Startreking across the Blogsphere, Hand in Hand.

I know that this was a short week, we had Friday off, but it feels like Sunday was just yesterday. While then so much for easily finishing the Designer Project before the Vacation, we only had one real class of Drama, it is a lot of fun though. I wish we were working with other people, it is a lot of fun to discuss what we just read... HEY! Richard! You didn't give me back the Book!

Anyways, Tuesday was our only real Drama day. It mostly involved us working in quiet on our computers or with our noses in the books, but included a fair amount of discussion. This most revolved around what really constitutes Theory rather than principle. Appia really is weird though, He basically wants everything to count towards the final theme; shadow and light, High and Low, Action and Stillness. His policy is that everything must work towards the final principle, however, his theory is better applied to an already created piece. This is because most people think in the other order: What can I do to causes X. However, he thinks: How will X be affected by this? Its weird as it isn't very concrete ideology, more of a concept.

On Wednesday, we were highly cultured and saw talented actors in the world renown piece: Space Pirates and Planet Booty. Okay, seriously though, it was a performance by Primary that was a space rendition of Treasure Island. It was actually pretty good, the only issues were that they needed to be louder and a lot of lines were forgotten, but hey, they're little kids. I think the main reason why the performance was good was part of Stan's Truth; They weren't acting energetically, they just were! At one point, Richard brought to my attention one of the "monkeys"(mice), she was VERY into the dancing, which somehow made it more interesting, (and funny). It was fun to watch and we even got to do some HANDy work in the classroom before, so we could see the set up. I've got to HAND it to them, they did a really good job with set, characters, and music, despite lack of talent. I mean are they really going to have trained actors in Primary, not really. And just for Richard I'll include one of the songs they used: StarTreking Across the Universe. Don't know where they found it but good choice. (They also had the Starwars space battle theme during the fight scene.)

(By the way the Hand jokes are due the fact that we were given the job of Hanging up tracings of Hands in a spiral.)

The Black Orb!

This shorter week (26th - 29th March)

We only had one in class lesson, but we watched the Primary Play and worked on the Secondary Production

In terms of class work this week not much has been done, more research and more learning about set design. We sat there in pretty much silence for an hour, pretty dull but I learnt some interesting things about the 2 designers. But the problem I am faced with is what is theory and what is work?!

The double Wednesday lesson we would usually have was interrupted by the Primary Play (something like the Space Pirates and Planet Booty). It was cute, watching all the little kids doing drama and some bits were rather funny that or the kids had mastered the art of perfect musical timing. They played up on stage but that playing up seemed to actually add to the piece rather that hinder it. It was a nice little play which we all enjoyed to different extents.

Now this week Georgia's and My life has pretty much been taken over by the School Production of the Odyssey, with me being Head Stage Manager and Georgia being my Co. Its been damn hard work even with 7 of us on a team. Wednesday after school was planning on big A3 sheets the props, songs, entrances and exits and all that shabaz. We also pretty much broke every health and safety rule in school, there I am up a ladder, top step, leaning over, scissors in one hand and sellotape in the other trying to fix a curtain so we could black the hall out. But other than that it seemed to go well, trying to get everything properly organised. Also WE HAVE A NEW MEGA COOL FOLLOW SPOT and NEW FUSE BOXES FOR THE LIGHTS.....Granted the new fuses boxes are barely working at the moment but still we got some! 

OUR INCREDIBLE VIEW!!!!

Thursday, Thursday was a successful disaster. Well we started off thinking yeah, props in order, action plan set out lets get on with the dress rehearsal. Thing I learnt: When dealing with props make sure the kids get then instead if you chasing them up. For the first rehearsal we missed scene changes, calls, props couldn't be found and problem after problem. But once we told the kids props are theirs and if THEY don't come to get it they won't have it things began to run so much smoother. I am very grateful for my team of 7 (that includes me) since without them it would have been impossible. One that makes out job so much harder is that backstage you cannot hear anything!!!!!! It was as stated a successful disaster. And just look at our view!!!

(edit 1st of April)
I almost forgot to add that I have finished reading the play we will study after the Easter Holidays which is The Good Woman of Setzuan, it was quite a strange story it will be interest to act our but I was thinking of some good set designs that could be used for it. I did some research into it as well are come across Setzuan apparently being the Modern day Sichaun in China. So it was rather interesting to find out. Can't wait to get started on this piece!!

So yeah that has been my short but rather hectic week! 

Richard #1

The Primal Crystaline Expanse of Expression:Version 2.0

This week was the start of another independent project, the Theatre Designer Project. This serves as our work for Mr. Fearnehough during his PATernity leave and the following vacation. We had to compare Edward Gorden Craig to our choice of two others, I choose Adolphe Appia. We were able to choose the Media that we presented in, and such I decided to do it electronically on a blog: http://year12designerproject.wordpress.com/ I decided to start this process by investigating the origin of their theories to allow me to farther understand them. (It really helps that I have seen a few Wagner Operas) It will be a bit though before I start to put information down on the blog, but I’ll probably start next week (at least the basics).

The other main activity of the week was missing History…. In order to watch the Yr 13’s TPPP. This was THE END of their time in IB theatre. Everything they had done, all their effort was for this moment. Yeah, no pressure. It was rather awe inspiring to watch them finish the course, a massive milestone in their lives. I would almost say that one of the hardest parts of this presentation was keeping calm and well prepared, because once you start the presentation, there is no going back. Only Forward. It did seem to be the type of project that as long as effort is put into the presentation than it would be hard to fail, BUT getting a high grade requires large amounts of preparation and practice. I actually really want to do my TPPP now, I really enjoyed our last mock and the presentations looked fun. (Maybe I’m just crazy… or Inspired!) Well, I still have a year before mine so… I have so much more to enjoy first. Not goanna leave now(maybe).

Anyways, a little late of a blog post but Version 3.0 will be on time.(I hope)

DUDE! WAIT!! That page was pretty!

This week (19th - 23rd March) we worked on our Designers Research Project

Bring on the research!!

In terms of blogging this week has been pretty darn dull. We sat down on Monday and began to research out two set designers (who are Edward Gordon Craig and Josef Svoboda). I decided to do my project as a blog instead of the usual on paper in a portfolio I wanted to be different. Blogs also allow you to add multimedia in that otherwise would not be available on paper (music/video). If anyone would like a look at the blog which is currently under construction Finished here it is:

http://ibdesignersproject.wordpress.com

All week we have been gathering information on our intended people, somethings are extremely interesting especially when I started to look at Josef Svoboda's work with technology, lighting and set design. He was a really innovative person, using technology to create cutting edge stage designs such as his really pretty PILLAR OF LIGHT! That's it for class work this week and probably the next few weeks, so keep your eye on that blog listed above.

For our final lesson on friday we watched the Year 13's final Theatre Performance and Production Presentation (TPPP) which was kind of scary in a way since that is us in pretty much a year from now. There were two in total, one standard level TPPP (20 minutes) and one higher level TPPP (30 Minutes) both were different from each other both were well presented. I felt myself more drawn into the higher level TPPP however the student naturally had to go more in depth than the standard level student had to so that is most likely the reason, content wise they seemed just as good as each others give or take. All 4 of us are higher level theatre students, and we have done everything together so far as an ensemble. So it will be interesting to see how by the end of these two years, how our perceptions of Theatre compare to each others, because I'm sure it'll be different in all 4 cases!

Both TPPP's gave me plenty of ideas of what I should maybe start to put towards my final TPPP in Year 13, but for now I'm focused more upon our upcoming end of year Theatre exam, so as of right now I'll keep my mind set on my Set Design Research Project which I think will majorly help me on how to structure our upcoming Research Investigation (RI).

I had a meeting with Mr. Fearnehough about what to do for my Extended Essay this week on Wednesday (21st March) and we talked about my idea(s). Which is / was something along the lines of Asian theatres and masks. We got talking about how I need something that interests me more than just 'interesting for Extended Essay' and I could see where he is coming from. I mean I am always interested to see different perspectives of theatre instead of the narrow minded western view. But it got me think, could I do a whole EE (Extended Essay) on this? Does it REALLY interest me? What can I do? By the end of the day I was so confused. My head was swimming with ideas, good and bad ones of what to do. So I went into metal mind-mapping mode trying to figure out what I could do and what would interest me and another BIG thing was run a workshop on. I went through many ideas, types of theatre ranging from Panto to Butoh. Technical  ranging from pyrotechnics to make-up. Here is a mind-map of what I did:

Idea Splurge

I then whittled it down to a few possibilities and started to think of workshops I could run, the 3 categories I came up with were Comedy since I've always loved comedy and been fascinated by it how people deliver the line, where the jokes come from, and how to get a whole room of different backgrounds and histories to laugh at the same joke. Technical, since for me being backstage and what happens back there is just as important to me as being on stage and performing to people, I've been back stage and worked there and know how it works and what happens. I've always been more interested in the back than the front of the stage since it is what happens back stage that makes the performance, I then started thinking, maybe projection, lighting, sound. All these ideas whizzing around. My final category that I though of was perspective, as mentioned before its amazing how narrow minded theatre can be sometimes and I just love leaning about all types of theatre and how other people perceive it. So now I am at a dilemma. WHERE DO I GO NOW! I'll have to go away over the next week or few and have a major think. Here is a more refined more thought out but still frustrating mind-map (click for larger view):

More 'Refined' sorry about brightness!

One final thing is that on the Sunday (25th March) Me and Georgia both went to the school production of the Odyssey, its all getting very tense at the moment since we are less than a week away from the Dress Rehearsal but still have barely worked with props, flats and scene changes. Georgia and I are Stage Managers (I being head and Georgia being my deputy/co) so it was pretty hectic for us too, trying to hear what's going on, on stage and what not. But lets see how it all turns out shall we? All in all, pretty much a repetitive week, not much to blog about really.

Just want to say have a great paternity leave Mr. Fearnehough, hopefully you'll have a class to come back too :P

Richard #1

This week, we haven't done any practical work in our class which I was pretty uspet about, since I always want to get up and start acting and "do" something physically. I know it must sound really annoying what I keep repeating, but after all, I am reflecting! Anyways, we worked on our Design Project, which personally I think we could have done at home and instead have started with the play from Brecht we will be starting after the holidays.

 Tuesday and Wednesday we wokred on our Design Project. Literally, we just sat there and did research which I absolutly hate doing in class. I normally use that time at home and when I'm in school I just expect "doing" something, like physically or something, not just sitting and working on your own. I also find it dead boring, just sitting there behind your laptop just resaerching stuff. Nothing happens! And everyone looks so sad and bored out, I absolutly hate that atmosphere, I can't stand it, which tends often to distract me and I just can't do my work properly. I have done the work, of course, but I did most of it at home.

Friday, we all saw Grace and Alexa's TPPP's. It. was. amazing!! I absolutly loved sitting there and listen carefully what the Year 13's had done for 2 years in Theatre. It was super interesting and I can learn awfully a lot from it when I will be doing mine next year. Grace had a lot of pictures and mentionned my work a lot in her presentation, which I was very pleased with. I of course had enjoyed doing a course with them two and I knew that she was going to mention it and talk about it. However, I had no idea how much "impact" it had on their course and how important it was, since I'm a year of Theatre behind them. Grace mentionned several points how it had affected blabla bla and blalbla bla, whch I actually wouldn't have thought saying if I would done it instead of her. Personally, I thought Grace's was more intersting and had more information about her 2 years of Theatre. She described it to us very clearly and it wasn't difficult to understand at all. They were super nervous of course, I have no idea what they're going through but they shared their stress with me. While I was sat down in the room with the other year 12's and I saw Grace testing her voice, going through her notes, "breathing"... I could see my self in that exactly position next year, and I suddenly got super scared. I have no idea how that happened, but I realized how much work and how much effort I would have to put in, even more than what I am currently doing.
I thought Alexa's presentation was interesting as well, although she did not have as much information and details as Grace, which is the main secret to get a 7. I think. That's what everyone keeps telling me that have been doing Theatre. Alexa unfortunately didn't keep my attention all way through, at some points I got lost and when I "came back" I had no idea what she was talking about and I couldn't understand a thing. Also, she was reading (I can't believe she actually did this, she'll get so many points off!) which got boring at one point. Just like Grace, she should have looked up to us a little more often and talk , have a presentation to the audience, not just reading out loud.

Overall, I thought it was really interesting seeing their TPPP's and I really loved it.

We are all so vein!

This week (12th - 16th March) well actually since it is Monday it was last week.

We got our IB Theatre Display up more or less and we were introduced to Set Design!

Tuesday (13th) was the first lesson of the week and instead of moving straight on from our Devised Blood mIST piece we took a detour down the route of creativity and we all decided to create a big-ass display to show our pretty amazing time during IB Theatre! So Tuesday was a planning lesson, what we would have, how big it would have to be, what goes where and this is what we came up with at a prototyping of what the display would eventually look like:

And that is where we pretty much got to during the lesson, but I had a study and a free period at the end of the day so I spent two hours working on my section of the display which was the section on ISTA (when we went to London with TaPS ISTA) adding pictures, captions and quotes all around to show the fun we had and what we had learnt.

Wednesday (14th) we really wanted to get everything at least stuck down and glued ready to be put up, which we managed to just about do, just a slight stick here or there left but overall it was looking pretty dang good, and by no time it was ready to go up. Wednesday after I stayed back at school to help out during the school play "The Odyssey" which I am stage manager for so I was annotating the script making sure what flats have to be on when and what not, and also I have to get a team together which I may need help on since at the moment there is me and two year 10's helping me currently.

Theatre Versus Oppression - The 2 Richards!

Wednesday night was a blast, Georgia, Spencer, and myself all went along to the "So you think you can count?" maths night to help raise a little bit of money for Theatre Versus Oppression (TVO) since Mr. Fearnehough will be going to the Ugandan refugee camp they raise money for in August and so we wanted to get a bit of fund raising going before the big IST'S GOT TALENT! fundraiser. We raised 164 Euros in total, all three of us were blown away by the generosity of the people there (every if some did ask for change)!

Thursday (15th) there was not a lesson but Georgia and I decided to use up our Biology Higher Study to put the entire display up on the display board. We came over a few problems such as most of the staple guns in school don't seem to work and the one that does shoots double stables, a certain high mathematics student counted the size of the board wrong so we kinda ran out of space on one of them and had to slightly cut it up. But other than that, all was good! The display was done...mostly we were just missing a title which is on its way cus we want a SUPER 3-D TITLE OF ULTIMATE DRAMA AMAZINGNESS!Now for the Grand Reveal. This is the IB Theatre Year 12 Amazing Supercalifragilisticexpialidociously epic display of Epicosity: 

THE DISPLAY! (There you go Spencer!)

Amazing? We know. The title at the moment is temperamental but we are getting there.Friday (16th) we left our display hanging on the wall majestically and moved on to a new topic of Set Design (Scenography) where we began to learn the basics of how colours and lines can completely change the atmosphere of a piece. It seems like it will be a really interesting thing to do, can't wait to get stuck in!

Sunday (18th), I was also at school for "The Odyssey" where I went through the whole script and found out how big my job actually is with like 3 weeks till the actual performance I've got alot to do. So BRING IT ON!

Thats it for this week, been mega fun, blasting music out whilst making our display, and starting a new topic! So yeah, successful week!

Richard #1

New Topic!

This week, we put together all of our recent work we have done during the year in Theatre on a massive black board outside of the room. It looks amazing and I absolutely love walking past there and seeing our faces there and all of the work we've done together. I also enjoying "forcing" my friends to look at it and to compliment me. Sure, they do think it looks amazing and beautiful, but I don' think any one of them can see and feel the amount of work we've all put in to it. Quote from Clara for example:" Oh my god this looks really good, drama looks like so much fun!" I could see the expression of her face that she was amazed by it and I've always thought that my friends think drama is an easy topic but I always shout back at them and tell them it's hard and serious work. To prove them wrong, I often bring some of them to our performances we do, and afterwards I go and talk to them and ask them what they thought about it. Finally, they admit that they can see the amount of work putten in and know that drama is a subject like any other subject (only just better and harder). No one has yet said that it looks "easy, what we've done(like in our faces) but if someone does I will deal with them personally.

Wednesday evening, our class went to the Maths evening competition except for me, because I had dance and I didn't have the opportunity to skip one lesson since we're having a show soon. But apparently they all did very well and I wish I could have been there to support them and to help to get money for TVO. I don't think it's fair that a group tries their hardest if one of the members is absent, it's rude and selfish to the others, so once again, I apologize if I couldn't have been there for you. They all raised 160 euros which is amazing and they were all impressed about it.

Friday, we started a new topic, Brecht. I've been looking forward to that topic for so long, ever since we finished our Stanislavski topic. We were supposed to start Brecht after Stanislavski but instead we did Forced Entretainment, which I got pretty angry at but now I regret nothing about it. Deep down I'm actually really glad we did it, but I wouldn't say I preferred it and thought it was our best topic we've done so far. I still think our Stanislavski topic, A Doll's House was the best one we did and I think I am the only one with that opinion in our class.

We are going to start designing and we are using Brecht's plays for it if I am not mistaking? Friday, we saw Grace's and Alexa's designs they had done last year, something we will also do and I am really looking forward to it. Also, next Friday, we will watch their TPPP's which I can't wait for! When I did the Pre-IB I saw Grace's mock TPPP, maybe this time it will be better and I could learn a lot from it. Can't wait!

Posting a post about posting a poster.

This week was different than most of the other weeks. I was expecting to start a new topic right after finishing Bloody Mess but instead we were told to make a poster to display in the corridor. We wanted to finish this for Wednesday afternoon, due of Math Night.

Monday, we spent designing the board and identifying pictures that could go up. We had a total of 12 pieces of sugar paper that we needed to cover in total. We decided that the two in the Middle would go to the title, and the rest of our projects would go around it. While we wanted to finish this quickly it too much longer than we thought it would. Even after two studies and the entirety of Wednesday, we only mostly finished it. I would upload a picture, but I know that at least Richard (who has access to the original) will post it. We still need to finish the Title but we are basically done.
 
During Math Night, we did an impromptu fundraiser, for Theatre Versus Oppression. While impromptu, we managed to get 160 euros in two hours. Not too shabby.

Friday was our only normal workday. We were introduced to our next unit, Scenography. The design process for the set and reason for design choices. I was sort of aware of this but it turns out that not only colors create certain emotions but also different types of Architecture. I'm interested in why but I don't think we will really study that part of it; I am though looking forward to this topic as it sounds very interesting.

We did so much work this week but I have so little to write about...

"Being on time in theatre is always being late"

Can't really think of a title for this week, so I am using a quote from Maria that she learnt at London. I actually think I'm the first to blog, which is a first haha.

So this week we worked on a display for outside the drama room and we just need to put the title up this week and it will be finished. It looks fantastic and I'm dead proud, it's amazing to look back on the year and see how much we have already accomplished. On Wednesday, Spencer, Richard and I also went along to the schools maths evening (even though I had vowed I was never going back after the last time), we went to raise money for Theatre Versus Oppression, which we will continue doing so throughout our IB, we managed to raise about 164 euros (I got 96!). I also made an IB theatre t shirt to wear for that night because in Wednesdays lesson we thought we should come up with a name for IB theatre and have t shirts made. I have not yet come up with any ideas for a name but am thinking about it.

On fridays lesson we started work on set design which we will eventually incorporate into our work on Brecht. I find it very interesting and I am particularly interested in costume etc. and how it adds to a theatre piece. I also enjoyed finding out about how different lines, shapes and colours all have a subconscieus affect on the audience.

Georgia

showtime

I think I missed last weeks blog again, I am so bad at blogging but I admit it and will try and make up for it. This past week we performed for Mr Fearnehough and it was nice to finally have an audience. We also got some step by step feedback which we've never been able to have before so now we can see where it needs to be cut down, or what can be placed like on top of the next. I also enjoyed it becuase it was really good to all get into costume and put a bit of make up on, even if that did just mean putting bad eye makeup on heavy blush and lip liner on spencerella, I think we should try and do more makeup for our pieces. My favourite part has to be the ending, Bohemian Rhapsody. I also think that filming each rehearsal was really good and that we should continue to do this in more of our work.We are going to keep on rehearsing and perfecting it because we are going to perform it in the IST Talent Show. Which is another thing that has come out of drama, we are going to be organizing a talent show for the school in order to raise money for Theatre Versus Opression, we can also come up with other ideas for raising money. On Fridays lesson we did a bit of a wrap up and also started work on a display of our drama work so far and it is amazing to look back on the year so far and think of what we have already accomplished.

Georgia STanley

Rawer than Steak tartare

Here. We. Go.

This week (5th - 9th March). It was Showtime.
Also we have now hit 1000 blog views!

Been a pretty full on and fun week in the world of IST IB Theatre this week. Starting with Tuesday (6th). The last rehearsal lesson, we HAD to cut it down. Our piece was sitting at half an hour, sure it was a fun filled half an hour but we had to get it cutted and gutted. We tried and didn't I feel, I mean there was so much that could've been done to cut it down by a couple of minutes (like layering scenes within scenes) which we never did we just cut down on song length and types of fear scene. I think if there is one thing we gotta do as a group on this piece is cut it down because if this is going to be shown at the talent show we can't have something that is 30 minutes long. But overall our Tuesday lesson went well, the video camera was out currently so we were not able to film it which I found a little disappointing since I always find it useful to watch it back, something that I mentioned in my earlier blog how film all practical lessons really helped me look at our performance in another view.

Spencerella!

Wednesday (7th) was Showtime. We were walking on thin ice for the first 30 mins or so because Spencer wasn't there so we came close to scrapping the show for that day. But wait! What was that? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? NO! Spencer! zooming.....cycling....wondering down the road, so the whole group suddenly had a surge of adrenalin and we were raring to go. So we quickly got Spencer in and made up. For better or for worse, I don't know take a look. But after 10 or so minutes we were ready and we had our very first audience member!!!! Granted it was Mr. Fearnehough but still it was an audience to react to our piece all the same. Our piece was literally exactly 30 minutes, 30 minutes of Bloody mIST. I have no idea where those 30 minutes went, one second we had started the next it was all over and the studio was a mess. Looking back to just the piece and the actual performance of it I'm going to the best bit was Bohemian Rhapsody (our Queen closing finale song) not because of what we were doing but because of what Mr. Fearnehough was doing he looked so into it, by the end I wouldn't have been surprised if he got up and danced around too. It was such a great feeling to see someone in the audience actually having a genuinely good time, almost as much as we were having a great time too! 30 minutes gone, I was exhausted and I think so was everyone else. I had such a great time though and like Spencer mentioned in his last blog, all from 40 minutes of playing, nothing else.

The remaining time we had in Theatre was clearing up which we had alot of, and then feedback. Everything that was said I knew was coming, the fight scene, look more at audience, 4th wall and all that Jazz. I knew what he was going to say but I only realised by performing it to an audience which shows how important actually rehearsing to an audience is. It strange trying to break the 4th wall when  there is no one on the other side of it, it is hard keeping eye contact when there is no audience there, you can't judge your voice or someone else's if they are on stage with you. You always need an audience member, think we could hire someone to be an audience member? So yeah, you know what's coming when it has been done if you get me. So even though we have no more class time one this we still gotta crack on and crack the piece.

Friday (9th) was a cool down recap lesson of the project and to look forward lesson for what's to come. We discussed Blood mIST a bit, the talent show and began to plan how to layout a big black notice board outside of the Theatre class room to show off what we have done so far, but we didn't get too far with it. That is it for this week me thinks! It's been a fab week, had some great fun! I just want to share one last photo with you guys!

2012
Year 12 IB Theatre Group

Just had to share that one with you guys! Thats all folk!

Richard #1

FINALLY Performance Day!

This week we performed our piece Bloody mIST in front of our Theatre teacher. We performed it on Wednesday for the first hour, whereas the second hour we had we got feedback back from our teacher. We have a lot to improve but overall, he thought it was really good and he had enjoyed watching it.

As usual, I was so happy when we had our performance day. I was getting really excited and I couldn't sit still, I just wanted to get up there and give the best that I could! (which I didn't though)

First of all, personally, I wasn't really happy how our performance went. Of course, overall I thought it went well,yes. But the small details are the ones that make it more perfect and better, and Theatre is a very important subject for me and I want to do as good as possibly in it. This is why I take feedback very seriously and I go over it after each lesson every single time; there hasn't been one time where I skipped going through feedback given to me in Theatre.
Since we work as an ensemble, we all need to do the best as we can to make it work and not think "It's fine, someone else will do it, I'm just in a group after all". I understand if for some of you guys don't think Theatre is the most important and amazing subject for you in school, fine, I'm willing to accept that,(even though it took some time) but what I can't stand is the fact that you're not supposed to make any efforts or just wait till someone else will do the work for you. I am just saying this for the future, I think we are great as an ensemble, but maybe we could try a little bit harder to work together and better to improve even more.

One main feedback Mr F. gave to me and I knew he was going to, was that I wasn't starring the audience in the eye. I have no problem getting on stage to perform, I love it,I don't get nervous breakdowns or any thing like that. But perhaps it would be because i never stare at the audience. I don't ignore them, of course not, sometimes I've even waved at them, but the fact that you have to look at someone in the eye is quite hard for me, I have no idea why! I used to find it impolite to just stare at someone,not when the person is talking the me of course,but just in general. Now I've got over that but I haven't exactly done many performances where i look into the audiences members eye. If it's a friend of mine, I would be terrified that she or he would burst into laughing or just smile at me which would make me lose my concentration. During the years while I have worked that fear away and now I do not freak out if a look into a friends eye during a performance. And why is that? Well, because I use Stanislavskis technique. I use the fourth wall to protect my self from the audience and I stare at this little dot far away from the audience. This might sound pretty stupid, but an audience can be pretty scary sometimes if you look at them in the eyes! And I have been hiding my self behind the fourth wall in so many performances but in those performances, it was okay because we applied Stanislavskis system in them.
Next week, I will have to work on that so hard to get it perfect. Challenge accepted!

We've started to plan the decoration for the black board in front of our classroom. We will show everyone what we do in IB Theatre and they will be able to see our amazing work we've done so far, which I am really proud of. We will continue this next week as well, I am really excited about it! (as usual)

Talent that pierces the Heavens!

This week was the climax of our last three weeks, Bloody MIST.

We weren't ready for preforming Friday, due to the vacation, and the deadline had been moved backed to Wednesday. This was the absolute last day we could move it back. Come Tuesday, we were ready to conduct our play but instead use this time as a dress rehearsal. We cut it down a little and timed it, still over fifteen minutes but half an hour is better than forty minutes. The lesson didn't bring much progress but it really reinforced our recent progress.

Then BOOM!!! It was the day of our performance. I was a little nervous but was well aware that the style of our piece is incredibly mistake-friendly. The randomness of the piece allows for variation, no matter how intentional. However, there was an unforeseen flaw. A road was closed and thus my bus was rerouted, meaning that I missed it. By the time that I was back at my home I was half an hour late. Fortunately, its only fifteen minutes to the school from my house. I arrived just before they called off the performance. After quickly getting Make-Up (still a slight tinge of regret), we started. This brought to light a few flaws in our practise method, for one the lack of an audience. While we claimed to break the Forth Wall, we didn't practise its application. This was very clear in the feedback we were given, but it was incredible that we were able to draw a Thirty Minute piece out of "playing around".

This was by far the best part. The performance climaxes with the four of us singing Bohemian Rhapsody with all the energy we have left. It really fun but at the same time it was far more tiring than any other part of the performance. I think this part most felt like it was from Bloody Mess, the same amount of investment. Being able to exaggerate every part of the song is AMAZING though, its like a rock concert in both energy and movement.

Friday fit very nicely with the theme of Contradictions. We read off our Pitches for Bloody Mist, mine was very eloquent, and I am proud of that . Than we discussed the Talent show for a bit than started to consider what we would put on the now empty bulletin board. It was basically a prelude for what was to come.

The Rocky Horror Show!
Let's do the Time Warp Again!

Friday night I went to see the Rocky Horror Show at TMP. It was so so so good and I felt the need to blog about it and share the ideas with you guys. I had a french friend who was in it who is rather shy and reserved, that's why I suggested her that she would start Theatre classes (in French schools,you don't get to do Drama in the curriculum so you better be happy if you have it in your school and not complain about it) She was absolutely amazing in it (yes, I've asked if I could talk about her in my blog don't worry) and she was loving it.


It wasn't a typical performance, of course not! First, when me and my mum came into the Theatre a huge TV screen was in there saying that there would be no seats in the performance! I had excepted it since it was the Rocky Horror Show, I knew that it was going to be "weird" and "unusual". The audience got separated into groups of 10, with a guide following along. That's when I started to get really excited and couldn't wait getting into the room! 

My mum was quite worried and shocked, she had never seen anything like this but I explained it to her that Theatre isn't always what you except and I started explaining to her the whole concept of it. And at the end of my explanation, she just said:" This is weird i don't think i will like it" (NOW WHO DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF,EH?) When we came into the space, all of the seats were pushed away and there were several "activities", performers that were performing in front of the groups. So it was like a journey for the audience, a very nice one actually. It was boiling and smoke was all around us. The guide took us to the several performances that were going on.

Oh and guess what, you will never believe this! The first bit of performance we saw was 2 actors doing the Time Warp on stage. They made the audience join in as well, I of course went at the front to do the dance and left my mum alone in the back. My mum didn't do the dance, and she got "told of by the actors", but in a joke way of course! So they forced the audience to participate in their activities, they wanted the audience involved. At the end of the dance, they asked for a volunteer to get up on stage and do it with them. I think you'll know who volunteered for this... ME! I went up on the stage and did the dance with the other actors, it was amazing, everyone was staring at me, wishing they could dance as well as I could(no, i'm joking,they probably thought I was super weird, but I didn't bother me at all, I had so much fun) I absolutely loved that moment and didn't want to leave the stage but at the end I had to. There was another active where they made members of audience have physical contact between them. One actor was on another stage and started massaging the person in front of him. He told the audience member to do that same for the person standing in front of him, and so on. It was rather awkward but everyone pretended not to be embarrassed.

Two teenage actors were fighting on the central stage, in mud. The weren't wearing anything much and all they were doing was fighting, but without speaking. There was a judge as well , a man who was wearing a skirt and had fake boobs on him (really rocky horror show). All of the performances were surrealist, it made you feel you were in a dream. It started getting hotter and hotter in the room, and everyone started sweating, THAT was really gross. I couldn't stand the smell and I started to feel really uncomfortable and wanted to get out, but you weren't aloud. Some creatures were standing at the door preventing you to get out. The real performance started at last, and the audience had to stand up for 2 and a half hours. It was really annoying and I got really frustrated. I couldn't see much that was going on stage but the actors kept moving along, just like how they did on "The Railway Children".

At the end of the performance, a man who had been narrating the story throughout the performance told us that his little girl had fallen asleep; basically, he was telling the story to the little girl who was trying to fall asleep. And us, the audience, saw the visual view of the little girl's imagination, her dream, her thoughts, which was the whole performance (reminds me of our Artaud piece I did with Grace and Alexa).At the end when everyone was waiting to cheer and clap, the man said:" Sssssssh.... She's asleep now. If you guys could please get out of the room WITHOUT making any noise, I would much rather appreciate it, so you're not waking up my little girl."
So everyone left the room, without any applause or anything, it felt SO STRANGE NOT TOO!
When we came out I wanted to ask so many questions to the actors but they didn't come out like they would for Panto, so I got a little disappointed. But overall, I LOVES THE SHOW, IT WAS AMAZING!

Bloody mIST almost perfect!

During the holidays I was missing our Theatre classes SO MUCH, I couldn't wait going back to school to get started with our piece, I was really excited to see what everyone had come up with as a piece since I had missed last week before the holidays due to the weather conditions.

I had no problem at all catching everything up, since I was really excited coming back to the Theatre classes it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it. Even if I haven't enjoyed the "play day" we had, I enjoyed being in the piece my classmates had starting devising. I loved the ideas and I was really exciting when it came to the acting part( FINALLY WE GET TO ACT), I couldn't wait starting playing my fabulous character my fabulous classmates had come up with.
On Tuesday, they started explaining everything to me, how this performance was going to work. They showed me how i was supposed to bring in the audience, how I was supposed to introduce my self with the music...

On Wednesday we stayed all day to continue with out piece. We made some massive progress and at the end we were all exhausted! I had dance later on that day and I had no energy at all to dance or just run around being crazy what i usually do at dance. It's a really good way to get calm down if you're a very dynamic, hyper-active person, it takes away all of your energy! Of course, I have experienced it several times but OUTSIDE of school, never in a school production which I find very interesting. Usually in our school pieces I just get mentally tired and exhausted but not really physically till the point where I have no more energy to run around the whole school and keep singing randomly to people. It felt like we had accomplished something huge, and I hope we were all proud of our work. I for one was, I was really happy with what we had come up with.
Also, in the morning lesson we had, we are going to organize a Talent show (such a brilliant idea I can't believe I didn't think of that) which was Richard's idea. We are helping the little children in Africa to get a school and we will be collecting in money for them. I'm also really excited to get started about that too!

On Friday, we polished our piece and tried to cut it down as much as we could. It's incredible not knowing how fast time goes while you're in the middle of acting, time just flows by so quickly!
We didn't have the proper costumes with us but we had the main ones. I had my pink sunglasses and my whip, Richard had his goofy glasses and some long socks and Spencer had his wig and lots of colorful feathers on him that would make him glamorous. Fridays lesson went super well as well, there was no problem at rehearsal. The lyrics for Bohemian Rhapsody were learnt, the dances were great, no one forgot their cues... The only I think we should work a little bit more on is our acting. Yes, I get the feeling that every time we've had a run through of this piece, we all say:" Alright, that was great, super, one more time..." And no one comments on the acting. I can't believe even I didn't do it; I should at least have said something. Maybe we just wanted to get our piece perfect without paying attention to our acting and how the others act. For example, we could be criticizing our acting between ourselves, I mean that's what we're supposed to do, right? Like, "telling each other off", if that idea works,if we should try it in an other way,if we're not loud enough... I don't know, just throwing in ideas here. I hope we could do that in tomorrow's lesson which I am looking forward too!

I regret NOTHING..... (Sorta)

This week was finalising our piece, which is now called Bloody mIST(not that I know how to pronounce it) and figuring out where we left off. Tuesday Rehearsal was unique as not only was it the first rehearsal in two weeks but Maria was also there. We treated the lesson as a refresh and ran through what we already had but with Maria. It felt very different to actually be messing around and Maria was REALLY scary, and she had her horse whip!
Than while we really needed the time on Wednesday for Rehearsal, we discussed a fund raiser. It was to be talent show where the different groups of performers would be in different areas and the audience would rotate. While I think this is a good idea, I would also really like to have a little festival, with games, masks and stuff.... Wrong part of the world though...... My main worries are that we won't have very many people sign up and trying to make it fun for the audience(which is not just the acts). We will cross that bridge when we come to it though, No bad premonitions at the moment.
We did manage to get the second half of the class for practise. We spent most of the time working out the final order for the piece, which was rather random progression. At least it works. We also managed to stay after school for three hours purely  for drama work. This was to be our dress rehearsal, as we were supposed to present on Friday, and such I had to wear a bow and a corset(don't care what its really called, It was really tight.) I really like Maria's outfit, looks good while still being both of her role. During this time we did a few run through of the entire piece, which present very few errors beyond lack of practise(my intro theme does run a little long though...) Our final run was timed and got 37:32 minutes. A little longer than we thought. (I was guessing 15 minutes and Georgia was 7 minutes...) While we have to cut it down, I want to go the other direction and make it into a public performance.
Fortunately, we were given Friday to prepeare, but the added twist was that Georgia didn't have the "offical costumes". We were forced to improvise from the Costume, Richard brought his own costume(which was VERY silly). I now had a wig, a dress, and a ton of feather boas, much better than a corset. It was all rather loose and fell off over the peice, by the end I was only left with the dress( While unintentional I like it.)
Random Caotic Tiring Exotic Odd Fun Explosive Organised? Silly New(appearently undescriable)
Richard signing off.

MAMA OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

We're back from the holidays and we're a full group!

This week (28th Feb - 2nd March) we were left alone for the most part to rehearse our upcoming production of Bloody mIST (I think we could call it this!)

Our Line Up

Action Shot!

This week started all the way back on the Tuesday (28th Feb) where we began with what we already had to give Maria and idea of how we are going to do the line up and entrances. So we then decided to plough on through the chair scene which has been inspired by Bloody Mess' chair scene, Maria putting out the chairs and measuring them perfectly only for Me, Georgia and Spencer to pick them up and run away with them. However we were all kind of scared of doing this since maria had a whip, but we slowly worked on the scene in a mildly chaotic way and finally came up with something we were happy with. Then for the first time with all of us we got through from beginning to end our line up which we seem to have nailed now. By using the line up we have altered it sightly so there's more 'messing around' going on during it rather than a sit down and just say who you are. We've got me falling off a chair, Spencer eating, Maria just babbling on whilst we go play cards and various other bits and bobs. Over the holidays I decided to create a playlist on my iPod for this piece, so I got lodes of music that could fit into our piece and we tested them out to see which worked and which didn't in the end we've got our playlist for our entrances and various other parts of our piece. We went over the entrances and how they would work with the music and timings and that neatly brought us to the end of the lesson. However due to how slowly we were progressing we did decided to take up a Wednesday afternoon to steam on through with it.

Theatre Versus Oppression Logo

Wednesday (29th of February LEAP YEAR!!!!) for the beginning part of the Wednesday school lesson we spoke about a charity that the school have worked with before called Theatre Versus Oppression, we took an hour looking through their website to see how they use theatre to help the refugee camp they work with in Uganda to overcome problems or help tackle things that are frowned upon in the camp (trying to stop violence against the women, getting men to carry other men to safety instead of letting them die ect) and so we went through their website talking about how they are using theatre and where the ideas came from. I feel there were a few reasons behind this, #1 is that we needed reminding and some people like Spencer didn't really know much about this, #2 was to help us as Theatre students to understand how theatre can help and #3 was to get us to do something. So, we talked about holding a fundraiser at the school which we all as Theatre students agreed we should hold one but also overcoming the obstacles that there would be (such as not having the big hall ect). So after some vigorous discussion we cam up with an idea of a Promenade/Talent Show kind of thing where people can walk around the school, go into different rooms and watch people sing/dance/act whatever. So for the next 20 or so minutes we actioned planned how this was going to work out which in the end we came to the conclusion we going to have to work hard and quickly to get this turned around into the upcoming IST's GOT TALENT! Where we decided the date was likely to be the 1st of June and we would perform Bloody mIST!

Moving onto our second lesson on Wednesday we went through our line up quickly just polishing up things here and there and what we would say. Over the course of Tuesday night I had merged our entrances music into one track so it could play with no one at the sound system so we tested it out on the sound system and it seemed to work perfectly, giving us all around 30 seconds to enter thus keeping the time down but giving us enough to enter. It seemed to work really well! From there we begin to try and see what would go next in our piece which didn't go so well and we ended up working on the finale of our piece! Which is Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen but the problem was we didn't know the lyrics so that didn't go to well. The only lyrics we knew were MAMA OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Spencerella

Wednesday afternoon was a blur, we got so much done and it was so exhausting I was glad we filmed it! We began by printing the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody off because we were really bad at it. We dressed Spencer up as a woman which is always going to be interesting! Wednesday afternoon was more of a stop start rehearsal as we needed to think of structure and what was going to be said. So at times we had Spencer and Maria rehearsing their 'Types of Fear' and me and Georgia rehearsing 'Yo Momma' jokes. After about one hour and a half we had a rough draft of each aspect that the would be in the piece so we did a full on run through putting as much as we could into it. The good news was that would had a deformed and mutilated version of what will hopefully one day be a final version of this, the bad news it was 40 minutes give or take.So that was our problem, we rehearsed it again for the second time that day it began to look slightly better, but it was just still as long. But I feel we managed to perfect the 'MAMA OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO'. Since Mr. F could probably hear it down the corridor we knew we were onto a winner.

Friday (2nd March) was a cut down lesson. Due to the length of our piece Mr. F told us we needed to get it cut down which we did! (At what price I do not know yet) but Friday was supposed to be a dress rehearsal but someone forgot their costume...SO WE RAIDED THE COSTUME CUPBOARD INSTEAD! We got Specerella in a dress, scarves and a wig. Unfortunately we don't have the video for Friday yet! But after we got a form of costume of we went through our piece, layering scenes on top of each other to shorten it, shortening parts like the 'Types of Fear'. Now Bohemian Rhapsody went amazingly well, we went from the creation of the IST where I had sweets thrown at me, I was spun around on the swivel chair, I had scarves thrown over. I feel that, for that EXACT moment is the most Bloody Mess we has managed to achieve in ours, it felt so similar. And HEY! We got 29 minutes, so we are slowly cutting it down. Next aim...20 minutes!

Just as a side note from this week I have got to say filming all our rehearsals has proven so useful not only for this blog, but to look back on you yourself and see how you can improve, but also it gives another perspective of the performance, since we are in it we are sometimes oblivious to certain things but the camera picks it up. I feel that we should record EVERY practical rehearsal, not just of bloody mess but of everything!

So, after a few bruises and complete exhaustion we have a VERY rough draft of Bloody mIST. Now it is time for us to make this chaos into Organised Chaos

Richard #1