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.