Workshop Unit: Cats devising assessment - My Idea

Workshop Unit: Cats devising assessment

As part of our Workshop Unit for our musical Cats we need to take a song from the musical and devise choreography to it to comply and fit in with our concept for Cats. Our concept is based on fashion and the fashion industry, the Cat characters are now based upon models, journalists and fashion icons.

My character is Munkustrap who in the original show is a black, grey and silver cat and is the protector cat and is right hand man to Old Deuteronomy. In our concept I can see my character being like Felicity Green OBE who is a British fashion journalist and former newspaper executive. Or someone similar to the role 'Emily' from the film The Devil Wears Prada who is second in command who essentially is what my character is like.

The song I have Chosen to Devise is the song 'The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles'. The song is originally sung by Munkustrap and is described as a battle between two neighborhood dog tribes, the Pekes and the Pollicles, who bark "until you could hear them all over the park". The cats stage the battles by dressing up as dogs and barking in each other's faces. This goes on until the Great Rumpus Cat arrives and scares the dogs away. 

The Original Pekes and the Pollicles

The way in which I am thinking of portraying my devised choreography for this song so that it fits in with our concept of fashion is that I am deciding to have 2 groups of people the Pekes & Pollicles and have one group as Photographers/Paparazzi and another group as Journalists. I am wanting this song to be a battle between the two groups of people and their interrogation of models so taking their picture constantly, hassling them for gossip and information. I have an idea of having the Paparazzi on one side of the cat walk staging and the journalists on the other side. I imagine my character standing on the cat walk singing and telling the story of the song and having the models walking up and down the cat walk around me being hassled by the two groups.  I think this would be a suitable idea as paparazzi and Journalist play a big role in the fashion industry getting inside gossip from models finding out what people are wearing and latest designs. This song comes after the song 'Old Deuteronomy' so that song could possibly be a press launch for a fashion event and there are journalists and paparazzi there interrogating people. I found it difficult at first to think of a concept as I couldn't keep it how it is written because it would not fit in with our fashion industry concept if two groups of dogs were having a brawl so I had to think of something that would be appropriate to the theme. I then thought perhaps two groups of models fighting over something  -  a new fashion item possibly - but then I was told that the Peaks and Pollicles song was too be sung and performed by the year 12's so I thought that the idea of paparazzi and journalists would be an appropriate idea and be a diverse song to the rest of the songs in the show showing a different side to the industry. 




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