Australian Theatre Assessment - ADDENDUM

Alright so it looks like I needed to mention things like "directorial skills" and "research", neither of which I really mentioned at all in my previous entries at all.

So, to hopefully remedy that, let me instead provide a link to our group's Google Doc - which essentially served those purposes for us, working better as a shared space for that sort of stuff than individual reflections. I hope that this satisfies those requirements, because it would be silly to go back and edit each of my previous entries just to copy over what's already written in there.

--Yes this is all going to go fine what are you even suggesting that it won't be perfect,

Alexander

FINAL WEEK PANIC MODE ENGAGE - Australian Theatre Assessment, Week 4 (T4W9)

AAAAAAAA IT'S ALMOST DUE AAAAAAAA

So yeah, this is our final week of working on this assessment. In fact, as I write this it is approximately 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon and this whole thing is due in just a little over twelve hours.

What a comforting thought. Why did I think that to myself.

So, things we did. Something I missed out on in last weeks journal because I decided to be a good boy and write it up on Friday evening, and also because I forgot some stuff, was that we recorded and edited a few voice-overs on the Friday and over the weekend of last week. We will be using these for various monologues and such, often with some form of loose justification for them - such as the shadow puppet scene. Anyway, those have really helped lighten the burden on us to learn lines, which has been really helpful and I'm sure won't at all be problematic on the day.

SURE. LET'S JUST ENTRUST THE ENTIRE FLOW OF OUR PERFORMANCE TO A BUNCH OF AUTOMATED RECORDINGS IN A PLAYLIST, CONTROLLED BY SOMEONE WHO I'M PRETTY SURE HAS NEVER EVEN HEARD THEM LET ALONE KNOWS WHERE THEY SHOULD BE IN OUR PERFORMANCE. IT'LL BE FINE.

...I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yelled like that. I'm a little nervous about tomorrow. And excited.

Nervicited.

So aside from that, we also rehearsed. A lot. Over and over. And that is a good thing, don't get me wrong. But what it means is that there's really nothing too interesting to put here, because the rehearsal process didn't really have any interesting techniques, or moments of revelation and sudden clarity, or anything like that. We just... rehearsed. And that was that.

So... fluff?

Yes, fluff. Turns out Neighborhood Neighbourhood Watch was written by Lally Katz. Why do I mention that, you ask? Silly you. You should know by now that it was for the sole purpose of being able to add a loosely related cat picture.

Katz => Cats. See. It's related.

And as you can tell, I'm really, seriously, out of things to say here. It seems like all things considered, tomorrow's going to turn out fairly well barring some horrible last-minute disaster involving Kate's laptop, three birds and a jar of peanut butter.

Yes, that is oddly specific. No, there's no reason for it.

--Always calm and collected and AAAAAAAA IT'S DUE TOMORROW AAAAAAAA,

Alexander

SHADOW CATHERINE IS A GIANTESS - Australian Theatre Assessment, Week 3 (T4W8)

Shadow puppets this week. Lots and lots of shadow puppets. I'm so glad I have other people in my group who are good at making shadow puppets because if I was the one in charge of that then every single puppet would come out looking like a horrible monstrosity formed of some unidentifiable mass of dogs merged into one creature.

Yes, a lot like that, actually.

So yeah, we're doing a shadow puppet sequence for the Mama Mia/Ana's Abortion scene. A rather lengthy shadow puppet scene. A very fiddly, rather lengthy shadow puppet scene. One that we can only hope works out in the end because we haven't even really had a chance to rehearse it all that much. Ehh, whatever, it'll be fine, the puppets look good at least which is a step up from anything I could have done.

We also did a lot more blocking this week. We blocked out all four of our scenes! Admittedly, in Doctor Vhite we barely move at all and Hiding Sandy is basically just stolen (heh) from an earlier exercise we did a few weeks ago, but aside from that it's all new awesome engaging blocking!

Okay, Mama Mia/Ana's Abortion isn't much to look at either, but Racist Insults is really cool!

...I mean, Racist Insults are really cool!

...I mean...

...Dammit.

Anyway, we had two vertical boards forming the sides of the back of the stage (does that make objective sense? It makes sense to me), and as the scene progresses Kate and I actually push each of them inward toward the centre of the stage - where Karen, playing Jimmy, is - in order to visually convey Jimmy's metaphorical confinement via the issue of racism. Also to physically confine him. Because it looks cool.

...I would right now launch into a stream-of-consciousness reflection on whether male characters played by female actors should be addressed using masculine or feminine pronouns, or even gender-neutral ones, but I'll spare you the pain. I'm not quite that cruel.

We also planned out each of our seminar sections and finalised the script! Yay! Once again, not really much I can mention here. Kate is taking the introduction and Doctor Vhite, Karen is handling both Racist Insults and Hiding Sandy, and yours truly has tackled Mama Mia/Ana's Abortion and the conclusion.

That scene really needs a shorter name.

--What if a crazed Communist went back in time and repeatedly stopped the event that led you and your friends to your respective destinies, and by doing so doomed the entire world to multiple apocalypses of varying degrees of awesomeness, because they didn't have any friends,

Alexander

KATE ALL ALONE - Australian Theatre Assessment, Week 2 (T4W7)

No single-day cop-outs this time! Five whole days of work this week!

Except for when we didn't have Drama.

And when I was away.

Yeah, except for those days.

So this week we started by organising a shared Google Doc for this task, which has honestly been really useful. It's allowed us to brainstorm ideas and such far more effectively, it's allowed us to link other important documents that we may need (currently just the assessment sheet itself, but I think we're planning to add a separate document containing the scripts for the scenes we're performing), and it's allowed us to communicate with each other when some of us are away. Looking at you, me.

So yeah, Kate got left all alone for at least one day, and instead of taking that time to curl up and ponder my isolation as I would have done she instead decided to be a great group member and think up some ideas for potential scenes we could perform, as well as for the direction of each of those scenes. So, well done Kate! Your effort has been greatly appreciated!

Then Kate and I were by ourselves and we certainly... talked. About... things. Yes. Not necessarily things related to the assessment, but definitely things.

Like, hidden revolving bookshelf door things.

Okay, so I'm exaggerating a bit. We actually did get a fair bit done that lesson, it's just that hidden revolving bookshelf doors stand out as the highlight moment of that hour. Aside from that though, we had a few philosophical discussions about the source of Ana's isolation, and how she seems to be trying to convince Catherine to be isolated with her - kind of like an "alone together" thing.

Also this week we started blocking a few scenes. Like, that's it. There's not really anything I can say on that. We decided the general shape of the stage for each scene, and that we were going to use the giant black box as a big foreboding desk. But, that's it. Not really anything of interest there.

--What kind of a name is Countess Coloratura, like, who would name their daughter Coloratura, like, I know names in Equestria are usually odd-sounding and weirdly prescient with regards to destiny but seriously Coloratura sounds even sillier than most of those,

Alexander

YEAR TWELVE WHAT - Australian Theatre Assessment, Week 1 (T4W6)

So this is our first assessment of Year 12, I guess.

I'm going to be doing weekly journals for this assessment, as I've been doing more frequently as of recent times. Just generally much easier to tackle. I mention this because this particular week, there was only a single class spent working on this assignment anyway.

So, moving on to the actual journal portion of this journal. Since this was entirely our first lesson with the assignment, the hour was spent mostly doing that kind of general coming-to-grips kind of stuff. We began by examining the sheet, taking a look at exactly what we needed to do and what the requirements were. Basically, we need to create a 'seminar' of about 12 minutes in length, incorporating 2 scenes from each of our 2 texts - Neighborhood Neighbourhood (it's an Australian text, remember) Watch and Stolen - discussing how Epic and Domestic issues were presented in each of them.

Complicated enough?

Karen and I...

Actually, it's worth mentioning my group members at this point. (I apologise for the stream-of-consciousness nature of these journals, but it helps me write them and also will help me read back through them when it comes time to do that for study.) So. My group is comprised of myself, Karen Nelapati and Kate MacLeod. Only three people, out of our class of eight. Something about preparing us for uneven numbers in GP groups or something. Anyway.

Kate was away on this particular week (and thus the entire 'week' of this journal), so Karen and I thought about how exactly to define Epic and Domestic issues - not just for the audience, but for ourselves as well. The concept we ended up with is that Epic Issues are, for lack of a better word (which certainly exists, but eludes me at this current moment), the large-scale issues; Domestic Issues are the smaller-scale results of these Epic issues.

Wow, this actually feels like a remarkably substantial post for a single hour of work. Don't get too excited though, it seems like a lot of description goes to the background information on any assessment so don't expect five times this much for each subsequent week.

--Not entirely sure how I got here,

Alexander