Tracy Turnblad

Leanne Jones - Played Tracy in the London West-End Production 'Hairspray'

• Leanne Jones (born 21 March 1985) is a British actress. She was born in Stoke on Trent and grew up in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, where she attended St Ivo School, before studying at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in Wood Green, in north London, graduating in 2006. Apart from two minor productions, including Karaoke Wedding at the Union Theatre and Enchanted: The Rock Opera at Valley Gardens, Pontefract, Jones' first professional role was that of Tracy Turnblad in the 2007 London production of Hairspray.

Nikki Blonsky - Played Tracy in the Film 'Hairspray'

• Nicole Margaret "Nikki" Blonsky (born November 9, 1988) is an American actress, singer and dancer. She is best known for her role as Tracy Turnblad in the 2007 film Hairspray  and as Maggie Baker in the 2008 television movie Queen Sized. She is also known for her starring role in the ABC Family original series Huge.

Last Accessed - 30/09/2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Blonsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leanne_Jones

Hairspray Production Background

Hairspray is a musical with music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman and a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, based on the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray. The songs include 1960s-style dance music and "downtown" rhythm and blues. In 1962 Baltimore, Maryland, plump teenager Tracy Turnblad's dream is to dance on The Corny Collins Show, a local TV dance program based on the real-life Buddy Deane Show.  When Tracy wins a role on the show, she becomes a celebrity overnight. She then launches a campaign to integrate the show. Hairspray is a social commentary on the injustices of parts of American society in the 1960s.

The musical's original Broadway production opened on August 15, 2002 and won eight Tony Awards out of thirteen nominations. It ran for over 2,500 performances and closed on January 4, 2009. Hairspray has also had national tours, a London West End production, and numerous foreign productions and was adapted as a 2007 musical film. The London production was nominated for a record-setting eleven Laurence Oliver Awards, winning for Best New Musical and in three other categories.

Original London production

The West End production opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre on October 11, 2007 for previews before its official opening on October 30. Michael Balll played Edna, with Mel Smith as Wilbur Turnblad, newcomer Leanne Jones as Tracy, Tracie Bennett as Velma, Paul Manuel as Corny Collins, Rachael Wooding as Amber, Elinor Collett as Penny, and Ben James-Ellis as Link. The original creative team of the Broadway production, with director Jack O'Biren and choreographer Jerry Mitchell, reunited for the London production. The show garnered a record-setting eleven Oliver Award nominations and won for Best New Musical, as well as acting awards for Best Actress and Actor in a musical (Jones and Ball). The production closed on March 28, 2010 after a run of nearly two-and-a-half years and over 1,000 performances.

Original West-End Cast

Tracy Turnblad – Leanne Jones

Edna Turnblad – Michael Ball

Amber Von Tussle – Rachael Wooding

Velma Von Tussle – Tracie Bennett

Penny Pingleton – Elinor Collett

Link Larkin – Ben James-Ellis

Motormouth Maybelle – Johnnie Flori

Seaweed J. Stubbs – Adrian Hansel

Wilbur Turnblad – Mel Smith

Corny Collins – Paul Manuel

Little Inez – Natalie Best

Female Authority Figure – Wendy Somerville

Male Authority Figure – Dermot Canavan

Last Accessed - 30/09/2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairspray_%28musical%29

Video; Good Morning Baltimore - Hairspray

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk4b3aUJlXQ

This video shows Tracy acting and singing the song Good Morning Baltimore which we have been given for our assignment. Our group will get ideas from the Hairspray performance to help us portray the character of Tracy and perform with similarities to the performance.

This video shows that Tracy is a very happy person and can't wait to get up moving. She is a very energetic person that likes to dance around. This is shown at the start of the song when she is in her bed and starts to wiggle around and the songs builds. She shows that she loves her town by singing 'I love you Baltimore', so in our group we need to show this through our movement and try and portray the same characteristics.

Lesson 2 - 20/09/2012

This week, we all took part in a vocal warmup and then we were split into small groups and given a song to perform as part of our assessment.

Our song to perfrom is; Good Morning Baltimore - Hairspray

In our group, we made sure that everyone in the group knew the song. We then kept singing it over and over again so we had a clear idea of the song. I see this as a strength because instead of rushing into the task, we started to think about each stage step by step (first the singing, then adding dance moves to it); this shows that we are working as team and helping each other. After everyone knew the song, we started to add appropriate dance moves to fit the lyrics of the song; this was successful because I think that the moves we came up with were original and creative, they were also very relevant to lyrics that we sing.

However, this week I do not think that we got enough done that we should have in the 2 hour lesson time. This now has made it hard for us to be on time with completing the task. To improve this, each memeber of our group is going to learn the lyrics at home so this will put us in a better position as we will have caught up with what we should of done today in the lesson.

Next week, I think that we should focus on adding more movement to the song so that we can progress further.