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).