Due Dates

August 24-25 – RI rough draft is due.

September 1-2 – IPP is assigned.

September 17-18 – RI final copy is due.

November 30 – Final IPP is due.

January 4-5 – PPP is assigned.

February 4-5 – Final PPP is due.

March 8-19 – TPPP:  Specific dates will be assigned.

March 20, 2009

I went to another Grease rehearsal. I’m not surprised at how they’re conducted, but it’s not pretty. The director, Mr. Riis, expects the actors to have the whole play down by now, but he doesn’t really try to help them directly. Instead, he just yells at them for stalling or asking a question. The play’s going on in two weeks and they’ve just started doing full runthroughs. There are always kinks to work out in the beginning; the actors haven’t practiced switching between scenes and they need to get adjusted.

Mr. Koller asked me to assign mikes to the 8 people I thought needed it the most. I went through the script and picked people who sing solos. The only problem is that during groups songs, a few people will have their voices magnified, and the whole balance of the voices will be shot. But this is on a tight budget, so we’ll have to make do. After all, in Snow White, only a couple dwarves and animals had mikes, and it didn’t sound that bad.

March 10, 2009

I went to one of the practices for Grease this weed because I want to help out with sound for one of the nights it’s performed and I want to help paint the scenery. I found the girl who was in charge of the artwork and volunteered myself. She seems kind of stressed, which makes sense, since the show is going on in less than a month and the scenery is still stark wood. She set me to work painting a wall a solid color, which is one of the few artistic things I feel qualified to handle. She can do all the intricate patterens and designs; she’s the one with the vision. Doing one large area continuously, I workd fast. She told me to use a sponge to make the edges exact, which I hadn’t ever thought of. I haven’t done a lot of set painting, but I’d always just seen people using brushes. Now this seems silly; of course they use other tools. Anything to get the desired effect.

Febraury 27, 2009

I got my PPP reviewed by Mr. Koller. He seemed very happy with it, except that my second section was severely lacking. He explained that the list of possible materials in the IB handbook should be used fully, instead of just using one or two things on the list. He didn’t give me an IB score on it, but he said that there would’ve been no point anyway, just because the second section was so empty.

I don’t think it will be hard to redo my second section. He gave more examples of what materials we might want to incorporate, and I wrote down those that would be most practical for my performance. I already had a stage plan in my original second section, so I need to work on factors like costume, makeup, and sound. I concentrated a good chunk of my commentary on the gamelan sounds, so I will go online to find some examples of that music to burn to a CD. I will also go by Joann’s to pick out some swatches of possible costume materials. I know what I want: soft, brightly colored materials for minor characters; and dark, scratchy materials for the main character. I don’t have a clue what a mind map is, so I’ll just leave that out and try to compensate with my other materials.

February 20, 2009

Today I turned in my practice practical performance proposal. I’m glad I have another year before it really counts because it’s a completely different assignment from any I’ve done before. The stimulus I chose was the legend of Malin Kundang. I had thought about using the maps of Atlantis, but it was too hard for me to think of a performance based off maps. Asia is interesting to me, so I thought it would be easier.

Mr. Koller said the performance could be based very loosely on the stimulus, so I read enough of the legend to get an idea. For the pitch, I just spit out all my ideas I could think of and fit into 250 words. The word limit was the hardest part of the assignment.

After I finished the pitch, I put off the assignment until Mr. Koller told us it was due in about two weeks. Last weekend, I borrowed Mr. Koller’s IB information about it because I was completely at a loss for what to do. I discovered I had to do research that would correspond to my play, so I started looking online for anything about Asian theater, and there was nothing. I went to the library and found the Cambridge Guide to World Theater. I jotted down some names of playwrights and practices that seemed good, because I couldn’t take the book home. Back at home, I was able to find some of the topics I’d written down online, but I didn’t really even know what I was trying to find. I thought that there was a theater practice I could relate to my performance, but nothing I found was like my performance. I ended up finding one practitioner whose work resembled it, though, so I changed my topic to the philosophical rationale and quickly wrote my paper. I thought it was well written and I’m extremely excited to see what I get.

February 6, 2009

This past week, I acted in one of the IPP plays I’m in. Ben and I were the main characters waiting in the waiting room of a free clinic. He’s a hobo suffering from an ambiguous disease and I’m a formerly rich girl. She’s very exciteable and has a strange disease I didn’t know before this play. I forget what it’s called, but she’ll see symptoms of any sickness or disease and think she has it to the point where she develops the symptoms, too. Like extreme hypochondria.

We were given our lines before the winter break, but I didn’t memorize them until the week we got back to school. Ben waited even longer than I did. It was only a five-minute play, so there wasn’t too much to memorize, but my character carries most of the conversation. We didn’t really practice until a week or two ago. Just reading my character’s lines, I thought she was supposed to be a nice ditz, but during our first rehearsal, the senior directors told me I was acting too likeable. My character was supposed to be really giddy and annoying. It took me a few tries to get the right amount of giddienss in, but I eventually got it. It was the first time I’d played an annoying person; it was fun. Ben did well; we only had a couple of things to fix, like me. One line I wanted to make sure I remembered was the list of several diseases my character had. I had it perfectly memorized (it’s a list of strange names), but during the actual show, I forgot probably half of the diseases. I even repeated chicken pox, because I was at a loss for words. But I made sure to keep my face straight so no one would know I messed up. I looked at the tape of it afterwards, and it seemed fine.

The Moving Body: Chapter 3, The Student’s Own Theater

Students make a performance from just a theme or a couple words. No guidelines, though performances are preferably under 20 minutes. They can remain silent for very broad themes, but may have to show very menial tasks, too, for a theme about a particular lifestlye. Exodus is also a good theme to show real problems in a hypothetical setting.

These performances lead to actual investigation into unfamiliar territory so they can observe and later create a realistic performance about it.

The student’s interaction with each other is also important to stimulate creativity, especially new relationships, so students should often change companions in a group to keep the interaction fresh. In these groups, students discover their strengths and how they want to work in theater.

This chapter was extremely short, I think because a lot of it is self-explanatory after reading the other chapters. Because improvisation is an important part of playwrighting, some rules of improvisation should apply when students are making their own plays, such as the importance of silence to have the best effect.

I liked how he advocated taking the play you wrote and observing what it would be like in the real world. This would help you learn more about the world for future reference, maybe noticing a universal trait that could apply to many themes.

I thought it was a little strange how he encouraged always going out and making plays with different people, to not get used to the same reactions from the same people. You’d think familiarity would help you work together better, but I think LeCoq’s point is that you should be ready for anything, including a difficult person to work with.

The Moving Body: Chapter 2, Movement Technique

Movement technique is divided into physical and vocal preparation, dramatic acrobatics, and movement analysis.

Making any movement in theater must be justified by indications, actions, or states. To prepate, elementary physical gestures can be given new, different, meaning. Then breathing is incorporated and very consciously controlled. The gestures, breathing, and voice finally all come together as one movent. While the limits of movement can be pushed, they should not be stretched to the point of pain. Physical preparation should be relaxing, but not eacy and not purely athletic.

Dramatic acrobatics is an attempt to free the actor’s movement to that of a child, including leaps, balanceing exercises, and juggling and play-fighting.

Georges Hebert’s “natural method” analyzes movement into several catefories through which common emotions can flow. Three everyday movements are undulation, inverse undulation, and eclosion. Each of these has a corresponding mask.

Undulation is movement that takes its leverage from the ground and spreads, like walking. Inverse undulation takes leverage from the head, which responds to something happeneing outside, like seeing a bird and stepping back. Undulation is voluntary, but the inverse is always a reaction. Eclosion starts from the center. The whole body follows the same rhythm.

To enhance the movements, one can expand it spacially to its limit, then reduce it to a micro size. Full expansion results in equilibrium of an actor’s body in space and reduction puts the actor in respiration, apparently motionless. One should expand to equilibrium before reducing. An attitude is revealed in a movement pushed to its limit and in breathing patterns and vocal tone.

Action mime is helpful for analyzing movement with objects without actually using the objects. It eventually shows two common movements in everything: pulling and pushing, not always literally. Vertical movement is between man and Heaven, and horizontal movement’s between man and man. Diagonal movement is abstract and unpredictable.

The four elements can also be studied through their relationships with bodies and movement, or through the objects they manifest in. Objects must be altered and observed by how they accomodate change, remaining changed or springing back. Their physical responses can symbolize mental responses to a parallel situation with people. This goes for animals as well.

The analysis of motion results in some laws of motion that always hold true, dealing with continuous motion, equilibrium, and fixed points.

Lastly, movement must have a clear beginning and end.

This chapter really has nothing to argue about. While I hadn’t considered all of the points made before I read it, everything that was new still made sense.

I already knew the important of deliberate movements in theater. In movies, someone can make a subtle gesture more noticeable by zooming in on it, but theater is completely different onstage. It is away from the audience, so every movement must be exaggerated, even if only slightly, to make sure the audience understands what’s going on. This goes along with every movement’s having a purpose. If actors are fidgeting or moving unnecessarily, the audience might get confused as to what’s going on.

The part about physical preparation where actors should release their inner child made me laugh at the image of a grown man jumping around crazily, but it is actually another good point. I see so many people who would be good actors if they just got past their self-consciousness and let loose. If people are able to do that backstage during a practice, they’ll be more likely to have no problem onstage.

I found the classification of people’s three basic moevements very interesting. LeCoq looked at movement in a whole new light; I never would’ve looked at where the power for the movement comes from. Most people just look at what the movement is. And I don’t think anyone would’ve been able to group all basic movement into just three groups. His insight really impressed me.

His laws of movement also make sense. Many of them are like common sense, but, once again, you wouldn’t normally think about movement in such depth.

The Moving Body: Chapter 1, Improvisation

Improvisation must begin with silent replay, reliving experiences in one’s life. The silence must be broken by either speaking (but only when necessary), or acting in response to each other. Many good improvisation expercises tap into one’s memory and, sometimes, emotions. Movement in an improvisation should keep an ebstract rhythm, not a predictable tempo.

The dramatic motor is what drives a play to go on. The dynamic scale is the important building up of dramatic tension to reach the limit, going beyond realism. The scale builds in the time between an action an a reaction. The longer the space, the more potentially powerful the drama could be. Near silence is important during this to help actors realize that speech is born of silence.

The neutral mask makes one receptive to everything around them and creates a calm, peaceful feeling. It’s the “fulcrum” of all other masks. Being emotionally balanced helps an actor better understand a character’s various imbalances. The mask can also reveal some of the actor’s personality by how he feels wearing it. The fundamental journey is part of the mask. One can discover nature and BE nature while wearing it. After the journey, one can identify with various aspects of nature and, later, other various objects. After identifying, one can transpose it by personifying nature or the opposite. These exercises leave traces in an actor to be used for years.

The universal poetic sense is the essence of life; not the physical components, but the abstract. Mimages are gestures that have no place in the real world. The emotions created by the universal poetic sense put people into action.

This sense is strong in representing colors. A color in a painting doesn’t affect one the war a color by itself would. The same goes for music, words, etc. Mimodynamic procedues and movements give an observer the universal poetic sense.

In addition to the neutral mask, there are expressive masks that include larval masks, character masks, and utilitarian masks. The expressive mask shows a certain character and its expression can be changed according to the actor’s body movement. A good exercise to do with masks is to act out the character, then act out a completely opposite character in the same mask. This is the counter-mask.

To become a character, you cannot being any of yourself into it, or it’s not acting. It’s important to thoroughly analyze the character: how other people see them, their relationships, inner struggles, etc.

This chapter presented a lot of new ideas about improvisation that I’d never thought of. I always thought of improvisation as just acting out however comes to your mind first. I guess this process includes some silence as you think of what you want to do, but I’d never considered a completely silent scene. It really makes sense that barely breaking a silence would teach you to include only the most necessary words. If a play has too many “filler” words that add no meaning or depth to the performance, it will come out very shallow and boring.

It also makes sense that improvisation should tap into an actor’s memories and true emotions because you aren’t given much time to play another character and create their separate memories. When in doubt, tapping into genuine emotions and using them for another character will give a better, more realistic play.

The neutral mask is a strange concept. I understnad its point, to neutralize your mind and teach you to use more body and voice to express your character. As for the latter, the neutral mask seems like a great tool, but I think an actor should be able to distance himself from himself and become his character without needing an outside tool. This goes for “discovering” nature, too. One should be able to become more observant by oneself.

The universal poetic sense makes sense to me too. It’s really another name for a very old concept akin to the meaning of life. It’s all the facets of life that science can’t explain. It’s everyone’s emotions, and the goal of theater is to make the audience feel emotions. Hence, it fits that theater should be all about the universal poetic sense: made from it, using it, and expressing it.

October 14, 2008

Today we were given a prompt to write a short dialogue on. Anna, Esther and I were given, “half the world hates what half the world does.” We’ve been brainstorming, trying to think of how to protray that. Mostly, we’ve been thinking or political parties because those create the most passionate feeling in people. Since we’re all from different countries, it would be easy to portray different heritages and beliefs. But we weren’t sure what issue to write about or how to address it. I think writing a play must be the hardest aspect of theater. Trying to write interestingly, but naturally, and getting a point across clearly is very difficult. It’s easier for me to take speech and use it to make an idea instead of the other way around.