My view of Oh London... What's Occurring rehearsal

The first rehearsal for Oh London... What's Occurring? It was great to meet so many passionate actors willing to give up their free time to take part in a one off show to celebrate St David's Day. As this was our first time meeting everyone, we started with some 'getting to know each other' games. I never realised how difficult it was remembering names until we had to call across the room and throw a ball to a candidate. It was clear to see how little we retained and it made me feel that I should put more effort into the next challenge.

We were then paired off and given the challenge of remembering your partners life story. My first thought was "oh great, I struggled remembering just names' but as I listened to the story there was a clear path which made it easier to remember. The most interesting part was hearing the background  history of all the actors, I found it fascinating to hear where their journey's had taken them.

After a brilliant meet and greet, we then moved onto more physical activities to strengthen the mental connections between the cast. Using a scarf, in turn we had to interpret it into something else, be it a sword, an umbrella or toilet roll. The scenes created were extremely individual and exciting. Continuing with the physical theme, we where then split into two groups and played the well known game 'Giant's House' where you re-create giant objects using your body. For me, this was a fantastic team - building exercise and once again gave us the opportunity to get to know each other a little bit better.

My favourite part of the rehearsal was when we were given a newspaper, and had 2 minutes to construct a dragon. 3 groups chose to become the dragon, whilst the other 3 made their dragons just out of the paper to make mini models. The best part was not one dragon was similar to another, portraying how versatile and creative one group of actors can be.

The show Oh London..... What's Occurring? is mostly devised and improvised using the actors sense of comic timing and creativity. The point of doing all the team building exercises was to get everyone working together and not as an individual. As a participant I felt it help build connections with people i had never met before. It was a great way to start rehearsals and get a company feeling.

Using these physical games, it gave us a stronger grounding for when we came to work on the Mock the Week style improvisation ' What you wouldn't hear at a.....'. Because we had spent time working as a team, we all thought as one and could sense who was going to speak next. A great technique for anyone who wishes to connect a group of people together.

After such a great team-building session, we had some down time to see what everyone was going participate in during the show. It was a little bit tedious as none of the pieces had been worked on with the Director and it seemed a little reserved as the actors were unsure of how to play the characters. Although it was great to see, that everyone was being featured in the show.

Even though the majority of the show is split into individual sketches, the main event 'Mock the Leek' requires a lot of team work and group concentration.  I would suggest the group counting game with eyes closed at the beginning of the next rehearsal to get everyone into the same zone.
Overall, I feel that this has been a very productive rehearsal and I cannot wait to see the final piece when all the small sketches are connected to make one comedic evening.