CTP Final Journal (#18, 11/27/18)
This past Tuesday, my team and I performed our piece. We managed to get in a great amount of practice with our sounds and lighting people. I think that over the duration of this process the most striking thing I learned was that you can't force progress and creativity (which I learned by trying to rush the story creation) and that if not everyone agrees, it may fall apart. We often found ourselves disagreeing or unable to decide, and although we were always able to work it out and come to an agreement, it did sometimes hinder the completion of our project. As we had hoped, the addition of lights and sound at key points in our piece had a huge effect, and the final performance looked very nice and clean cut because of it. Our talkback as well went swimmingly. Through the questions we were asked about our process, we were able to communicate to the audience our purpose, our thoughts, our early desires for this project, our inspiration, everything, We were able to describe how our piece grew and changed over time, and explain why we chose what we did. Finally hearing the feedback of an actual audience on our piece was as informative as it was rewarding.
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CTP Journal #17 (11/19/18)
As I predicted, this week was mostly centered around practicing and setting up lights for our piece. We were given red gels to use, and have been practicing with them as much as we can. We have three rows of lights in the area we are performing in. The back row (furthest from the stage) is now entirely red, which works wonderfully for our piece, as we need to be able to switch back and forth between lights quite often. My team and I were able to type up sound and lighting cues, and have been working with two of the juniors in our theatre class to teach them how to do it. The last classes we had were spent finalizing cues, and practicing with these juniors. I imagine that this week's class will be much of the same, simply practicing through repetition and making sure that our lights work, and, more importantly, that they give the desired effect. A couple of times we have changed lighting to match our artistic visions better. Now, everything is set in stone, and all that's left is to make sure everything goes smoothly for our performance date tomorrow.
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CTP Journal #16 (11/13/18)
This week was by far the most productive my group and i have had. We had a difficult time in the beginning with deciding on our actual plot was, and I think that that indecisiveness is what stunted our progress for a long while. Then, after we had our plot, we struggled with organizing the scenes in a way that worked and were all hesitant to finalize things. This week though, my teammates and I had a talk that was basically along the lines of, "we need to start solidifying things and making important decisions now." After this, morale and determination were high, and we succeeded in setting our characters, scenes, and a vast majority of our transitions in stone. Now, going forward, our main priority is practice and figuring out our lighting and sounds. This is integral to our piece, and it would lose most of it's intent and extra artistic elements without it. We also took it upon ourselves to meet over the weekend. In doing that we were able to practice our piece many times, and get together to create most of the recordings that we need to integrate into our piece. This included radio announcer voice lines, background noise, and the collection of royalty free sound effects that we will be using. Next weekend, we plan to meet again just to make sure that we have the time we need to finalize everything else, and sneak in some last minute practice.
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CTP Journal #15 (11/5/18)
We have officially started writing a script in our group. In doing some exercises and trying to decide how each scene was going to play out, we found that trying to do it without is actually quote difficult. Our piece, however, is not dialogue based, so we are hoping that we will be able to instead of writing out concrete lines for everyone, write our intention and thoughts about each scene, with guiding lines that can be used. This basically means that we will be offering potential lines, or coming up with a few lines that encapsulate our purpose for the scene, and that we think will accurately portray the feelings to the audience that we are trying to omit. We are having some difficulty right now, as we don't have a lot of our lighting or sounds set up, but those are both extremely integral parts of our performance. This next week, we will be working on refining our scenes, our script, and hopefully trying to get started on the other aspects of our piece that desperately need the work.
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CTP Journal #14 (10/21/18)
Last week, my team and I did some amazing work!
We talked and did exercises for the entire class period both days and through this, we were able to finally define and outline what our plot is, and who we want it to center around. Even with those two things, there are certainly other aspects to be solidified, but as it is right now we're doing pretty well with what we have and where we want to go from here. As it is, we have our first few scenes, and we know how we want it to end. This week we did a lot of talking to hear what everyone is thinking for the future. We did this because we wanted to get an idea of how everyone maybe wanted it to go, and from there we discussed which ideas we liked and which we didn't. We need to start working on our intention now, and what audience we think our piece would best suit. Right now, we're thinking very loosely that the age group of the audience would be later teens and adults, but we need to get a lot more specific than that for the future. That is likely what we'll be doing next class, as well as organizing a better storyline. Because our week was so short this week, we ended up only having one class period. During that period, we did as I expected we would, and focused on what we wanted our piece to convey to an audience. Rather than thinking about age or a certain specific demographic, we tried to pinpoint the main point or message from our piece. As it is now, we have a few different possible ideas that we're considering. This period, we also spent a good portion of time trying to make a somewhat coherent outline of the plot so far on paper, leaving room between each point to add in notes or other events. Now, we have a fairly stable idea of both our plot, and the main characters we will be centering our story around. |
CTP Journal #13 (10/15/18)
Unfortunately, I was not present for last week's classes, as I was in Mexico for a family member's wedding. That being said, while I was there I did my best to communicate with my team at the time of their regular class meetings. I face timed with them, but that proved not to be very effective. Instead, we were able to text and communicate ideas over the phone and email. Luckily for me, my team values my input, and is waiting for me to be there with them to make any final decisions. Tomorrow we'll meet for the first time this week, and that is when we'll start cementing details about characters and scenes, and the types of events that we want to have. While I was gone, I was told that they used the class time to delve a little bit deeper into the main themes we developed last week, and all of the notes taken were sent to me, so I have a copy. I read them, formed my ideas, suggestions, and reservations, and will be relaying them tomorrow so that we can collaboratively decide what we want to keep and what we want to edit.
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CTP Journal #12 (10/10/18)
So far, my team and I's devising process is going smoothly and following our previously created schedule. This week, we spent our time delving deeper into the emotions we wanted to have attached to our piece, and how we want to build our piece around them so that the audience is imbued with the same ones. We gave personal stories, songs, and memories, then drew a small handful of strong, common themes between them. Once we had decided what those were, we got out a large piece of poster paper and began making a tree of our themes, and the sub-themes that fit underneath them. We talked about the type of theater that we wanted, and the artistic style we want to keep in mind while creating our project. Now, we've not gotten into the characters and scenarios that we want, and instead focused on laying the base for those so that we don't rush into anything or become attached to certain ideas too early on in the process. Next week is when we may begin touching on that, but there are still some foundational things that we need to set up before we can do that.
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CTP Journal #11 (10/1/18)
This most recent week in our CTP process has been mostly just the required IB planning work. This means that while we know how we want to go about the CTP, we still don't know what it is we'll be doing. This is because we haven't gotten into any of the actual devising yet. However, I have high hopes for this year's final CTP performance. I'm in a group of strong and experienced theater practitioners who all have creative ideas to bring to the table. We all decided that we had a relatively similar vision for a final piece, and could work effectively together, so we formed a group of four. I think that that, combined with the fact that this year, we have a better idea of what we're doing from the start, will help us to produce a meaningful and striking piece. So far, we know that we want to take some inspiration from the devising company, Frantic Assembly. We like their approach to theater because they tend to focus on the portraying of emotion through movement, physicality, and expression. We like this, because we all want to end up with something that isn't too dialogue heavy. This week we also worked on our group agreements. Most of our agreements were built off of what we had learned from our prior CTP experience, so I think that they'll be more effective this year, or at the very least more refined and relevant.
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CTP Journal #10 -Revisiting the CTP and Theater Profiles
The seniors in theater this year are all going to do a final Collaborative Theater Project. The ones we did last year were just for practice, and these ones actually will be sent in to the IB. In preparation for this, we filled out a worksheet to give other potential group-mates an idea of our skills and strengths. This worksheet is called the Theater Profile. I did not think I was going to be able to fill out the entire sheet with listings of my experiences, skills, etc, but I actually ended up using most if not all of the room provided on the page. I had to remind myself that even non - theater related aspects of yourself are important, and can certainly affect the way you perform, write, and discover theater. I am overall looking forward to a second chance at the CTP, as looking back, there are quite a few changes that I would like to make. I'm thankful for the having had the chance to practice last year so that I know what to do differently this year, and I'm glad for the profile sheet, as it will likely help everyone get sorted into groups they'd be good for.
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CTP Journal #9 -Final Reflections
Our piece overall was something I was glad to be a part of, and I greatly value the experience. Nearing the final performance, our teacher asked us what our intention for the piece was, and we realized that we hadn't established one that we could all agree on. In the end we decided that our intention was to show the audience that even the most unlikely people can become friends, in the right circumstances. Other than that, our performance was pretty solid. Although, we did end up changing the set in a pretty major way just a few hours before our audience showed up, adding some big elements that would help it look a little more put together. I'm a little sad to be done with this project, as I had a lot of fun with my peers and learned a lot about devised theater. I look forward to the next opportunity I get to create a piece of theater.
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CTP Journal #8
Today, we tried to make our beginning scene make a bit more sense. So far it seems kind of choppy and unbelievable, so we're trying to fix the scripting. I think one of our problems right now is that we know what our end goal is, and we know how we want most things to go, we just are having a bit of trouble with getting there. Hopefully though, with some work and attention, our piece will not feel as unnatural and forced as it currently does. We also talked about how we need to work on our energy levels, because most of us had pretty low energy this week, and so every scene we tried became stagnant and felt wrong. Each character is either a high energy character or a medium energy character. My hope is that if we do have higher energy levels, the script and relationships between our characters will seem more believable.
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CTP Journal #7
This week, we worked a lot with the scenes we had laid out. I think one of the goals we want to accomplish is giving each character a scene in which they shine. There's that, and then a couple of scenes are thrown in in which the focus is on the developing relationships between characters. We spent a lot of time doing a sort of trial and error method for some of our scenes. We played through them improvisationally, then talked with our director about what things could be different or felt awkward. I enjoy this process, because while it does involve a little bit of fumbling around and blindly trying to figure things out, it also means that anything can happen in the moment, and sometimes you'll find something good that you want to keep. We are making some good progress, and are hoping to work with our script again this upcoming week.
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CTP Journal #6 -Inspiration Session
Recently, we had ourselves an all class Inspiration Session. What this means, is that we brought in three personally significant items each, sat in a circle, and presented them to each other. It was kind of like the high school edition of Show N' Tell™. It was a mixture of funny stories, soul baring, and discovering some of the more obscure similarities we shared with each other. Ultimately by the end, we had narrowed it down to a few themes, including monsters/fears, childhood, and loss. There were others, but these were the main ones. This helped everyone out quite a bit when it came time to start creating our pieces, and I'm glad that we did it. It gave us all something to build from if we didn't have any other ideas, and came in handy when incorporating certain themes and ideas, and tying things together. I look forward to seeing how this Inspiration Session manifests in our future pieces.
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CTP Journal #5 - Agreements Discussion
In class, we were all given a sheet of paper with some agreements listed for the CTP process. First, we went over this as a class and discussed what we wanted to keep, remove, and edit. That went rather well, and we were able to come out of it with a good list of things we all believed were important. Everyone was asked to write them down, which I think was a very good idea for future reference. If ever we find ourself in a rut, it may come in handy to look over our agreements again. This process was not group exclusive, and was something we all had to agree on as a class. I was pleased to find that one of the things my peers and I agree on without a doubt is the issue of respect. Devising a piece inevitably requires vulnerability. In order to even begin, everyone must input their own thoughts, which brings up a fear of judgement. Even though arguments or differing opinions are to be expected, it's highly important that no member be shut down or ignored, or made to feel as though their opinions and creativity are not valued as much as that of their teammates.
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CTP Journal #4
We've decided to bring back one of the ideas that was brought up in the initial brainstorming session (the one I was absent for). I think it's a really good idea that will help us in figuring out the dynamics between characters and how they interact. My group and I want to take inspiration from The Breakfast Club. We all agree that that's the kind of bond we want our characters to end up with, and have been keeping that in mind and trying to incorporate it. This class was rather uneventful in terms of exercises, mostly because we had multiple people missing. So, out of the three of us present, we decided we'd start working on an actual script. Again, none of it was set in stone, but we actually managed to do pretty well together. We weren't able to finish the whole thing, but we definitely got a good chunk of it out of the way. I think that that was a pretty good way to use our time in our teammates' absences, and I'm looking forward to discussing what we wrote with them when they return.
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CTP Journal #3
Today we focused on doing exercises to get a better sense of the plot. We started by getting more of a grasp on what we wanted each character's personality to be like. Basically what we did was give a few adjectives for each of our characters, then launched straight into telling a story about the character's childhood from their point of view. Our basic plot right now is four teens who run away together, despite the fact that they don't know each other that well. They all run away for different reasons, so in this exercise we tried to tell childhood stories that sort of alluded to why they would want to leave later in life. It was awkward, as we expected. Mostly because nobody knew how to tell a genuine story in character yet, so they all came out choppy and unsure. I think a way we could have improved would have been to make sure that everyone knew in advance that nothing they said was set in stone, and could be changed later. That way we would have been way less apprehensive about saying something we later wanted to change. After that, we attempted to improvise the dialogue for the first scene, which we hadn't written yet at that point. Again, it was pretty awkward trying to go off of just the bare bones of an idea and make something good. But that's another thing I appreciate about my team; they all are willing to do exercises that make them feel awkward or embarrassed for the sake of the project.
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CTP Journal#2- HowlRound
http://howlround.com/devising-the-environment-finding-a-narrative-in-the-noise
This week we were assigned another HowlRound Post reflection assignment. To fit our current curriculum, we are to pick a journal that has to do with devising and the devising process. I chose a journal written by Stephen Spotswood, who wrote his post while teaching a group of students who were making a devised piece about climate change and the environment. He talked about how each aspect of a piece is important in it's own way. For example, his students want their piece to really stick with people, but still be something humorous rather than a hard-to-follow trudge through scientific facts and grim-looking statistics. My group has somewhat hit the same problem. We want our piece to be funny and make the audience laugh, but we also want to have something that they can think about or take with them once it's over. Another thing Spotswood touched on was the importance of having exercises in a group devising something. These can help people work through the persisting uncertainty of what to do next. |
CTP Journal #1
I was not present for our first meeting about the collaborative theater project. This meant that when I came back, I was bombarded with lots of ideas. Luckily though, I ended up really liking what the group had come up with. Thus far we have not started any exercises, and have instead been focusing on further developing the ideas that we have. I really appreciate that my group has been so attentive and made sure that I am able to contribute as much as they are, despite not having been there when the general idea for the story was thought up. Our work is coming along nicely, and we've started brainstorming what exercises we can take from the theater companies we researched to further develop our characters. Today we mostly focused on the plot, rather than going too in to depth about who our characters were. All we have on them so far is their names, and faint ghosts of their personalities, but I'm looking forward to working on them more. This has been a fun and engaging creative process so far, and I like it very much. My character's name is Tab.
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Personal and Social Context
My personal context, I suppose, would start with the fact that I grew up in Washington. My father is from Montana, and my mother is from LA. I moved around a few times, but always stayed in relatively the same area. I have two sisters. My older sister is 20, and my younger one is 13, making me the middle child at 16. I was born on April 19th, 2001. As for social context, I suppose not much is different.
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