Cheesy photos and Macaroons

12th - 16th December 2011.....OUR LAST 2011 THEATRE LESSONS! 

This week started off like any other week, rehearsing and going over again and again A Doll's House trying to burn those lines into our memories. Naturally we had things thrown in over the week which turned out to be one of the most enjoyable weeks for Theatre Arts we've had so far (in my view). I feel this maybe a long blogging so KEEP READING it's semi important...ish!!!

Tuesday (13th December) like previously stated it was a bog-standard lesson of rehearsing bits of our extract. Me and Maria decided to... WORK OFF SCRIPT -add dramatic 'dun dun duuuuun' here-. We worked off script to try and get our actions more believable and fluid (since we looked more like acquaintances than Husband and Wife). This I actually felt was better than working with the script (OMG) since we could explore possible actions towards each other to the max. An hour seemed to fly by, with us only getting a few actions done, nevertheless we seemed confidant that those few seconds looked believable. SUCCESS!

Cheesy Photos (Left to Right):
Bekki, Spencer, Izzy, Lydia, The Hough, Natalie, Maria, Me
and Georg

<----- Now who is that amazing year? (not year 11)

On the same day, us 4 year 12 IB Theatre Arts students (and some GCSE ones too) went to go and watch a rehearsal of Botanica (a dance show at the Oddysud, video in link) created by the theatre company Momix. I have to say I had my doubts, however I literally sat through the whole performance with my mouth open. The two things that stuck with me were the usage of the UV reactive costumes and lights, I often had to remind myself that these were actual people doing this, you just couldn't see then at all (if only we could do this at school....maybe in the cupboard?). The second thing that stood out was the presence all of the dancers had on the stage. How they held themselves and just their physical presence. One person was able to hold the presence whereas I've seen things where 30 people can't even hold it. The ability to sit on those front row seats were amazing (saying the rehearsal was free to watch and tickets were some 50 odd euros). This just goes to show that walking around and saying words isn't the only type of theatre. Botanica had no words or dialogue, only music, AMAZINGLY EPIC costumes, some good ol' projections and pretty darn good dancers. Goes to show how dancing theatre can make an enthralling show (well rehearsal).

Wednesday (14th December 2011), for the first hour of our double period we learnt yet another Stanislavski technique....Tempo-rhythm which basically is (well what the bubble says) "Our pace, both mental and physical, the pace of everything round us and everything we do". Which in Richard terms means the pace of the character, the piece and the metal pace of a character. We then did a few exercises and what-not on it to show what it is (loving the face Spencer :-P) then we had to show the tempo-rhythm of a certain bit of our extract. This didn't go so well, I seemed to be showing pace/tempo of speech not character and piece. After this and fixing what needed to be fixed, during the second period we identified the tempo-rhythm of certain areas of the script and got to work pacing out a certain bit. During this we got stuck on what to do for a movement during this bit, we asked the other 2 (Georg, and #2) they said each action was equal and it doesn't matter which we used. We then asked Mr.F which told use about the subtlety of the action instead of a big huge reaction. I could see where he was coming from, subtlety and the things no one notices are believable whereas clear and big actions are well Panto.

On Thursday last break, (not sure if the other two know this) Maria and I went to see Mr. F about what we need to do to achieve a 6 in our next report. Naturally he said to me what I had already identified (more than once and I am fully aware of this, as I was by the end of last year). What is pretty much something like, "Don't take negative feedback to heart, don't beat yourself up about it. Embrace the feedback, instead of casting it aside and getting annoyed. Don't see it aimed as negative instead see it as a building block or foundation to add into your piece to make it as structurally sound as possible." Yes that was a metaphor. But I knew before I even asked him what I had to do to get to that 6.

But whereas on our last day of school for 2011 (16th December). We pretty much sat down, ate the scraps left off from the year 13 party and had a macaroon (NOW DO YOU GET MY TITLE?) which didn't seem to stick to the side of our mouths, Nora's these days. Anyway we did a small exercise where we had a partner (I had Spencer) and we were told to talk about food. Easy enough right? Wrong! We had to use gesture through parts of our body, such as the feet, stomach area, heart and head. So I was wiggling my feet and trying not to use my hands, it was easy, fun, hard, and difficult at the same time. We then watched a small video about Guildford school of acting and we discovered that the Imagination Muscle is the most important and that we need to learn to control the cop in the head.

Been a great start to the year, Mr. Fearnehough you are a great teacher (even if you do speak a little too much) lets hope next year is even better. Also I will probably blog near the end of X-mas.

(Sorry for the Republish it seemed to have become a draft again!)

!Happy Christmas!

Richard #1