SHADOW QUEENDOM

Description: this week has been the week we performed the school play, call "Shadow Queendom", all the week we've been  rehearsing and it has been very tough we had a lot of work to do. We have been acting and improving the scenery, costumes, actions, props and also making sure that everything is ready and perfect.

Analysis: First of all we started the week by finishing all the play (as it was not actually all finished). This was easy to do, because we had all the story planned and we just had to modify some things. On tuesday we did all the play, but still there were some things that were not right and somethings that didn't work so we had to change those, in my opinion there was a lack of acting skills (including me) not everybody of course because some did a very good job on their acting, but i think we needed to explore more our characters, and as we didn't have time to do this, they were not completely developed, I am not saying they were horrible, but they were alright. Apart from the acting on wednesday we rehearse for the last time as on thursday we were going to perform, we had some problems, such as that Stefano fall from the stilts and the head of a puppet was broken but in the end we solve this problems, first we fixed the puppet and about Stefano, he was alright, also that day we had public which were Maria Laura and Martin, and they gave us some feedback regarding the way we were using the puppets and that helped a lot to improve the play. The first day of the performance, I think it went very good, I had very low expectations, so in my opinion the first day everyone got really concentrated and they put all of their effort and the play was very good until the last part were Mateo didn't know his lines, apart from this everyone put a lot of effort and as always there were little things to improve for the next day, which we did. The second day everyone was more relaxed but somehow we did good, and the third day too, we added and improve some things during these days and in conclusion I think the play was good. This play showed me how to solve problems and how important is to always have a second plan, I was freaked when stefano fall but everyone came with different ideas of how could we replace him and we had a "plan b". Regarding my acting in the play I think it was poor, I really think I could have explore more my characters through the different exercises we once did in class, I was focus on my character but I guess that wasn't enough, and as I played different characters I needed to differentiate them. But we didn't have time to explore characters on the Theatre, we were too busy doing the puppets, the masks, and the scenery and the homework and works for other classes as well, because of course, Theatre arts is not the only subject, so I clearly didn't have too much time to explore my characters. I found really difficult to work with the big royals as I had problems with my bag and it hurt a lot to use those puppets,  also my puppet moved a lot and so it looked really bad, so I had to work more on my body in order to make the puppet look better. Regarding the before-acting things I did, was mostly putting make up on the girls and brushing them, which is easy to do and I think they looked very good. There were lots of problems, in this play, and it was very challenging because we had to make all the puppets but also we had to teach the kids how to use them, and as they are kids, they would usually play with them, or not use them correctly, so for the next time I would say to first think clear of what we are about to do and all the complication that this may imply and then see if it would work, in this case it did work but as we focus a lot on the puppets, we missed some things such as the lack of the scenery and maybe some of the acting. One of the scenes I loved was the shadow puppet scene, this was because it was something new and also it was very interesting to see, and you could do things that normal actors cant in front of an audience, for example when ramon's arms fall or when they took out manuela's guts, this little episodes, made the scene very interesting and innovative. In conclusion I would say that the play was very good, as we all put a lot of effort. 

Connections: In order to improve the acting, as I said in previously, I would have done more physical characterization, and this would have helped me on finding my character more, also when i said my lines i didn't know what actions to do, so in order to improve this too, I would have patiently sit and read my script and then find actions for each sentence I said, so the scene doesn't turn boring. Also, to improve the way the little kids were using the puppets, maybe we could have took a whole lesson just to teach them how to use them, and so maybe this would make the play look better. Also, if we would have more time we could have find a way of making the "big royal puppet" look better, as it moved a lot, I could have used a strip to hold it.

Reflection: what most worried me in the whole play was the way the actors were acting with a puppeteer, they all thought that they were the ones who were acting when the truth was that they were just a tool for the puppet to come alive, what I mean is that when using a puppet, the important thing, is the puppet and how you find different ways of making the puppet come to live, which we did in a way, but we needed to explore and rehearse a little bit more, so, which could have been other ways of making the puppet come alive, and how could we have teach the actors to be puppeteers, in order to improve the play and to make it even more interesting?