School Play Rehearsals

DESCRIPTION

This year’s school play is going to be German expressionism, the IB power puff girls are in charge of this and this week we’ve been working in our groups, directing the kids. I’ve been doing two scenes from the play, the first and second scene, I divided the groups in two one of only boys and the other one of girls and two boys.

Also in class we’ve learn the different types of lanterns and how this will be applied in the play. In class we learned the different types of lanterns and the ones we will be using are: the PAR’s which are always used in the school plays, and the one we have a lot of, even though this doesn’t have lens and we cannot focus the light as the spotlights. Also we will be using Fresnel’s and finally spotlights which the school will be buying. Besides this we will use projectors to project some images we want as part of the scenery.

We looked at the scenery and Roberto came with the idea that we will have 4 levels in the ‘real-life’ story within the play and we have to come out with the ideas of the dreams.

ANALYSIS:

First of all, the school play rehearsals are very enjoyable, my group are call the “Geist”, I prepared two scenes and I tried directing as good as I could: I did an inner-performance before giving them the scenes, we explored different feelings, such as anger, sadness, scariness and others, this I think helped them understand a little bit more what we meant about the inner feelings coming out when you perform, in the final result I realised that the acting was not exaggerated at all, as I did not rehearse exaggerated movements, or I did very little of it. So this is why I will be doing exaggeration exercises next week, as German expressionism is all about body and face expressions. For the face expressions I will be using tension and relaxation gestures, so that they get used to have exaggerated expressions and to give the effect of a mask. I will also be using music as an external tool, and breathing as an internal tool, so that they can get more into the mood. The breathing helps a lot to transmit the feeling of the actor to the audience, it’s in my opinion one of the best ways of transmitting either anger, happiness, etc. As you do not only transmit it to the audience but you also feel what your character is feeling. Also the music helps a lot to take out the inner feelings of an actor, that’s why I’ve spent a whole rehearsal with different type of music to set different types of mood within my characters. Still as said I need to work on the exaggeration and breathing as well.

The four level idea was for me very inspiring, and I would love to be doing the one for the dreams, but I can’t as we don’t even have a storyline, I know that it’s my duty to do this, but we’ve never talked about it deeply as a group, but looking at the rehearsals, the ‘shrei’ have been working on short scenes and I liked the zombie scene they did, I thought it could be the blue dream. My vision for the kids in blue for this first dream is like this performance, not the acting but the make-up and the idea of the bald heads.

CONNECTIONS:

As I have some of the music that we may use in the play, next time I will use this music for the rehearsals. As in “El ultimo ensayo” the music in this year’s school play, in my opinion, needs to be very well done as it will be the music and the actions of the actor together that will set the mood within the audience. As in “El ultimo ensayo” where when there was a ‘funny part’ (the Calacas) the music changed completely, or there was slow music, meaning something else, that’s indeed the feeling I want the audience to feel in the performances.

REFLEXION:

As said before this week I’ve been working on two scenes, and this was very challenging for me as I had to split myself into two in order to see both of the scenes. When I did the music technique with my group, they were not motivated at all, so I wonder if they will be motivated with the exaggerated movements. Anyways they do not have an option, if they want to be in the play they have to do this movements, but how to motivate them?, what should I do?, and how to target what I want? Which is that everyone gets involved and excited, and therefore do a great job? Also are this exercises going to work?, I know I must try to know, but if they do not work what else should I do?, maybe try them again? But then it will turn REALLY boring. How do they know they work? Maybe in order to stop doing this exercise they encourage themselves to do it better just once and then what? How to know if the feeling from the actor comes from the inside?