OH MY GOD SO MUCH STRESS!

This week has been one the most busiest week of my life; I have had a huge amount of work to give in to every single teacher I have. I have done more and more research for my EE and universities. I have done the dance lessons who took place for 2 hours right after school... and much more. This week has been very tiring for me, and thinking of the Talent Show just makes me want to cry.

We are running out of time and things aren't going as we planned at all. First of all, the tickets sale isn't going well, so I am gonna have to step into that and "show them how to sell tickets" (which is apparently a very hard job to do). We've only seen two acts so far, out of the ten. Today, me Georgia and Richard went around the school asking the acts when and where they were willing to show us their act.
We got that sorted now, most of them will come Tuesday showing us what they've done. Our Bloody mIST piece is fine; we had a run-through Wednesday afternoon and we had 2 audience members to watch it and to give us feedback.  They seemed to enjoy it a lot, although at the end, one of them said:" I really wasn't expecting something like this, I thought what you did in theatre were pieces such as a Doll's House," (which is a very naturalistic piece and she saw our Doll's HOuse performance). We explained to them our piece, and since this reaction might come from a lot of people, especially our audience we will have on Thursday evening, we decided to create a little guide, a prospectus so they will know everything out it; who we are inspired by, what ideas we are using, AND we shall tell them this isn't the only thing we do in drama (they might think all we do in drama is have fun and mess around) etc.

Today, we discussed the issues of the Talent Show, what has been done and what hasn't, and what should be fixed if necessary. If think we are all stressed about this, well I know I am, and I realize how hard it is to be responsible and running this production. You have to look out for everything and make sure EVERYTHING is alright, not just your self! By the way, this is a nice link with Brecht's work, that one stage you are working as an ensemble and your acting isn't supposed to affect just yourself, but it affected the whole performance if there is no proper communication. Speaking of Brecht, we showed Georgia our little devised work we had done while she was away, "A Brecht's House" as we called it. We struggled a little bit to get one with; instead of thinking what the message was and get on with improvising the scene, we argued a lot with the ideas. We weren't agreeing at all who the one was in this scene who had the power and control. At the end though, we went with the idea of Nora gaining power and Torvald submitted (if that's the correct word). Our second scene was the one we struggled the most with, we had to swap around actors several times for this. (more details will be found in my journal)

Also, I know no one was there for the tickets on Friday afternoon, and if you could please stop telling me off for it I would appreciate it; I do know I am responsible for the CAS students for the tickets sale and also for the guides, and I did put specific people responsible for the sale. I had provided them a timetable for each of them and told them "If you have any problems, please come and speak to me about it". Someone told me she couldn't make it that day and I had to re arrange the people responsible for it. No one was there as it seemed, and none of them told they they had to go, I had to go up to them asking them "Why weren't you there on Friday selling?" So yes, I was quite shocked about this!
We are Year 12 students now and we can no longer push the blame away to someone else; younger students are supposed to look up to us and we have to set a good example. I have been creating problems and issues, I am aware of that but instead of just sitting there wining about it am I trying to fix them, so you can either chose to support me or just be quiet.
So I do apologize for this misunderstanding that happened on Friday and I am not going to play the "it wasn't me it was her!" game, and I will take full responsibility of the consequences so it seems.
However! I have made up for this, I have talked to the Victor Hugo people about the Talent Show, the German School and my french friends,and  lots of them seem really interested in this Talent Show. I have about 10-15 ish people (or more) who will be buying tickets on Tuesday after school. YES I WILL BE THERE! Also, people wanted to book their tickets or buy them on the night, the booking will be possible but I will only be doing this with the people I know really well.

I am sure we can learn a lot from our lack of responsibility/communication/organization for this Talent Show (which is a good thing!) for the next time, and especially for next year in Year 13! I realize what it feels like to have all of this pressure on your shoulders and everyone is relying on you! We've made it, with some difficulties of course, but we still made it !
I hope we will be able to put off a great show this Thursday, and I certainly hope students will look back at this saying: "WOW, why didn't I audition for this, it looks so cool, I should have been in it"
Next year another one maybe, I don't know, let's see how it goes for now! But if you do want to put another Talent Show on, DON'T PUT US IN CHARGE OF IT :)

Tic-Toc goes the clock

This week (21st - 25th May) in the world of IB Theatre

We have been up against the clock and time is quickly running out

Tuesday we were a person down, so group work slowed and didn't run as smoothly as usual. However that wasn't a massive problem since we had other things to discuss such as the upcoming IST's Got Talent which is on all of our minds as the moment due to the fact ticket sellers haven't been selling and whatever tickets have been sold it seems no money has changed hands yet but I'll get onto that later. For some part of the lesson we got up to work on our short piece 'A Brecht's House' where we try to implement Brecht's acting techniques into a naturalistic play which we have previously worked on (A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen) but this also was slow going as even though we were aware of techniques we were unsure of how to actually implement them into that piece since we were doing two separate extracts from the play itself. So Tuesday was more of a slow paced lesson with not much being done.

Wednesday however we were back up to the Fabulous Four of the ensemble. We planned what our moves were for IST's Got Talent such as when to see the acts and talking to the tour guides. But also taking a side step here I feel that doing and organising IST's Got Talent has shown us how much work something even this small scale is, such as reliability on others, trusting others which shows from our experience people have to be pushed and lead rather left to do their own thing which is something we need to keep in mind for any future events we organise or help to organise. So we discussed this along with dates things need to be done for since there is less than a week before the evening and everything is still very chaotic we really need to pull together and do this, so the first hour was pretty much admin on the whole IST's Got Talent Event. For the first half-hour of the second hour of our 2 hour lesson (TOO MANY HOURS!) we got to work more on our Brecht's house before we showed Mr. Fearnehough, in this half hour we were able to get alot more done (maybe because we had four people?) but whatever the reason it seemed to go much better than other rehearsals. Then for the final half-hour of the lesson we showed it to Mr. Fearnehough and took pictures throughout (which I will be annotating in a separate blog post) and after we had finished we talked about what we had used (Epic Theatre Wise) in our Brecht's House Piece. Discussing how each one has their own diverse affect on a piece and how it cuts it up and alienates (or Verfumdung's) the piece, such as having a narrator saying what is about to happen as this distances the audience, masks again give clear indication of distance, music, and following a message rather than a plot. We learnt that each aspect of Epic Theatre alienates in their own way (and in some cases some aspects depending on the piece alienates in more than one way)

Wednesday after-noon we stayed back after school to practise our Bloody mIST piece which we were lucky enough to have 2 audience members. So we performed our piece (as full as we possibly could have) to that audience which as first they were very and I mean VERY confused about, however after we took the time to explain where the idea originated from and why our piece is so confusing and weird to understand, which then caused them to get it much more. We did have a problem however, people had decided to stay back after school to practise for IST's Got Talent but they hadn't notified a teacher meaning they were not actually allowed to stay back, so after alot of huffing and puffing we had to send them home which is a shame since we could have benefited greatly from seeing the acts that were there. But what can you do?

Friday was a proper admin lesson talking about the action plan for the night of IST's Got Talent and also sorting out the title for our big IB Theatre Display and a Leaflet / Programme of what Bloody mIST and why and how it came about. One final thing however that bugged me Friday was that were had been told there would be people at the front desk or outside selling tickets for IST's Got Talent, I got our of school some 10 minutes later NOBODY WAS THERE. NOBODY. I mean come on? When you say you are going to do something, DO IT. It majorly bugged me. So now we really are up against the clock for this!

Anyhow and that nice and flowery note that is it for this week and just maybe for future reference for me I'll be missing Tuesday and Wednesday Theatre Lessons due to the fact I'm in Scotland looking at 2 universities.

Richard #1 

Missing Theatre :(

I was away from school last week and missed 3 hours of drama, which sucks. However, Maria and Richard have been filling me in on what I have missed and I have been able to read the blog. While I was away the Talent Show was discussed, tickets will be going on sale and posters are ready to be put up on Monday. The drama group also did some work on transforming Ibsens play 'A Dolls House' into a Brecht style play, I can;t wait to find out more about it!

Lately due to lots of bank holidays and exams we have had a few days off school and missed some more theatre lessons. But in the time we have been in we got our drama exam back (I was pleased with my mark and quite enjoyed thinking about the purpose of theatre), handed in our drama design work and started on Brecht. Over the April holiday we were given the Brecht play 'The Good Woman of Setzuan" (which has sometimes been translated as "The Good People of Setzuan" not sure how useful this piece of information is now but if there is one thing a debate in English lit taught me it is that the way texts and titles are translated is important) to read. As well as reading the play and learning about scenography we will also be learning a bit about Brechts ideas about acting.

Despite my limited knowlegde of politics etc. I find Brecht's ideas on acting and using theatre to convery a message really interesting. Through doing acting exercises I have learnt a lot about Brecht, although I imagine there is much more that I do not know. Obviously in his work he wants you to sympathize with the poor proletariat/peasant and dislike or even hate the nasty, horrible capitalist (who he will very often not name so that the audience has no chance to emphathize with the them) who makes there life such a misery. But he wants to do it in such a way that you do not leave the play just having watched a play/story and felt sorry for the poor little worker, he wants to make it so that the story is disprupted for the audience and instead of feeling sorry for the worker and as if they have just watched a story.

We did this task were we had to make stage pictures, tableau, freeze frames. While Stan the Man was all into putting on your character, and being your character, making sure you were showing your character as a person, Brech was much more concerned that at every single moment every single one of the actors on stage were showing the right picture and converying the right message. While his actors were rehearsing he would take pictures and afterward they would all sit and analsye the pictures, making sure the message was being shown. We practised this with our freeze frames, and learnt a lot. At one point we wanted Maria to be the most dominant character in our tableaum but because we had her turning around to face Spencer he looked to be the more commanding person, as if he was controlling her. It was crazy to see how small a detail could change the entire look fo something on stage.

Unfortunately, I missed Tuesdays lesson becuase I was sick, and my blog post from last week didn't save properly but I can edit it so this is like an extension. On Wednesday, I watched Maria, Spencer and Richard perfrom their first part of A Brecht House and then I took part in the second, in which I played Doctor Rank and Maria Nora. Because at the end of the first extract we performed we painted Nora as quite a manipulative character we kept her in this role for the second extract. However, this is not really the way I saw Nora when doing A Dolls House and I found it interesting how we changed out perception of her to keep it fitting with the first extract.

We have also been very busy preparing for IST's Got Talent, which has taught me many things, for example, children simply cannot be trusted, you need to be on them every second making sure they have understood what you have told them and that they have passed the information onto their parents. So far it has been quite tiring but finally I understand my mistakes and hopefully the night will be a blast. It has been great getting back to Bloody mIST again and I am going to have a search through my house in a bit to find exciting props/costume/make up for the piece again..

Georgia Stanley

Not so much Drama, Huh...

This week was ridiculously short in terms of Drama activities. We had Monday and Tuesday off, and we spent Friday discussing the Talent show. I think this is why we didn't realise that we hadn't blogged.

 Wednesday, was based around learning Jest. Jest is Brecht's method of bashing the audience over the head with his message. While his objective is already extremely clear in the plot of the story, Jest finalizes all possible doubt. The concept of Jest is really quite simple, showing the emotions and thoughts of your character through clear actions. The actual execution is rather difficult though. For one, the action has to spend an extermly clear message without ANY other possibilities, and Secondly, you cannot see your actions as the audience while doing them. In one of our practice poses, I was the focus point even though we were trying to highlight another person and we just couldn't see that our pose was having such an effect. Jest is one of the main examples of why Brecht still wants good acting, even though enjoyment isn't too important for him. 

On Friday, we discussed the talent show and arranged the acts into different sections. We have finally gotten down some concrete details and times! I just hope that we do get some more time to practice Bloody mIST before the show, 3 consecutive showings ouch...

A Brecht's House

This week (14th - 18th May) again was a very bitty week, with Thursday and Friday off we only have had 3 lessons this week and we are a member of the ensemble down with Georgia in the UK rather than me this week so it has been slightly more difficult this week.

Tuesday was a theory lesson in which we covered many things. Firstly we look at the differences between dramatic theatre (things such as panto and many modern western theatre pieces as well as movies following close to this too). So we were given a table which compares it next to Epic Theatre (or Episodic Theatre as Spencer said). Here is that table for those who want to reference to it:

Dramatic Theatre	Epic Theatre
Plot	Narrative
Implicates the spectator in a stage situation	Turns the spectator into an observer but
Wears down	arouses his capacity for action
Provides him with sensations	Forces him to take decisions
Experience	Picture of the world
The spectator is involved in something	He is made to face something
Suggestion	Argument
Instinctive feelings are preserved	Brought to the point of recognition
The spectator is in the thick of it, shares the experience	The spectator stands outside, studies
The human being is taken for granted	The human being is the object of inquiry
He is unalterable	He is alterable and able to alter
Eyes on the finish	Eyes on the course
One scene makes another	Each scene for itself
Linear development	In curves
Evolutionary determinism	Jumps
Man as a fixed point	Man as a process
Thought determines being	Social being determines thought
Feeling	Reason

The thing that stuck me is the utter difference in it all, where Epic theatre throws away the character and focus' more upon what and how society will see this piece and making an audience think instead of feel (Head over Heart), finishes each scene in a cliff hanger (as if an series of Episodes), and right at the beginning of each scene tells you what is going to happen whereas we have dramatic theatre which wants people to be emotionally attached to the piece, and maybe the audience is involved in the piece somewhat and that man in the piece is unalterable. What is in the script is what you play. So this is something completely different to what I have ever seen done. We also learnt about Aristotle's 3 Unities which are: The unity of action, The Unity of Place and The Unity of time. The Unity of Action says that a play should have one main action that it follows, with no or few sub-plots. The Unity of Place says thata play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place. Finally The Unity of Time says that the action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours (plot wise of the script). Which is something which many pieces that use Dramatic Theatre follow, whereas Brecht shatters this concept and chooses to ignore it. Dramatic theatre also sees the person as unalterable as if he is part of society and he is playing the role society gives to him. Whereas Epic Theatre sees it as society creates the people and ideas similar to Marxism which is quoted as “a theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change in Western societies.”

One of the masks (Nora is now the Joker apparently?!)

Wednesday, we talked about the Talent show for some 30 minutes which seems to be full steam ahead and in the last 1hr and a half of the lesson we were told to try and perform Doll's House in a Brecht style. In a nut shell we failed pretty badly, we had the theory and what we wanted to do with the scene but we didn't seem to have the means of performing it. We had ideas for masks, narrator, scene titles, music, Gestus, attitude, political message and how the scene would pan out but we some how were unable to act it out and when we did it didn't seem right and seemed more like A Doll's House placed in a west-end show, as well as a Commedia piece.But I don't get why we struggled so much, but we'll see what happens next lesson I guess.

That's it for this 3 hour Theatre week. I want to get this Brecht's House nailed. Maybe with the full ensemble we can get it better!

Richard #1

3 Gestus to what we have been up to

Last week (7th - 11th May) was a very short week for me since we had the Monday and the Tuesday off costing us one lesson and for me since I was jetting off to the UK for the weekend I missed Friday too. Leaving me with just the double hour lesson on the Wednesday (9th May)

So I'm going to have to talk about Wednesday (9th). We began to study Gestus in class to show how much detail Brecht wanted in his pieces, which in turn is see as the "attitude of the charter". Meaning if Brecht were to freeze any moment of one of his pieces (i.e The Caucasian Chalk Circle) he wanted too see the attitude in that freeze. He wanted to see a woman who had taken a baby, saving it's life but putting hers at risk, giving up everything she loved and having to marry a pig of a man. All with Gestus, he wanted to see that history, that attitude on the character. So, naturally this was pretty darn hard for us.

First we were given titles which we had to apply a Gestus or attitude to. These 6 titles were

• War: Maker of Heroes
• The Waste of War
• Most popular kid in school
• Most unpopular kid in school
• Sincere Politician
• Insincere Politician 

Spencer and I worked on the first two, Georgia and Maria worked on the second and we all as an ensemble worked on the last 2. War: Maker of Heroes didn't go too well since we seemed to be giving off the the wrong attitude since it seemed biased towards one of the two of us. Whereas Waste of War seemed to go slightly better as it communicated all the Wastes of War with that one Frame. Also when we worked on the politician Gestus we realised how detailed you have to be with it, as Maria has mentioned in her previous blog, body language plays a key role even if it rotated slightly towards one person as well as contact between the two people. Everything in Gestus / attitude has to be so extremely clear so that the audience can look at it and realise automatically what is going on.

Then we did individual Gestus' for types of people read out such as unimpressed land lord, a bent copper, a foolish fireman and various others. Again everyone can imitate a fireman and police man but by adding a foolish fireman you have to think quickly to see how you can portray this clearly to an audience. Which is what was the key part for these 2 hours, showing with immense clarity what / who the character is to the audience.

That was pretty much it for this one lesson week for me. One quote that I took from this was "When does a pacifist become ready to kill?"

Richard #1

TMA show-Brecht work-Talent Show! :D

Last week was a week full of theatre, which of course I enjoyed a lot! Every day of that week I had to do something that involved theatre after school, or even during school.

First of all, I will talk about the TMA show I was involved in; I was helping out Kate with her performance with the little children. I did the choreography and I also helped out with the acting, I loved doing that! Every rehearsal went really well, the children worked really hard (although sometimes I had to shout at them, but it was nothing serious) and we had a lot of fun. Just because we had fun doesn't mean we didn't worked hard! At the performance day, some of the children got a little scared and started to run through their lines last minute; I told them it was a very bad idea to go through lines 5 minutes before on stage, it will make you more nervous and you might forget them more easily. Some of them didn't realize that all of the rehearsals we've had meant something to them, like when they got to the theatre they started to panic and think:"oh gosh, WE ARE PERFORMING AND I DON'T FEEL READY".

Fortunatly, nothing bad happened, it was a really good performance they pulled out. During the whole performance everyone was involved in, I couldn't help my self to feel SO JEALOUS of those who were allowed on stage and would perform. I sat there watching every act and I kept thinking: "God I wish I signed up for that. I wish I could be in that group. Oh, why didn't I do that instead??" I've already done one TMA show last year and I loved it, but this year I decided to do something a little more different, helping them out. I hated sitting there feeling sad and I wanted to go on stage so bad just to perform! One of my members in our Theatre Group told me :" At the end, let's perform out Bloody Mist in front of everyone!" I would have loved too, there was such a bog audience! I realize now how much I love performing and how angry and upset I see others performing while I'm not. I am going to have to get used to it, especially when I will help out for Panto next year, doing front of house. I might start crying actually. But anyways, the whole performance went really well and I was proud of my work I had done.

Second of all, I will now talk about our Brecht work we've done in class so far. We have done a lot of Brecht acting which is really interesting to learn about and discover new acting techniques. Unlike Stanislavki, Brecht does not want his audience to "feel" but to "think and reason" during the performance. He therefore created the V effect we've learned about, which tends to distance off the audience to have an emotional connection with the characters. He wants his audience to ask for themselves "HOW would I do in this situation? What would I have done if blablaba would happen?" Instead of going all :"Aawwwh that is s sweet!" Brecht wanted:" Now hang on a minute, how would I have done this if that was me?" HOW was really important to Brecht. We did some exercises  on Gestus. Every emotion is treated by Brecht's Gestus through the play. The actor is supposed to express himself very clearly what his goal/action is for the particularly scene, mostly know as an episode.
We got paired u in groups of 2 and we were given the given circumstances and had to produced a freeze frame of what was specifically told to us. At the ed, we all worked as a group, were the given circumstances were to show a good politician that had gained the trust of his people, who loved him. What was interring in this exercise was that our acting was ok, but we only focused on ourselves rather than to look around and watch what others were doing. For example, when I was shaking Georgia's hand and had my hand on Spencer, whiteout noticing, I was twisting my body around Spencer and this looked as if Spencer was more important and had all of the power. That's what Gestus is, and I think it's really helpful for the audience to get the message, and not the plot.

Friday, we  discussed what would happen for the Talent Show. We had made the list of the acts and we needed the list of our CAS students as quick as possible. Tuesday, we had a meeting to our CAS students who wanted to help out with the production, and of course get CAS hours. Lots of people wanted to help out, which we were really happy with, but somehow I don't really think that the people who are involved for the acts don't really seem that motivated any more. In the beginning they were great, but now, since a month has gone past, it's like they've forgotten about it a little bit! I hope that the tickets sale and the Posters coming up soon will motivate them again, I don't want parents coming in on performance night thinking all of this is rubbish and our school doesn't have talent! I'm sure when we'll get closer to the date, they will realize this is really happening and they should get a little move on.

Back to Brecht work again! Today, on our double lesson, we had to come back to a Doll's House but convert it into Brecht theatre. So no naturalism(not the acting necessarily), the set needed to be clear for the audience what the message was all about, masks, music, gestus, a narrator....
We had one hour to prepare this and we struggled a lot... We did too much talking and not enough of the acting, improvisation bit which we should have done. We had created 2 masks for Nora; one when she puts her little sad puppy face, begging Torvald for money on and another one where she manipulates him and gets away with it. This of course gives her the power, which shows that Torvald is actually the week one (in this episode) and he keeps giving his money away to Nora. We really struggled with the Doctor Rank scene, and we didn't have enough of time to work on it, but the first one went pretty well after we got some useful advice. Next Tuesday we will continue this exercise and show it to Georgia.

All for one and One for all

This week (30th April - 4th May) we had a look over a few things such as our new topic on Brecht and The Ist's Got Talent. I think this will be a long post!

But first after a long and intense week of exams (23rd - 26th April) we were left with one lonely theatre lesson that week. On that Friday Mr. F wanted us up and acting and introduced us to our new topic on Brecht which we began by looking at the piece of The Caucasian Chalk Circle which is a Brechtian play. We were introduced to the ideas and politics behind Brecht such as the fact that he believed in the communist party and what they were doing and so many of his plays adopted this, which is a frequent occurance with Brecht; the poor (which represent the communists) are always depicted as the protagonist or "good guys" of the plays whereas the people with money and power (factory owners, governors ect) are depicted as the antagonists of his pieces. The way I remember this is All for one (meaning everything goes to one person which depicts the "bad" in Brecht's plays) and One for all (meaning everyone gets something and everything is shared equally showing the "good" in his plays)  Brecht also very rarley names his characters for the reason being that he wants little to no emotional attachment between audience and actor, rather than making the audience "feel" and go awwwwww he wants the audience to think and reflect not only during but after also about what they would have done in a situation such as that, how their life refelcts the play, and so this was the main key feature behind Brecht's plays. So we began to learn how the lines are used and narration is used within his pieces which causes a distance between the actors and audience.

Tuesday was a day off so no need to catch up on that day. However on the Wednesday (2nd May) we spent an hour talking about IST's Got Talent and how we are going to get it to work and we also had to change the date, so we decided to bring in forward a day and so now it will be on May 31st. The second hour was chosen  down to a coin flip. Georgia and I wanted our exams back and Spencer and Maria wanted to continue with Brecht, so Mr. F tossed a coin and we ended up looking at our exams. The first 40 minutes was a general chat about the questions given to us (which were Compare and Contrast two separate times you have been in the role of actor and the other was What is the purpose of theatre?) and so we talked about what should be included, how  we found the exam ect ect and then one by one he called us in to tell us our grade and give us individual feedback. With the grade I got I was both happy with it but then again felt that I need to improve this grade. But I guess it is hard to base your entire grade on an exam when in the end we don't end up doing a "timed written essay". I'll just have to improve for next time.Wednesday after-noon we stayed time around 4PM working on Bloody mIST, it was nice to be working on it again since it feels that this is the piece that has brought our entire ensemble together, but as Spencer has mentioned in his previous blog post there are certain things that need to be done to improve it such as scripting and what not but saying we haven't done it for a good month or so we are at a good point.

Friday (4th May) we continued with some Brecht work where we worked on Gestus which is key in Brecht as it is facial expression and gesture and so we were paired and given an emotion which we had to portray to our partner through movement, gesture and facial expressions which went OK not amazing but we got the idea behind it and what it was trying to show. The second task given to use was we were given another emotion and we had to portray it 3 different ways in a freeze frame with a narrator. Georgia and I got love whereas Maria and Spencer got Regret, our 3 scenes were first meeting, marriage and holding a baby which I felt we were partially successful in portraying. This week I have also made a concept ticket for our IST's Got Talent from scratch and I was pretty happy with it!

Look at this Beauty!

Then on Friday and Saturday night a local English theatre group (TMA) which Mr. F runs a class for put on a charity event to showcase what they had achieved in the last year and I ended up helping with the lighting for the show. The last time I did the lighting was with Mr. F and it was pretty close to a disaster the fuses boxes were pretty much knackered and not all of the lights worked and everything such as the lighting shifts had to be done manually from a lighting board. BUT NOT THIS YEAR!!! TMA had invested in some brand new lights and lighting board which worked liked a dream, Friday night we programmed everything in so I learned how to program and store lighting scenes in banks and scenes which was interesting so when it came to Saturday it was basically press a few buttons and we were away, it was a good experience to work with functioning lights almost as much as it was working with broken ones!

Well, that is it for this week, its been a week full of theatre and has been pretty darn fun!

Richard #1

Brechting it down

This was a most irregular conclusion to our week of exams, but also the start of our Brecht work. We also had no school on Tuesday which cut one of the days out of rotation, worked on Bloody Mist, and discussed the Talent show.
Wednesday was the introduction to Brecht's work and in order to do this we are using the piece, the Caucasian Chalk Circle. It about a maid who cares for the abandoned son of an overthrown governor, and than has to deal with a custody lawsuit from the old governor's wife. Its rather similar to the one of King Solomon's stories. We preformed one of the scene in the style of Brecht, with a Narrator and really showing emotion, and than analysed it. My perspective is that while the performance is Stanislavsky child, Brecht's is the message given by the performance. He could care less about the audience enjoying the show, he just wants them to understand his objective.
We stayed after school, til four, this Wednesday as we really need(ed) to start rehearsing Bloody Mist for the Talent show. While most of it worked out, we still have a few issues: 1. We really need to script some scenes to prevent them from running on for to long (or so we have lines) 2. Having an audience 3.Costume and Roles We did have a lot of fun though and I really like the newish creation of the IST (even though its a little out of character) It was a lot of fun though, but we really need to continue practicing before the Talent show.
We also ran into a few issues with the date of the talent show (which forced us to move it forward a day), and got a section of tickets printed out. I really hope that we are moving fast enough though, I would really like to have more than one rehearsal.
Friday, we continued with Brecht. It was mostly practicing his theory of expressing feelings extremely clearly(with little or no vocals). It was difficult to do as while I know how I behave with different emotions, not everyone behaves in the same fashion but the signal has to be clear (and I know for one that I tend to hide my emotions rather than clearly show them).