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Journal #10: World Theater Tradition Revisions
Most of the seniors in the IB theater class opted to re-record their world theater tradition presentations with substantial revisions. Everyone worked together, peer reviewing to make edits to their own work and that of others. I had to change a pretty crucial part of my presentation, and while it was a bit of work to figure out what I needed to change to make it happen, I think that now it is much more acceptable and conveys my point to the audience far more effectively. This thing was my moment of theater. Before I was only really portraying and angry, screaming voice. It is true that this is how Kyōgen actors speak, but when I did it it sounded clunky and awkward, and did not accomplish what a moment of theater is meant to accomplish. Now, I am doing a short monologue from The Odd Couple, by Neil Simon, and showing the physicality of a woman. I am also giving multiple examples of stance and form. I think that these will both work in my favor, and make for an ultimately better presentation.
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Journal #9: Thought Economics
For today's journal, we were all made to read the following article: https://thoughteconomics.com/theatre-performance-and-society/ . I think that this article is one of the best I've seen when it comes to discussing theater and its importance. This is because in writing it, the author interviews many different people involved in theater. Not just actors and directors, but dancers, musicians, and artists as well. When looking at theater as a whole, although I am an actor, I think that it is crucial to get the word of all involved, not just actors. This way you can truly see the amount of work that goes into a performance, and all the different people who have an interest in creating theater. Through these different perspectives, we can see the incentive and opinions behind all different types of people who all have a common interest: theater. For example, if you look at the accounts of a playwright and a set designer, they will both describe the importance of theater to themselves, and the rest of the world. However, their reasoning for their love of theater will likely be very different. Articles like this (in which many different types of "theater-people" are included) are important because they showcase the significance of theater on a global scale, and how everyone, no matter how opposite, can find something beautiful in the art of creating and putting on a performance.
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Journal #8: World Theater Tradition
Recently in class, we each began researching a theater tradition from another culture. For my research project, I've chosen Kyōgen, an old Japanese comedic form of theater. So far I've learned a lot about the voices and movements of many of the different types of characters. Kyōgen is similar to Commedia Dell'arte in that it has a number of stock characters in every show. The ones I've learned about are the Servants. the Master, the God of Fortune, and some animals. One of the things that surprised me is that I haven't seen any Kyōgen pieces that use masks or dramatized makeup. This may just be because none of the performers I've seen wanted or had time to do that, but I haven't read anything about it either. Hopefully I will learn soon. I am waiting on about three books from the UW library that are all about Kyōgen. I'm looking forward to having concise, organized sources that focus only on the theater type I'm researching.
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Journal #7: Restoration piece
As a class this week, we read a play called The Rivals. Once we had finished, we divided up into groups and all chose scenes to prepare from the play, which will be performed as our final. My group consists of four people, and we all decided to cast opposite of the characters we usually end up playing. I am playing the role of Lydia. So far the rehearsals are going well. They're pretty much what you would expect at this point. Everyone is bumping into each other trying to figure out how to say their lines and how to get the hang of their timing and blocking. That being said, we started the process off pretty well. The thing I enjoy most about my group is how we can all freely give each other notes. I think that it's important in a self-directed piece like this to be able to speak to your group and listen to everyone.
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Journal #6: Commedia Process Part 2
This week for our Commedia piece, we worked on figuring out how we wanted to stage our performance. We've mainly been rehearsing in the dance room downstairs, so we had to choose a setup that would be able to be adjusted to fit a different environment. We also had to remove the table from our skit, as it made maneuverability difficult and blocked a significant portion of the stage from the audience's view. Our piece will not suffer without it. In the finalized version of our performance, we hope to make the audience laugh, while also making sure that they can identify each student's character without too much trouble and understand the storyline despite the fact that none of us are speaking English. We are only allowing ourselves to speak gibberish. This way, we can practice inflection and intention in the voice, and learn how to tell a story without narrating what's going on.
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Journal #5: HowlRound
http://howlround.com/when-the-playwright-has-an-agenda
This week one of our assignments was to go onto the Howlround theater blog and find an article to reflect on. I chose an article written by Jonathan Mandell, who went to see two pieces of theater, Ferguson and The Siege. Ferguson is a play about the death and case of Michael Brown that stands to "debunk the still common anti-police narrative", and The Siege is a play based on the 2002 occupation for thirty-nine days by armed Palestinians of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. He discussed the two plays, and the reactions he got from people reading his reviews online. Ferguson is the one he spent the majority of his time talking about, though. I think that, to answer one of his main questions, it is not necessarily the responsibility of theatergoers to research a topic before they go and see a play about it. They have no obligation to do so. However, I would highly recommend it, especially in the case of plays like Ferguson and The Siege, so that you can have all of the background info on an event, and therefore construct your own opinion on the portrayal of it while in the audience. |
Journal #4: Commedia Process Part 1
In our Theater class, we are creating a theater piece based on Commedia del Arte. So far it's been a lot of deciding how each person will interpret their character, and learning the basics for them. I ended up with the role of Brigella, the cunning servant. I've actually found her somewhat difficult to portray, as most of the videos we watched spent very little time on the character of Brigella. Each character has a signature movement assigned. For example, Harlequin's is wide. jaunty hip movements and bouncy steps. Brigella's is slight hip movements. It's pretty difficult to move like that without becoming Harlequin, because you want to exaggerate so that people can tell who you are, but you also don't want to do it to the point where you get confused for someone else. It's hard to be slight and exaggerated at the same time. So, what I've been doing thus far is kind of sashaying around. Brigella is the wise and cunning servant, and so it makes sense to me that she would walk around like she owns the place (or at least like she wants to). Granted though, she is still a servant, so I've tried to make it more of a subtle confidence. I think I'll figure out what I like for her eventually.
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Journal #3: Imagination in Theater
-"To what extent is imagination a fundamental requirement for participation in theatre?"-
I think that imagination is one of the most important aspects of good theater. Imagination and creativity in a show can be the factor that makes or breaks the whole thing. Imagination comes into play in literally every single aspect of theater. Actors, directors, tech crew, props crew, set designers, everyone. Each person needs to have at least some sense of imagination. This way, they are able to make their show unique and interesting, even if it's been done a million times. Actors need it so that they can take their lines and blocking and make it interesting, to imagine new ways to do things that maybe others haven't considered previously. The backstage crew needs to create props, costumes, lighting, etc. That accentuates the theme of the play, but also adds something interesting. Directors need imagination, but a specific type. They need to be able to come up with their own ideas of course, but they also need to be able to take everyone else's unique ideas and mold them all into something that can be incorporated into the production to add to it and make it better. They also need to be able to visualize what they want the end product to be right from the start. A production without imagination is no doubt a boring one. You could try to make theater without imagination, I suppose, but it'll be terrible. Who would want to go see that? Who would want to participate in that? |
Journal #2: Lysistrata Setting
This week in Theater class, we were tasked with creating a practice director's notebook journal entry, centered around the play, Lysistrata. We each need to pick a setting and time period to put the play in other than Greece during the Peloponnesian war. Initially I was thinking of doing something that I already know some about and something more modern, like World War II or the Cold War, but I couldn't really see either of those working out. So instead, I did some research and came upon the English War of Roses. Hopefully, I will be able to make this work. The War of Roses is an English Civil war between the White Roses (House of York) and the Red Roses (House of Lancaster). I think that if I'm able to pull this off, the symbolism of roses and love/romance will fit really well with the play, even though it's more focused on sex than romance. The specific roses' symbolism in this war work well regardless though, as white and red roses have meanings that pertain to the story. Red represents love and passion, and white represents purity, both of which can be related to the plot of women withholding sex from men.
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Journal #1: Kabuki Theater
This week, we were told to research something of interest to us, and take an "inquirer's path" to find more info. I found information on Kabuki theater WSAIB website, and was interested in learning more, since I had only ever heard of it. Kabuki is a form of traditional Japanese theater, most well known for it's extravagant make up and ornate wigs. In it's beginnings, it was mostly women who performed, but the Tokugawa Shogunate forbade women from performing later in the Edo period, leaving it only to the men. Men often took on female roles in order to keep Kabuki theater going, using the same make up and hair, and the same traditional movements. I had known about Kabuki before this, but I had always thought that it was typically performed by women for a majority of the time. Today, Kabuki is still performed in many Japanese theaters. Some theaters even provide headsets to non Japanese speaking audience members that help to translate and explain what's happening. I think that after learning all of this and watching a few online videos, I'd like to go see it for myself someday.
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