Dancing

This week I will be focusing on directing, as I directed a lot. The scene I direct was scene 1, the ones of the dancers for the school play. They already had a part made of the dance, but it was very short, incomplete and it lacked of energy. As it is the first scene, I truly believe that it should start very catchy and with a lot of energy.

This scene was very hard to direct, as the girls that dance are from form 4 and even though they are supposedly to be more responsible and mature, they do not pay attention and many times don’t follow instructions. They did not put the effort that they should have put it when acting, but as they are convinced that they are not important and that they won’t talk, they feel as they do not need to put that much effort. But the truth is that every scene in the play is unique and special, and even thought they might not talk the dance implies lots of effort and energy. They should be very focus and I clearly don’t know how to make them want to do this dance, because it seriously looks like if they didn’t even want to be in the play.

Apart from the lack of behavior and interest from the actresses, I should take account the movements for the dance. The dance in this scene, will be the first one, so in order to make the audience interested it must start with a lot of energy and entertaining movements. I came out with some ideas for the dance, which I think work very well. On the other hand, I must say that the dancing is sometimes boring. But what does it take to make it as interested as the “Mas pequeños que el Guggenheim”? , the dancing here was very funny, but we can’t make it funny in the one for the school play, so we cant make “silly” movements, otherwise it would look as if we are making fun of it. So what can I do to make it interesting but not as a joke?. I have already used a very interesting part, but what else?, and what can I do to make this girls more interested?, and what to tell them in order for they to know that their scene is as important as the rest one?

ENERGY

 This week has been “Puppets” week, we use all the skills and energy we learned just to do puppets in every single moment we could. We finish joining the pieces of the body, of the big puppets, which Manu took lots of time to do them and then we were filling them with cotton, until one of them broke, we had to paste them with the “Africano” which we are all addicted to now, and we mostly did a lot of puppets. But what I want to center my entry about is the two plays we went to see this weekend: “Mades Medus” and “Mas pequeños que el Guggenheim”.

First of all “Mades Medus” had a really  “thinker” storyline, as it was not easy to understand and it was very complex. In order to transmit the message they wanted to transmit to the audience, which I think it might be the “paradoxes”, they would have had to use the setting and acting in a different way.

First of all, we all agree that at some point the play was boring to see, this was because the actions in the play were not continuous and did not attract the audience’s attention. Even though their entrance was really interesting as they were one on top of the other one and it catch our attention, not only because they were in an acrobatic way, but because of their actions and movements. It started with a really nice energy and very catchy until they starting talking and until the plot started developing. The energy never reduced as the actors were always motivated and never loosing energy (in my opinion) but in this case the actions and the acting did not work well with the script, as they used the typical prototype of “funny and silly characters” with “difficult and complex script”, this they usually use to “make the scrip interesting” but instead of doing this, they opaque the script.

I personally think that the script was really difficult to understand, and even though  the script was made to transmit controversies and knowledge, it did not made sense at all. If we might talk about the setting I might say that it was really “cheap”, as they didn’t use the colors well and the setting was very poor, as the costumes and make-up, we could even see the make up going out and leaving pieces of the actors skin uncover, which gave the impression of unimportance. Also even though on a stage you do not need too much props to make the play interesting, in this play the props were used in such a poor way, that it was not catchy, and so instead of helping the actor it disturb him.

We also have “Más pequeños que el Guggenheim”, which was the second play we went to see. This play was a comedy and it was just amazing, somehow it made Robbie stand up, so we can agree that it was outstanding. This play made me laugh through all of it, and on the contrary as the previous one I did not get bored.

This play started and ended with the same energy, but what made it different?, first of all the plot and the storyline, as it was simple but not “cheap”. It was easy to understand and follow, which made the audience even more interested. Also they used a really “informal language”, (bad words, I would say), but instead of making the play vulgar, it made it funny, and enjoyable. We couldn’t take our eyes off the play. The acting was just great, every single actor had its different type of walking, speaking and expressing, which showed how much work in characterization they did. Which I may say, that it showed that they worked a lot in that, and was with this that they gain the audience attention. They even danced, and even though the dancing in plays tend to be a little be childish and boring, in this one, it end up being a master piece, with more laughter and attention from the audience.

I haven’t enjoy a play this much since a long time ago, as we are cursed from the “analysis” point of view every time we go and watch a play. But this one made my mind flew away and unconsciously I was analyzing but at the same time enjoying the play.

We can say that in both of them the energy of the actors was very high and well developed, but what made it different? Why was one play more interesting that the other one?, and I think that it is because of the script. So in a conclusion I can say that if it is difficult to understand and the acting is “funny” so that it “makes it interesting” then it won’t grab the audience attention. If the script is easy to understand and the actions are well developed as well as the characterization, then here we will gain full attention of the audience. But would this work for every script? Or just special ones as the last play we saw? How can we get into such a deep and well developed characters? What does it take? How can we know which jokes can work and which ones won’t? Is it a risk to take? Any steps to get there?

Directing

This week, we’ve look at several things, first about how to do an analysis and the steps for it, this is important as we are doing out research and it needs to have lots of analysis in order to get top grades. In the workshop we continue doing masks, but other kids were helping too and it didn’t work as bad as I thought it was going to be like.

Also for the first time this year, we did warm up in class, it was very difficult as we needed a lot of concentration, which is the same as you need for acting, so it is very important for an actor to do the warm up, not only to concentrate but to get full of energy and get ready to act. I found this really difficult the first day we did it but the second one was quiet easier as we already know what was going to happen and therefore we got ready for it.

What I enjoy the most this week was directing scene 9 for the school play, even though they gave me very little information to start building the scene, I managed to do quite a lot, and at least from my point of view it wasn’t that bad. The scene was about ghost, so we needed to explore the character; we walked like ghost for 5 min to get an idea of it and to see what looks good and what doesn’t work. Then we come up with a special type of ghost which I think it worked as it is not as the normal prototype ghost but a new one. It was very difficult to keep order as they were kids from form 1 and even though they are from upper school, they were often distracted. Somehow I manage to do the scene with some dialogues and some techniques like: still picture and chorus. I think we need to work a lot in the scene but up to know it is moving on. What worries me, is that, if I took 2 hours to do a little scene, and we still need to work on it, would it take that much with the other scenes? And what about the younger kids ones?, would they be distracted?, Would we have time? 

Regretting Puppets?

This week was a short week, but even thought it was a short one we did different kind of activities which helped for the school play and the research. Talking about the Research, we had to do the “outline”, first outline I have ever made, but it is quiet simple, just and introduction, 2 chapters and a conclusion, all referring to our research question, I think this helps a lot as it helps me be more organized in my investigation, and even though I haven’t found much yet and there are books with little information about Mexican theatre, I have managed to look forward to different sources such as videos and blogs.

Regarding the school play, we showed the kids our puppets, and they will make their own puppet, we will make the old ones make their puppets to avoid waste of time and mess. We need to teach them how the puppets stand, that they have to open their mouth in every vowel, that we give the puppet life and that we must cover our faces and look through the puppets eyes, all of what they taught us in our puppets classes. All of this make me scared, as I don’t know how they will respond to our teachings, and if they will behave good or it will be a mess, also, are we informed enough to teach them? What if they ask something that we don’t know? , Would I know how to respond to this?. And anyways would it work? Because this question has been following me through all the last two weeks, wouldn’t it be a mess? Would we have enough time to do the puppets? , Would it be a waste of time and materials?. What to do if it doesn’t work?.

Making puppets

This week, what we most learnt to do was to make puppets. We had our lessons where they explained us the different types of puppets, they even showed us the one we saw in “Vedova in Lumine”, this helped a lot as they explained the basis of how they were used, and as we are also using this type of puppet for the school play, it helped for us.

Also we saw a performance with puppets, which was really interesting. I think that all depends on the puppeteer, they make the puppet go alive and they make them unique and enjoyable to see. I was so excited to see these performances, and more in the second one, as it was different from any kind of puppet performance I have ever seen, it made me get full of suspense and I was scared and at the same time interested in the performance.

At the end we were doing our own types of puppets with spongy material (for the head), I found this quiet difficult to do, but we are still working on it, we will have to show this to the kids that are doing theatre and they will have to do a puppet too, I wonder if it will work, or if it will be a mess. Would it be a good idea using that much puppets in our play?, would it work?