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