finally acting!

Description: This week we’ve been doing a lot of the acting of the play, we’ve been talking about the titles that can suite the play we are making, and we’ve come up with the title “Shadow Queendom” , which is the perfect title as it is short and sounds like a fairy late, and this play is like a fairy tale. This week particularly I’ve been working on acting, I haven’t act since a long time ago so I enjoyed this “acting week”.

Analysis:  I’ve been rehearsing two scenes, scene 8 and scene 10. I forgot how acting was, in scene 10 I am Mathilda, and I thought this was going to be an easy work to do, but I’ve come up with the problem that I don’t know how a queen walks, talks, and moves. So instead of being an easy work to do, this scene was very challenging. Now I’ve search more about queens and I think I have an idea of a queen now.  This scene is when Deborah is destroyed and Mathilda wins. The rehearsals were very tense and in a way a stress one, especially because in this scene there are little kids, that sometimes it can be very hard to work with them. Also because there is a fight in this scene, and fights are always difficult as everyone has to be doing something and it has to be “in order”.  Apart from this scene we were working on scene 8, in which there are 2 guards (one of them me), and this guards have big puppets, which ive been working on those too, we have already the head of this guard puppets, but we have no idea how the body will be and we only have a month! This is an easier scene as we use puppets and I did know how guards moves and talks.  

Connections: I really want to make a good queen in scene 10, so I was thinking on trying a physical warm up and work in movements that this queen will do. Also for the big puppets, to remember the classes we had about puppets and to practice with the puppets as soon as I have them.

Reflexion, question: what I was wondering, was about the puppets, how are we going to make their bodies?, and would it be easy to do? Because we only have a month…

Stimuli to get a play

Description: We’ve been working on our stimuli for our PPP, this week i had to search about: symphony 25 of Mozart, and all week through we’ve been talking about this and how can we get the plot and the vision of a play with just this song.

Analysis:  For this symphony, we first had to look what the symphony was made of, and what does it had. We realized that the instrument played were repetitive, like a mirror. So we came up with the idea of the mirror, after 2 classes of looking at the song, we came up with this idea. And now that we had the idea of “mirror” we had to look for a story, you can either invent the plot or use a book (a story), that connected to the idea of mirrors. I decided to invent a story, and as a game we split the two sides of the stage, and then playing with still pictures, both sides tells a story in a different way, I was thinking of the theme “abortion” and the plot will be arguing about this. The plot would be with a family and a girl that is pregnant, (this appears on both sides), then the girl starts telling her parents that she has been raped (both girls in the stage talks at the same time) and then when they start deciding whether to abort or not, one part of the stage freezes allowing the other one to talk and then this one freezes and allows the other opinion. This will teach the audience a different perspective and different opinions about this controversy theme, and this will also allow them accept new ways of thinking.

Connections: I really want this play to TEACH the audience something, to leave the theatre with something more in their heads and to keep them thinking and to keep them analyzing about this theme, like in “Sin titulo, tecnica mixta”, that taught me things that I didn’t know about Peru even though I am Peruvian and that made me think about this problem. I want the same effect on the audience that will see this play.

Reflection, question: What I don’t know is how , for example, Sin titulo, tecnica mixta, did this, how did he made the audience go very deep and then keep them thinking about the theme they acted, how did they get to teach the audience something and how did they get to really get them into the play?

Masks

This last week, we’ve been working in the school play as always, but we have also went to see “Los musicos ambulantes” from Yuyachkani.

For our luck this played used masks, (half masks), which by the way gave the play a really “catchy” effect. I think that as Roberto said, working with masks includes lots of characterization, and movement  as they cannot see your gestures and you have to transmit your feelings by your body.

We were talking in class that in order to use a mask you must always look at the public and in this play we saw the effect, that this gave on the audience, yes, we have to look at the public and avoid looking to the back or next to you.

This play was very interesting as they used lots of instruments, and very  nice Peruvian songs, which I liked, because they used different types of instruments, but all Peruvian. I really enjoy the characterization of each of the characters in this play, but if I had to talk about one, it would be the dog which was called “chusco”. I enjoed more this character as, in my opinion it was well developed and had a very good use pf the body and transmited us (the audience) all the feelings  without showing the gestures in her face.

This also made me think about the physical work, that we did in class, as we have to explore every part from our body, would this help in this kind of acting? As they use masks?, I think that yes, it would help a lot, as you have to move every part from your body and show what you can and cant do.

I have never watched a play with masks, and I truly believed  that masks was a bad idea, and that it would be very boring, but after watching this play, I changed my mind and now, I think that masks will be very interesting to see I our play, and something “different” to work with, but just as every new technique it is difficult to developed and we must face the truth, and we have very little time. So apart from physical work, what does it take in order to make the school play as interesting as “Los musicos ambulantes”?