We had our public dress rehearsal last night and everything went pretty much according to plan, so we can’t wait to use the energy drawn from the audience to give the rest of the run that little bit of extra sparkle.

We were even featured on BBC Radio Scotland’s Culture Show yesterday afternoon, which was a real honour and hopefully has done wonders for the publicity of the show. You can listen to it on iPlayer HERE (skip to 1:23:40 for interviews and snippets of music!).

We’re all so proud of the commitment of all the cast (especially Primary 7 of Leith Walk primary School) and crew and can’t wait to share our opera with you. Toi toi toi to all involved!

Photos by Andy Catlin

We visited the Botanics again on the 25th with Primary 7 in tow, and they all seemed to really enjoy seeing their future performance space. Everyone has been working so hard to learn their parts, and despite the odd bout of nerves, they were all fantastic. Their class teacher was quoted as saying that it brought them all great joy and created a “treasure of special memories [that they can] dip into for evermore.”

Only 19 days til opening night!

Photos by Kirsty Renton

We usually start by warming up and having some fun altogether in the hall. Today we played a variation on one of our favourite games, Rollercoaster, which had everyone pretending to be marshmallows and experiencing “zero gravity” in no time (not simultaneously, of course!). Once everyone was giggling and raring to go, we all went off to our classrooms to polish up our songs.

Each class wrote a set of poems based around sleep and night-time, and we chose a winner from each class whose poem we would set to music. For example, Joanna from P5/6 wrote a fantastic poem about trying to go to sleep when she’s not tired, and Laura, Ollie, Christie, Polly and Jess K have added a beautifully relaxing melody featuring talented solo singers and instrumentalists from the class. We’ve all pushed our creativity to its limit, with some classes even inventing weird and wonderful instruments, from bottle flutes to musical dreamcatchers, to accompany their songs. We can’t wait to hear how they all sound in the concert next month!

And of course, we cannot forget the stars of Watching – Primary 7. They have been working hard with Katy, Tim, Jess B, Ciara and Dee to learn the songs for the show, and with the help of Skye and Gerda have started to introduce costumes, props and choreography into rehearsals, which is really making the show come to life. It’s only 35 days until our first performance and we couldn’t be more excited!

It’s half-term next week so pupils at Leith Walk will get a much deserved rest, but our work continues as we’ll be going to explore the Botanics and imagine how it’ll be transformed next month…

Photos by Andy Catlin

With a particular interest in science-based costume and natural history, Anna was commissioned to create starfish as part of the handling collection for The Natural History Museum. Health and community art projects have also been developed through Stitches in Time with Barts and the London, Cultural Olympiad and HRP.

She has previously designed for Dreadnought at The National Museum for the New Year Games; Snails and Ketchup, Ramesh Meyyeppan; Aerial costume for All or Nothing and Iron Oxide and First Feet Hogmanay celebrations.

An artist in residence, Anna works in various primary and secondary schools and is currently resident at High View Primary School. Anna is looking forward to the collaboration with P7 at Leith Walk Primary School.

After much excited chitter chatter between pupils and students, everyone was keen to get started. Our choreographer Skye led a fun physical warm-up that had everyone running around and bouncing up and down, before Dee (the musical brains behind Watching) and Music in the Community students taught the children a fun “good night” singing game as a vocal warm-up. By the end, everyone was raring to go!

It took us about an hour and half – including a short break to re-energise with juice and biscuits! – to run through the whole opera, and the focus and enthusiasm shown by Leith Walk pupils was absolutely incredible; they are, without a doubt, an enormous credit to their school. Our two leads, Patryk and Carla (who play Jay and Ada respectively), rose to the challenge wonderfully and we can’t wait to see them in action in the Botanics. We were especially impressed with how Carla stayed so cool in a creepy scene with her Nightmare (played by Iulian Furtuna) – it was quite frightening, even to a group of students in their twenties!

Everyone had a fantastic time and we can’t wait to start preparations with the stars at Leith Walk Primary School this coming Wednesday.

Photos by Andy Catlin

One of the first things we did was measure each other for our costumes (which, incidentally, are going to look fantastic!). With a class of 20-odd students and two 150cm tape measures, it was a bit of challenge but we managed. Roll on February 2nd when we can try on our costumes…keep an eye out for the pictures.

Our next task was to do some improvisation with percussion (cowbells, shakers, thumb pianos etc.) in order to create a soundscape depicting the ticking of a clock. The plan is to play this at the start of the show as we stand among a giant projection of a clock, and it sounded really good, so hopefully it should keep getting better the more accustomed we become to our instruments.

Ahead of meeting the children of Leith Walk Primary School next week, we spent some time recapping on the main choruses of the show and trying to remember the choreography for ‘Tick Tock’, which we made up with Skye Reynolds back in November. It was a bit tricky with no video to refer to, but we just about managed.

All in all, it was a productive session and we’re all really excited to show the children our ideas next week. Stay tuned to see how we get on!

Iulian Furtuna is a mime actor, puppeteer and director. He was born in Romania and now lives in France. He trained at the Bucharest Theatre and Cinema Conservatoire, the Marcel Marceau School of Mime in Paris, and the LEM (Laboratory of Movement at the International School of Jacques Lecoq). In 1998, after working as an actor, dancer and puppeteer, he founded his own company to create theatre, dance productions, and exhibitions using plastic art and video including Ficelle!, Uncle Vania, Oh, Quel Monde..., Les copropriétaires. He has worked as a stage director and performer in Tanzania, Malawi, the UK, Spain, Germany, France, New Caledonia and Romania. Since 2004 he has been a puppeteer for the programme Les Guignols de l’Info, and he also makes short films and video clips for Canal +. Since 1997 he has been a dramatic arts teacher, teaching acting and puppet handling, at EICAR, the University of Art in Edinburgh, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. His performances are touring in the biggest theatres in France and worldwide.

A free family drop-in event will take place at 1-4pm on the final Saturday of our run of performances (21 March 2015) in the Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh.

We will be making our own seventeenth-century sleep remedies, and you can take our quiz to find out how good a sleeper you are (and were, 400 years ago). Come and find out about the mysterious properties of the Venice Mallow or “Goodnight at noon”, learn why some violets were known as “hearts-ease”, and explore why your doctor might have advised you to smell melons but to steer clear of garlic late at night!