Confesiones de Ana Correa

DESCRIPTION:

“Confesiones” by Ana Correa was an unipersonal in which the actress shared important parts of her life and how this was an influence to her characters.

In order to show this two different scenes (the one where she is telling her story and the one that her characters are acting on), she created an inner scenery: with a tape she formed a square in the stage and when she was in this square, she was a character acting, and when she was out she was herself.

In order to change her characters, she was wearing many costumes one on top of the other, and while she was talking, she would take the clothes off and put it in a big bag she had. The first costume she had was from a nurse, she was already on stage when the audience came in and we could feel a “Paucartambo” mood, as she was throwing things on to the audience and she was a wearing a mask, like the ones used in Paucartambo. The second costume was of a poor woman, the third was by Bernardina from Santiago, the fourth of a teacher, the fifth was from Yerma and the sixth from a character in “Sin titulo, tecnica mixta”.

ANALYSIS:

First of all what I found very interesting in this unipersonal, was the use of the space, we could clearly see too different spaces that represented two different things, one was of the real world, in which we could see Ana Correa sharing stories of how her characters were built up, and the other one, was the one in which she portrayed her characters. One was of description and the other one was of image.

This separation of the scenery was very catchy, as we could see how an actress changes into a character. It taught us that we can have two different spaces on stage, even though the scenery was very poor, as it was all black, this helped a lot in the changes of scenery. The scenery was completely changed just by the use of props, and how the actress filled this stage. In my opinion the resonance here was very controlled and measured. Because even though she was telling us her experience, she performed this in such a way that everything fit in, she even had a book, which sometimes may read, and then she knew where to change and where to enter the character-stage and everything was precise.

Also I learnt that the texture is very important, it creates different moods on stage and in the audience. In this play in particular, the use of different textures helped the audience understand the characters inner intentions. For example, in the fifth character which was from Yerma, she was a washerwoman that was hanging up the clothes, she used real wet clothes, which gave the scene a more realistic and deep meaning, we could see that the clothes were wet, as they looked heavier, and the actress got wet when she was surrounded by this clothes also the floor got wet by the clothes, this gave a meaning to the play, as it showed that she was not pretending to be a washerwoman but she was one.

Also the use of the plastic bag (we can see a picture bellow), gave this scene another perspective, with this and the use of her body she made a foetus, we could see what the intention of the character was, what she wanted and could not have, which was of course a baby. But what if she used cloth instead of this plastic bag, would it have been the same? Because the bag gave the exact meaning of this foetus, the texture as we can see is VERY important on stage as it creates a mood and a reaction in the audience.

CONNECTIONS:

We could clearly see here the effect of “divided image”, which is when we visualize two different things which finally joins. We can see this effect in this play, as the characters and the actress came together, they join and they are one, as every aspect of the actress life keeps on bringing the characters she built from her experiences. Also we can see this in “El ultimo ensayo”, when the old Yma Sumac and the young Yma Sumac come together at the end; we visualize in our minds  two different Yma Sumacs, but they are actually one.

Also the texture, as already said created different moods, for example, we want to use metals in this year’s play to create a cold’ish feeling within the audience.

Also regarding the different ways of changing characters, the actress wore one cloth on top of the other and while she was talking she took the clothes out. Another way of changing characters as already seen is having a black base costume and then add simple clothes on top which are easy to wear and take off: As in Shadow Queendom and Valle oscuro.

REFLEXION:

This week we’ve talk a lot about the magic of theatre, when theatre works, which is when the audience can see things on stage that are not there, such as in Yma Sumac, when we could see that the actors where singing to her, while there was only a chair there, or for example what mimes do such as Marcel Marceau (we can see a video bellow), which incredibly makes the audience see what is not there, this clearly requires a great body work, and as in this year’s school play we want to focus a lot on the body expression as it is one of German expressionism’s conventions, I was wondering how to achieve this, I’m not saying that this year’s play is going to be a mime play, but in my opinion doing exercises about this , of “mime” would help a lot in the characters development and it would turn on the imagination of the actors, but in order to do this the use of the body is very necessary, and we want exaggerated movements, but how do we achieve, in such a short time this kind of skills?, maybe doing articulation movements? Would this help? What exercises can help in order to achieve this? Or we should just give them the scenes and work, without any preparation?