords" by the band Axis of Awesome which is a piece made up of a simple 4 chord pattern and with single lines from popular songs that go with the pattern as the lyrics. We decided to do this because we feel that it has alot of potential to have a strong comedicv value to it and it is also something that people might enjoy listening to and hearing lines from their favourite songs.

Rehearsal 3
In todays rehearsal we had another look at the song and decieded that we wanted to put our own spin on it and add in songs that we like and take some of the ones out to shorten the piece because we had also noticed it was quite long.
We also added a story line to the piece so that it has some sort of context and does not just come out of the blue. We decided that my character would be found by Andys upset due to his dog dying so in his grief he had written a melody of his dogs favourite songs and wanted to perform it.

Rehearsal 4/first performance
Today we performed the piece to the rest of the class where it recieved a positive reaction. People seemed to like the idea of lots of songs all played together and found it quite funny aswell. However, we both felt that we over played the story part and that it dragged on too long and wasnt as funny as it could be. Coming to this conclusion we decied to scrap this story line and create another one for the next rehearsal.

Criteria 2 Shaping Material for a variety act

We had a few ideas to play around with at the beginning of the process of planning for the variety performance. We had decided that we wanted to do a music piece and we played around with the idea of adding comedy and a potential story to our song. At this point we had gone over some pieces such as Waterfall by The Stone Roses and some acoustic renditions of popular contemporary music but  we  then thought about a song that consisted of comedy whilst also being contemporary.
This then lead us on the idea of a melody of our favourite songs, both old and new, written to a simple chord structure.
We had previously seen a performance on YouTube called 'The Four Chord Song' written by a band called 'Axis of Awesome' where they wrote a 4 chord melody and then included singe lines of lots of songs that fit with the structure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ

Once we had decided that we wanted to do something similar to this we began rehearsing this piece but as we went on we decided to add our own spin on it and replace songs with ones that we had found to fit with the chord pattern. Once we had finalised our piece we performed it to the rest of the class in which we decided on the type of staging we wanted for it as well. We went with a simplistic idea of two stools set up at the front of the stage where we would sit and perform.

Our first performance of it we had a story line where my character was upset about his dog dying and so he had created a melody of his dogs favourite songs but after watching the performance back we realised that it was quite long and not as funny as it could be if we were just playing ourselves.

We then went back to the drawing board of hope we could present the piece and in what context, so we ditched the dead dog and went with the idea that we were two very arrogant "musicians" who wanted to teach the world about music and therefore created a song explaining how simplistic and similar contemporary music is.

Character Exploration - Our House!

Character Traits:




Is your character funny?
Yes, I think Joe is funny because he is witty and quick on the ball when it comes to jokes and understands what makes his friends laugh. His humour also comes from being with his too mates Joe and Emmo. They all compliment each other with their comedy and bounce off each other.


Do you have any real friends?
Yeah Joe does have real friends within Emmo and Lewis, they stand by him in times of need and always lend and hand if he is trouble. He also has a good relationship with Sarah but some parts are quite rocky.


Do you hold a grudge?
Joe holds multiple grudges which are realised and created in the play for example from the start, he has one against his dad for leaving him when he was a child. Another is against Reecey for killing his mum.


Do you make irrational/stupid choices?
Yes he does especially as bad Joe. Throughout the show when it is his bad life he makes constant bad choices without thinking about them and it all leads to worse things for him until the ending when his mother is killed in a fire which was consequently created by Joes bad decision making


He is careless and not too bright however he has the nest intention at heart and tries to help out as best as he can.


Does you have a secret agenda?
Not an obvious agenda and a set target but he does try to impress people when he's with them whether its through talking or accomplishing tasks.


Park Scene
In the park scenario, I originally made a few friends within Naomi, Andy and Harry but then Andy accidently stood on my pet tortoise called Philip, THEN, Valencia's character came over and punted poor little dead Philip and his shell came off. This then escalated into me, Harry and Andy trying to put Philip the tortoise back together. Reecey killed my tortoise e.g. my mum (maaaad metaphors).

Baggy trousers

Today we started choreographing baggyou trouters. This song revolves around the theme of being in a school in a class of naughty children. We started by watching some other versions of it and a previous one that some people in our class had peformed and we built them up around that.
WWW
The energy and the dynamics of the piece was good because we all looked like we were in a class and the characteristics were good.
We used various levils such as sitting and running along chairs

UNIT 50 OUR HOUSE SCENE

Actions - what specifically you do
Jumping/dancing about in the style of a party
Walking about
Spinning around
Skipping
Kicks
High fiving (happy gestures)
Kangaroo Jumping
Piggy Backs



Dynamics - How you do the action
Sharp movements on the step  motions
Energetic movements
sloppy and relaxed to show character
All people on the stage are friendly to each other and look like a big family.

Our House Dance Routine 
Today we started to devise he dance routine for the song Our House. I think it went really because we all contributed towards the dance in the duets section. I feel I also contributed because I helped create some of the dance moves and steps for the piece. I think we could have improved in the part where we run between each other not that it was bad but it could be smoother.

Basic understanding of the movement
Lots of good energy towards the dance