Making da Magics - Political Theatre Production

This will likely be a rather lengthy post, seeing as it has to incorporate multiple hours' worth of ideas, teamwork and above all, practice; hopefully it won't be too daunting though.

It all started on a dark and stormy night. Or, you know, a kind of average afternoon. It was time for Drama. We filed in, sat down and were almost immediately bombarded with our assignment for the unit - a performance, logbooks PLUS a bonus essay! Actually, the essay confuses me. It's apparently an "in-class essay", but we've already been given the scaffold and the question and told that we can fill these out ahead of time, bring them in and copy them straight down to hand in. So, it's a take-home essay that we have to rewrite in-class. It's a little confusing to me.

Tangents aside, the first step in any group task is to get a group, and this seems like a good place to mention a trend I've been noticing recently. Whenever the need for a group task arises, certain people are avoided and kept out of groups (sometimes for good reason, sometimes not). And recently, I have become one of those people. I'm not sure why, or indeed if there even is a reason for it, but it can be particularly noticeable in Drama when we're told to work in groups of 4-5 and I end up working on my own because the groups of 4 were "already full".

So, this happened again. In fact the group including Liam and Jack (because those two always have to work together for some reason, despite making reverse-progress two-thirds of the time they're together) actually asked me if I could find someone else and ask them to be in their group. The nerve.

Anyway, as it turned out, there were enough of us (all people generally considered to be quite good performers, actually) that had been thoroughly rejected to form our own group. Which we did, understandably.

The next step was to decide on what the subject of our performance was going to be. Seeing as our group did already have a gender minority (one boy - me - and four girls), we decided that it would make sense to discuss sexism in our performance. The way we did that, though, was what I find particularly interesting. Although we did not set out with such an intention, as our performance developed it became clear that it was less about overt sexism and more about gender stereotypes and their enforcement (often unthinking) by others. I guess you could say that resonates with me rather a bit given recent developments in my life (for clarification, see signature image/s).

So once we got that out of the way, the next step was to find statistics to present to the audience and provoke thought and consideration. Our group did an admirable job finding statistics, sources for statistics, compilations of statistics, analyses of statistics, and pretty much every other thing you can think of with "statistics" in it. Which we then proceeded to not use in our performance. At any point. Good job, team.

 

Then, the casting and the stage/set design. We did these simultaneously as they impacted each other a bit, as will be explained in a sentence or two's time. Some aspects of this were pretty simple (such as casting me in the lead male role, because, you know, I was the only actual male in the group), but others required a little more thought. The final cast we decided upon consisted of these people in these roles:

- Alex M: Male Lead (Peter)

- Kate G: Female Lead (Wendy. Yes, this is a Peter Pan reference. No, we didn't expect anyone to get it.)

- Emily H, Ellen O'S, Tarryn R: Secondary Roles, Props etc.

This is where the simultaneous casting/stage design came into play. We decided to divide the stage into two halves - a 'boy half' and a 'girl half' and create a physical barrier between the two (even if it was just a strip of masking tape, but it got the point across). As such, we had to attempt to keep all cast members (including secondaries) on one side and one side only, and this factored into our casting decisions.

Finally, it was time to start practicing. Because we didn't have a solid script as such, a lot of the blocking was improvised, at least to begin with. At this stage, we were about 3/4 (or more) of the way through our assessment and had less than a week left to get it done.

Then, Oscar.

I don't mean to complain about Oscar specifically. He can be quite a good performer, actually (as he proved rather well in our final performance). It's more just the issue of having to take something we've already spent weeks working on and add roles for a whole new person and then re-rehearse those scenes with only a week left to do so.

Now I'm going to rant about Liam and Jack's group again for a minute, so bear with me.

We were told that the reason that we got Oscar (he hadn't actually had a group up to that point, so obviously he needed somewhere to go) was that Liam's group was originally asked to take him, but had said something along the lines of "No, we had him last time. Give him to someone else instead."

Now, I was in their group for the last assessment. We didn't have Oscar in our group. So not only were they refusing to accommodate Oscar and treating him as a burden (presumably while he was right there), but they also straight-out lied and said they had had "the burden" last time and so refused to take him in this time.

Bear in mind that this is all based on the evidence that I have, so it may not be even remotely accurate. The group may have been referring to a separate time (that wasn't an assessment) when they took Oscar in. It's also undoubtedly clouded by my own personal bias. But I still feel that however one looks at it, that kind of behaviour is still wrong.

Okay, rant over. After working out a role for Oscar (he also functioned as props and secondary characters, although his most common role seemed to be that of a table for some reason), we actually rehearsed the production. We didn't have enough time to rehearse fully in-class, so we set up another appointment in which to rehearse. Unfortunately, Oscar and Tarryn didn't receive the communications for that so neither of them showed up for that rehearsal. However, those of us that had known about it worked out where they would be and what they would do. In fact, Oscar and Tarryn both did remarkably well considering they weren't able to make it to our largest rehearsal.

I will also admit to having missed a smaller rehearsal after that - I was sent an email explaining that we were to have a rehearsal before school on Monday and didn't actually check my email until around noon that day - but I don't think I missed too much (I didn't feel lost by anything the next time we rehearsed after that, at least).

And then, it was eventually time to perform. The production went surprisingly well, all things considered ('all things' being lack of practice; a song that half of us didn't know the words to, let alone the actions; and Oscar). We were particularly complimented on our use of the halved stage - many members of the audience found it clever, innovative and above all effective.
I felt that we all worked together well, and I don't believe anybody forgot their lines at any point. The closest we came to a real problem was in Scene 1, when the "babies" (or babbies, if you prefer) were thrown and were meant to be caught. Unfortunately, both babbies were thrown too high, rebounded off the roof and hit the floor rather than being safely caught. As you can imagine, this would not normally be healthy for a newborn.
Again, I feel like one of the biggest shortcomings in terms of our performance was the lack of statistics. The other performance presented during this lesson (Liam's group) had a lot of statistics. Possibly too much. That's beside the point though, what I'm really trying to say is that the statistics did lend a little more impact to their message and that our group could probably have done with some of that.

Well, I guess that's the end of my production documentation/reflection. Was there too much Photo Finish? Not enough? Just the right amount? Let me know, I like feedback.

11/8/14

We began the day by watching a TED Talk by Improv Everywhere, detailing some of their ventures into Invisible Theatre. One of the performances that stuck with me, for sheer comedic value, was the one in which a group of around 20-30 people walked around a single Best Buy store wearing khaki pants and blue polo shirts. Some of the other performances shown did, however, convey the purpose of Invisible Theatre somewhat more accurately - to spark conversations among people. The idea is that, after the performers have finished, some stay behind pretending to be bystanders, and provoke conversation about the event and what can/should be done about it.

Next, we did some reading about Forum Theatre. The idea behind this one is that a play is shown to an audience, detailing some kind of oppression. The audience is then asked to volunteer to take the place of one of the play's characters (usually the victim) and do their best to 'do something' about the oppression without breaking character.

We followed this up with an example of Forum Theatre in practice: A play was put on for NYC residents detailing a homeless (presumably) man's fight for custody of his child. Of course, the original play did not end well for the man; that is, after all, the point of Forum. Members of the audience were then asked to take over the role of the man and attempt to obtain custody of the child. A few volunteers attempted to simply argue with the judge, while others actually obtained help from others and gathered evidence to prove their capability.

To kick off our practical activities, we partook in an exercise known as Sticky Paper. Groups of four or so people were given three pieces of paper (or at least one piece less than the number in the group) and these pieces of paper had to be held on one particular group member by the others in the group. This becomes slowly more difficult as more limitations are applied, such as which body parts the paper can be held on or which parts the paper can be held on with.

Finally, we were (in groups again) given a few headlines to choose from and were to create a freeze based on a headline of our choice. My group chose "Teenagers forced to work for peanuts", presumably for the quirkiness of the headline itself.

Following this, we then expanded upon this freeze to create three scenes on the issue. The resulting play that my group created was surprisingly decent, actually, effectively presenting the issue and building up to a conflict and a resolution (although not a happy one).

Okay, this one's permanent, I promise.

12/8/14 to assessment - a regretful apology

It seems that the computer has somehow eaten all of my journal entries from this time.I'm not sure how it happened, but as such I have no entries for this time. Rest assured that all notes in my actual book are still intact and I have participated in and analysed all in-class activities with the utmost enthusiasm.

I just don't know what went wrong.

31/7/14

It looks like I'm returning to the old format just for this entry. Instead of a question to answer like usual, we instead have a summary of today's events to expand upon, just like we used to!

I don't actually know if that's a good or bad thing, or is it's permanent, or anything, but here we go.

The first thing we did was very much a physical exercise. I guess it counts as a warmup since we didn't do anything else first. Basically, each person was given a chair. They then created 5 different poses (or was it 6? I honestly can't remember, there were so many and they were all so similar) on different levels - high, medium, low, and then two (or three) combinations of levels, which are always difficult to work out how to do.
Then we walked around the room while music played, and when it stopped we were told to recreate a certain one of our poses on the nearest chair. This became difficult after a while, not so much because of the physical aspect as because of the mental strain of trying to remember all of those abnormal positions and their numbers.
Eventually it turned into a game of musical chairs, with one chair being removed each round. I stayed in for a while, but I certainly didn't come close to winning.

Next was one of my personal favourites - The Bear of Pontier. This is a game that can take multiple forms and can have multiple names, but it's always the same one underneath. Essentially, one person is the "bear" (or some other designation, depending on the 'skin' applied to the game) and everyone else takes on the role of woodcutters (or similar). The idea of the game is that all the 'woodcutters' have to pretend to be dead, trees, or in a similar non-moving state of existence. The 'bear' can then use any method that does not involve physical contact to make the woodcutters laugh or otherwise move.
Now, there were two variations on this base in the game we played. For one, when a woodcutter breaks they do not sit out; instead, they become a bear as well. The other variation I only discovered once I was already lying down, frozen and "dead". Apparently, unlike the usual method of playing this, it was not compulsory to keep one's eyes open. I only discovered this at all because people commented on my bravery for keeping my eyes open. So as far as I know, I was the only one with eyes open at all, which may provide some benefit but is mostly detrimental in this situation, and I still managed to be one of the three winners (apparently none of us could be broken so we were all crowned winners). That's why I like this game. It's one of the few games that I'm really any good at.

Finally, we did an interesting exercise. We were divided into groups of four or five (some groups had four, mine five) and created, in about 10 seconds each, freezes depicting four situations - bullying, sexual harassment, exclusion and subversion. Each group then had its best freeze chosen by the other groups and was given some advice on how to make it better and more realistic, and then recreated it.
My group was given 'subversion', and we did a fair job of it I guess. It did get the idea across well, but apparently there was no way we could hold our imaginary knives behind Adam's back in a way that both conveyed the right intention and was visible to the audience, so I guess that was a little problem.

So I've got a new fairly-permanent image, this time made by me. This will continue to appear at the bottom of most posts, for a while at least.

29/7/14

I did not attend this lesson as I was participating in the English ICAS.

This seemed appropriate. And yes, most (if not all) placeholder images will be ponies.

28/7/14

So, there wasn't really a question as such today but I am to talk about Political Theatre and the clip of Bread and Puppet Show that we watched.

Political theatre (no, stop it Chrome, I'm in Australia, theatre is spelled 're') is essentially what is implied by the name - theatre with a political subtext (or just plain supertext). It often makes extensive use of theatre techniques, particularly metaphor, to discuss important and controversial issues without directly talking about the issue and instead letting the performance remain primarily entertaining.

Bread and Puppet Show is either a group that has been creating political theatre since the Vietnam War, or a performance by that group.
Okay, I looked it up. It is indeed the group. That's what I thought.

So we watched a small segment of a performance by this group, discussing war, politicians' responses and tactics and the consequences of this. A primary feature of Bread and Puppet is also their use of masks, something that was not missing in this performance (albeit full papier-mache [paper-mache?] helmets rather than simple face-masks). The politician, in particular, was portrayed as having a very big head, something that I imagine was intended as quite symbolic.

The politician kept coming up with "clever" ideas and tactics for the war (indicated by another masked/headed person holding up a sign saying "Intelligence"), which then resulted (indicated by the same person holding up a sign reading "Result") in people dying, more each time, eventually revealing statistics on the current deaths in the war (which war it was, I can't recall). While the deaths of the actors were largely symbolic, it was still quite confronting. To lighten the mood, the politician was then executed in a rather hyperbolic manner, having his "head" chopped off and then proceeding to run around like a chicken would under the same circumstances, while the other performers held up his head and declared joyously, "What's inside? NOTHING!"

The clever part here is that while this is quite silly and a little entertaining, once the performance is finished all the audience is really left with are the confronting facts and figures, and the tragedy of war and the detachment of politicians from it. This is exactly what political theatre tries to do. It presents and entertains the audience with humour and an entertaining performance, but contains a deeper political meaning that stays with the audience long after the show has finished.

I'm thinking I may include a picture signature at the end of each entry. I haven't got a good one yet, though, so I'll include a different placeholder image each entry.

3/6/14 -> 21/7/14

That looks like a really big timespan to cover in one entry, but it actually includes the three-week school holidays as well. The reason all of these entries have been condensed into one is because all these lessons have focused on the same subject - our Surrealist assessment.

But before we get into that, the first lesson after the 3/6 was half-assignment but was also the lesson in which we performed our Absurdist extracts. So, some feedback on how that went from my perspective.

Travis was surprisingly cooperative throughout the performance itself, especially considering how uncooperative he was when we were practising. I only had to make one compromise to get him to actually perform decently and to say his lines and not my lines (or my lines and his lines), and that was to let him have free range during the section in which he was supposed to pace back and forth across the stage. Considering that previously I had had to let him perform the whole thing lying under a chair to get him to even come close to doing the right thing, the whole thing went rather well.

Now, the assessment. The task was to create a Surrealist performance based on one of a few stimuli. I am in a group with Karen, Jack, Kate McLeod and Liam (okay seriously Google Chrome, you can recognise all the other names fine but NO LIAM IS OBVIOUSLY NOT A WORD THAT EXISTS), and we chose to do our performance based on the idea of 'Heaven's Waiting Room'. Only later were we to find out that almost all the other groups had also chosen that one, but when some groups were asked to change their subject we stood firm and kept our stimulus. That sounded a little strange.

There really wasn't any clear divide between any of the different tasks we had to do - we just kind of worked on each one at the same time as the others and switched to some of the more theory-based tasks when Liam and Jack refused to cooperate, which they did surprisingly often for two people so committed to the subject of Drama. I must admit that I missed most of the script-writing as that took place over the holidays on Google Drive, and I was in Sulawesi with no internet connection whatsoever for that entire time, but I still feel that I managed to contribute significantly in other areas.

Well, tomorrow is the big performance. I guess that's when we find out if all our hard work (for some of us, others tended to not do quite so much hard work) has borne fruit or not.

Hm. This needs a picture.

There. Perfect.

3/6/14

Describe what you saw in the chairs exercise. What stories and relationships were developed?

Describe your Absurdist extract -> Who do you play and what Absurdist techniques are used?

So, you may remember the 'impulse exercise'. It was either earlier this year or very late last year - I'm pretty sure it was this year. Well, the 'chairs exercise' was very similar to that, only with slight variations. The three actions were different (clap five times, jump on the spot and roll on the ground), the props were now all chairs and could be moved around, and each person created their own goal that they attempted to fulfill. Mine was to turn all the chairs upside down, and as you can imagine, many of the goals clashed with each other and created conflicts.

While I'm sure I was intended to reflect more on the one that I watched (the class was divided into groups that went one at a time), I honestly have a better time remembering the one that I was in. Cody and I certainly had a few interesting moments and negotiations - Cody's goal seemed to simply be to sit on one chair with his feet on another. Of course, this created a problem as every time I turned over his foot-chair He would get back up and turn it over again so as to put his feet back on it. After a couple rounds of this, I came up with a solution: I turned the chair over then picked up his feet and put them back on the upturned chair. Problem solved! We both seemed rather content with this solution. Then Allie came and took the chair altogether for the line she was making in the middle of the stage.

Allie actually seemed to be the main antagonist of the group, simply because her goal was totally incompatible with anyone else's and she would not yield to anyone. Apparently, the chairs even had to be the right way up as well as in a line in the middle, because every time I tried to use the line as a convenient way to turn over multiple chairs in quick succession she shooed me away and turned them all the right way up again. Because of this behaviour, a few temporary alliances were formed simply to get the chairs away from her. Obviously none of the plans were very elaborate because none of us could talk and they mainly consisted of just picking up a chair or two and walking away, but some of them worked (temporarily at least).

Okay, that's probably enough on the chair exercise. Now, the Absurdist extract.

Travis and I are performing a four-page extract from Waiting for Godot (the longest possible performance of the list we were given because why not). I play Estragon, and Travis plays Vladimir. It's... interesting.

The extract makes use of quite a few Absurdist techniques - which is of course to be expected from one of the great Absurdist plays - including a cyclic plot (or at least one that doesn't go anywhere), disconnected words and actions, repetition and pause. So much pause.

2/6/14

What was the effect of having words and actions not connected to a scene?

How did the performers show meaning in their Absurdist piece?

Google Chrome really has no grasp of theatre. It hates the word Absurdist. I thought it hated some others too, but apparently not.

Today we worked on an Absurdist piece (see, there goes Google again telling me there's no such word) by creating a performance in multiple steps. First, each person grabbed an object (mine, for instance, was a toy telephone). Then, each person came up with something to do with the object that had nothing to do with the object's intended purpose (mine, for instance, was swinging the telephone in circles by the cord). Then, each person came up with a phrase that had nothing to do with anything (mine, for instance, was "There's a kitten on the floor"). See, repetition. I'm getting the hang of this Surrealism thing.

We were then divided into groups, and were tasked with creating a performance using those actions and phrases only. I worked in a group with Cody, Karen and Oscar, who was surprisingly cooperative. We were given a few scenarios to choose from, and we selected a bus stop, because if there's one good generic scenario for a drama performance it's a bus stop. We went through and blocked the scene, creating characters and working out their interactions as we went. One thing that I noticed in particular was how much more important tone of voice and body language were compared to in some other performances (they are fairly important anyway, but that just gives you an idea of exactly how important they are in this style).

The result of all these disconnected words and actions strung together to form a simple yet engaging narrative was quite interesting. Our group's performance was widely regarded to be mostly coherent - except for the bit at the end where I got hit by a bus and went flying, and people seemed to assume I'd had a heart attack despite the fact that heart attacks don't normally send people flying. One of the other things I noticed from watching the other groups was how important tone of voice really was - there were some groups that relied mostly on body language to convey their narrative and it was simply nowhere near as coherent or engaging.

Well, I guess that's that then.

The end.

27/5/14

Describe the Expressionistic techniques you used in your 'Paperchase' scenes.

        -Explain how your movement changed form robot to human.

So, the 'Paperchase' scenes. Basically what we had to do was create a scene in which one character (in fact, the only truly 'human' character in the while scene) has a simple objective to complete. However, they encounter an obstacle which forces them the do something else first, and this continues to a surreal (see what I did there?) level. Because this is Expressionism, every character other than the main character is either a robot or a puppet controlled by a puppeteer (the puppeteers don't count as characters). This had the potential to be a really interesting piece.

And then the groups.

I was not in a good group. Nobody seemed to be on task. Cody almost was a few times, but the other group members really made it hard for him to concentrate. As such, I could barely get anyone to focus past the point of "Okay, what are we doing then?" (Seriously, it took 15 minutes to get the whole group the focus long enough to work out what the premise was, and then at least another 10 to work out the main character.) Eventually we worked out what Cody was trying to achieve (getting a cup of coffee for his boss, played by me because that was the first role we chose and no-one else was paying any attention) and what his obstacles would be (to some extent). We had a puppet in there, serving as the cashier of the coffee stand, and two robot serving as the ATM and Cody's boss, but nobody seemed to actually understand the concepts of that beyond the names.

And then the performance.

Actually, the performance itself wasn't so bad. It went according to plan (or at least, as much plan as we had). But it really didn't have any techniques, and was just kind of bland. Not to mention that nobody seemed able to focus either, so that didn't help.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising Cody. He's a really good worker, he was just in an easily-distracted mood today. Everyone else was feeling extra-distracted, and thus hasn't been named because they're really better than I've made them out to be in this entry. I just get upset easily.

26/5/14

Last lesson up until this one was exam time. That's the reason for the significant date-gap between these last entries.

Today's question: Describe the surrealist techniques you used to explore a surrealist artwork [in my case Harlequin's Carnival]. What effect did other groups create that were successful?

So, today, we created a surrealist performance based on a surrealist artwork of our choice (given three or so to choose from). My group chose to do the artwork Harlequin's Carnival. We made use of a few techniques, but not many as we didn't completely understand what we were doing. Out main technique was that of lighting, changing the lighting from blue to red when the performance changed from benign to sinister. There was also some repetition of actions, but once again we really had no idea what we were doing.

Some of the other groups made some really good use of space, as well as far better lighting than what we had. The idea of the lighting was quite similar, although it was much better timed and executed. The use of space, however, was incredibly clever. Instead of sitting and observing in a group, the audience was instead divided into pairs and formed arches with their arms. The performance then took place around and through these audience-made arches, creating a very immersive feel.

Some other groups also made good use of pause, repetition and disjointed language, which were again things that none of my group did. Oh well, this is how you learn I guess.

And that's a rather short entry, but they're probably mostly going to be like this from here on in, now that I'm more focusing on answering the question rather than simply recounting everything we did (which isn't actually what we were meant to do - I guess that makes sense, better to reflect on something than to simply ramble on about just the events themselves).

13/5/14

Today's Question: Describe how voice, sound and movement [were] used to create a surreal performance of 'A Dream Play'. As an audience member which performance was the most effective and why?

Well, before I get on to answering the question, I'll quickly run through what we did today. We did a few vocal warmups to get us going, and then worked on our Gibberish skills by both talking to and abusing others in Gibberish. Finally, we played around with our voices utilising a song, the name of which I do not know, but which goes as follows:

"Hey, ho, nobody's home/Food nor drink nor money have I none/Still I will be very merry"

This can be repeated as many times as wanted, as it effectively loops from the end of one to the beginning of the next. As mentioned, we played around with our voices using it, performing it as a round, whispering it and changing the volume of our voices continually among other things.

Now, the question. We were divided into groups of 4 to 5, given copies of an extract from "A Dream Play" and were given the better part of a lesson to devise a performance.

Our group did quite well as far as I could tell; we used multiple layers of surreal sound and voice - the background noise, the chattering, high-pitched voices and the constant, quiet drone in the background. Movement was also used effectively - each type of sound had its own row and its own movement pattern, making our movements seem simultaneously simple and confusing.

As an audience member, I can barely remember any of the other performances. The only one that I truly remember at all was one in which the group surrounded us in a circle, performing around us. This interesting use of space had an impact on me, but one of the things I did notice was that none of the other groups made full use of multiple layers, both in terms of movement and of sound and voice, meaning that their performances ended up being much more 'flat' and less surreal and entertaining.

Again, I feel like I need a picture here, but I can't think of anything to put (related or not).

12/5/14

Today's Question: Describe how transformation was used in your surreal object performance. What was the effect you observed as an audience member watching the transformation and use of color and music?

Yeah, so we're occasionally doing this sort of thing now, where our journals are more about answering a question that recounting events.

So as the question would suggest, our main task today was a performance in groups. Essentially, we were given five objects (that one would find in a dream) that we had to form as groups - a lobster telephone; a flower with human legs for petals; a half-woman half-alligator (this one was interesting as my group was entirely male); and a melted head on a crutch - and then transformed from one to another.

The transformation helped very much with the feeling of the performance taking place in a dreamlike, surreal state, as well as allowing for the transitions between each object to be less jarring and more... almost confusing, I guess. Something along those lines. I know what I'm talking about, I just can't work out what the words are.

Of course, we weren't the only group who did such a performance, which brings us to the second part of the question. One of the other groups, after performing theirs, were then asked to perform it again with different lighting. The angle of the lighting had a large effect, to begin with - lit from below, the performance seemed much more mysterious and not a little more hostile - but the colours also affected the mood greatly - blue makes it feel more dreamlike, green simply enhances the surrealism of it all and red lighting created a very noticeable sense of foreboding and aggression.

Now here's a cat.

5/5/14

Today we carried on with our chorus performances, after doing a quick warmup that was essentially Chinese Whispers but with mime.

Well, I say we continued, but really we started properly working out what we were doing. Most of the people in our group also magically disappeared, but we got a few more back, pretty much evening out our total.

...Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that last journal. Sorry about that. We've been looking at chorus in performance (multiple actors portray one character - not necessarily one person, but one character, such as 'the women' or 'the builders'), and divided up into two groups to each perform, as a chorus, one half of a chorus section (specifically, the women's section from Medea).


So. We essentially started work today, despite starting last lesson. That time was mostly spent throwing ideas and hoping they'd stick, and by the time we started today we had a nice sticky ball of ideas that we were ready to start sculpting into a performance.
I love and hate that metaphor at the same time.
Our performance consisted of one action for each line, often essentially acting out the main point of each. The main technique that we used was the simple 'integrating audience' one - we surrounded the audience in a circle and performed in pairs around them. We did also use a little canon, but not much.

No other groups really thought to integrate the audience into the performance, but many other techniques were used, including multiple voice and transformation, things that we simply didn't think to include.

I don't really know how I can evaluate my particular performance on this one. I guess I'll just say that I have a better understanding of chorus, how it works and how best to create an interesting and engaging performance using these techniques.

1/5/14

Alright, so I lost the "New Post" button for a while, but I've found it again now.

This day was an all-prac-all-the-time pracstravaganza! Okay, that was pretty terrible, but I'm standing by it.

We started out with a routine/repetition exercise, in which each of us mimed our morning ritual from the time we woke up until the time we left for school. I don't actually have a morning routine, so I just took the things I do most often and put them in a semi-logical order.

I started by waking up, rolling over, falling out of bed and almost going back to sleep, before staggering to the kitchen and making myself an unspecified hot beverage. After this I brushed my teeth, ate five spoonfuls of something from a bowl, put on clothes (somehow, despite my movements really not being able to apply clothes in a real-life situation) and reached for the door handle before freezing to indicate I was done.

A few routines were chosen out of everyone's (Tash's, Kate's and Jack's) and we were divided into groups to learn and exactly copy their routines. I was in Kate's group and thankfully, she simplified and stylised hers to the point where we were all able to learn the routine quite quickly.
We got up, got dressed (via sweeping our hands down our bodies as if to say "look, I have clothes on now"), washed our face (moving our hands in small circles in front of our faces), ate breakfast (the actions you'd normally expect from people miming eating), pulled on our bags (slightly stylised, but relatively close to the real thing) and finished, with our hands on our respective imaginary doors. We seemed to do this all rather well - we were all in sync (or close to it) and we all understood the exact movements we had to perform, something that could not necessarily be said for some of the people in the other teams.

This was all well and good, but then it was time to take it a step further into non-realism. We were told to use canon (performing the same actions slightly out-of-sync, like a round), repetition and timing to enhance our performance and make it appear less real.
Our basic idea was that the two of us on either side (me included) would perform the routine backwards while the other two performed it forwards. This almost worked. The problem was that we decided to do a little canon as well - the person on the end would reverse-get-dressed, the person next to them would take a bite of cereal, cereal, reverse-dressed. Then we would use each other like mirrors to wash our faces, before doing the same thing again, but the other way around - reverse-cereal, dressed, dressed, reverse-cereal.

The problem appeared when we got to performing it, when the person on the end of the line began our first canon segment by reverse-eating. The two in the middle say and compensated for this, dressing instead of the intended eating. I, meanwhile, had not noticed due to our half-masks (which I have forgotten to mention earlier) obscuring my peripheral vision and the fact that we were supposed to remain looking straight ahead, and so only noticed what had happened too late, resulting in me reverse-dressing and looking out-of-place.
This, of course, was obfuscated further when we performed the second canon segment - since we all adjusted to fit the new routine, I ended up reverse-dressing for a second time, enhancing my out-of-placeness and at the same time making me look like the one who had gotten it all wrong.

Now that I'm done complaining, I think it's about time I ended this off here. I felt that I (and the rest of my group) did rather well, but I could maybe work on my awareness of the group when performing. This was I'll be better able to adjust to any changes and not ruin the effect by looking silly, wrong and out-of-place, even though I'm the only one who actually did it right.


Sorry.

29/4/14

Drama Journal: 29/4/14

Hey, it's another journal entry!

On this day, we mostly focused on practical activities, though we did receive a few theory sheets at the start of the lesson.

We engaged in two 'prac' activities, the first being a warm-up called "Ali Baba and the 40 thieves". I have decided that the best way to explain this is with a brilliantly drawn diagram by yours truly:

Look, I learned how to actually caption images!

This exercise is all about working as as group, keeping focus, and memory (as well as a bit of improvisation on the part of the first person). I feel like I did quite well on this, not flubbing once, but a few other people had quite a bit of trouble - whether because they just couldn't do it or because they couldn't be bothered.

After this, we divided into groups of 4 (I was with Liam Negus, Jack McGee and Travis Wettig) and created a short piece about the process of getting ready for a first date. Our group had the shortest performance, but could also be considered the most innovative. Most other groups' performances consisted of one person playing the lead role while everyone else played secondary characters or props, while our group had two main characters (showing each side of the date preparations) and two people playing every prop used in the performance.

A few notes just to finish off:

1. Each of these last two journal entries has been a day late - this is because I didn't have time to write a journal on the day of our first class, and I only had time for one last night so I figured I'd do the first one first.

2. Expect my journal entries to become more well-formatted and professional as they progress, and as I learn more about this software. Incidentally, these last two days have been the most fun I've had writing journal entries as far as I can remember.

28/4/14

Drama Journal: 28/4/14

Continued our new unit of Non-Realism - apparently I missed the first lesson of this (despite the fact that I'm pretty sure I haven't missed any lesson recently) because we were halfway through a task that I had no idea was even happening.

We watched a few videos of drama performances, both realistic and non-realistic, and noted how such techniques as movement, sound and transitions (and a few others) were used.

I feel the need to include an image at this point, because blogs usually have images strewn throughout their posts.

There we go, much better.

So. We then engaged in a few basic practical activities to bring us back into the swing of things for the new term. I honestly do not feel like explaining 'You' again, please refer to one of my older (non-blog) journals for this.

Finally, it has been requested that I talk about my opinions on how non-realism compares to realism. I haven't had much experience with non-realism so far, but it seems that non-realism allows for a wider range of performance and character choices, as well as (perhaps) making it potentially easier to cover mistakes and flubs with nonsensical improvisation - since the rest of it is also nonsensical, the audience probably won't even notice.

That didn't feel like a proper way to end this entry, so:

THE END

Much better.