On Tuesday, we went to Victor Hugo (the french school that is right next to ours), and as much it is directly behind ours WHY do we have to walk so far! It would be less then a minute if we jump a gate or two, but due to a large series of housing complexes, the walk takes around four to five minutes (once again, why?). Anyways, we left in the morning and missed our morning classes (Physics and Drama), which came back to bite me later... but anyways our reason for going was a Shakespeare workshop run by Helen Leblique. What really made this special was she was the Director of the Royal Shakespeare company's production of Anthony and Cleopatra, the text that the Victor Hugo class was studying. So Important+ Knowledgeable+Used to Classes=Profit! We spent the entire two hour or so Master class discussing status and its importance in the play. The first activity we did was to draw a card from a deck and put in it on our head so that other people could see it but we couldn't. We then mingled with the class, and the twist was that our importance was related to the card we held. Some unlucky people ended up drawing only low cards and had to play the fool. I personally drew around 9, so I wasn't powerful but I wasn't unpopular. It was really interesting to how people treated the difference in power, both from a theatre perspective and from a personality perspective. As I had no idea where my card was I treated everyone politely and observed their reactions, other people though were much more upfront about their treatment of others, Shoving them aside or jostling for a position. When we finished the activity, we were told to arrange ourselves based on where we thought that our rankings were compared to each other. We actually managed to arrange our selves perfectly. The second activity the opposite, only we could look at our card. This also lead to sharp contrast in actions, some people were very bossy because they held a high card, but others were polite and subdued about it. The arranging at the end resulted in only a few mistakes again. We then read through a section of the play and acted it out. It took a long time so I'm going to abridge what we leaned: 1. Characters interpret status differently 2. Depending on how they are said, words can have very different meanings 3. Character Interaction is defined by Status, assumed or otherwise.
Then there was a performance of Bloody Mist for the Victor Hugo students. I did in fact arrive late, but only around 10 minutes late for the time that I said I would be there. I didn't plan for the weight and bulkiness of my school supplies while biking, I even crashed into a bush. Anyways, it was our worst performance yet. I think that the cause lay in the fact that no one started out with any energy, people were tired, sick, or just grumpy. By the end though we had really gotten into it and the audience was really enjoying it, but not so much at the beginning(this is actually a common theme, the "WTF is going on" section of the piece, where they are still trying to figure it out.)
And that leaves the set designer project, we were basically told to pick any scene out of The Good Woman of Szechwan (Chez-long, or something like that apparently) and design a set for that scene. I totally forgot about it over the time we were given to get started, fortunately most people had only selected the scene and a basic concept. Personally I had been drawn to the public park, where a unemployed pilot attempt to hang himself but he gets saved by the main character, so I picked that scene. Many people really just dove into the design but I wanted to make sure that I understood the space that I had before adding glamour and flair to my design. So I went through the piece and marked every scene change to produce a flow chart. From this I was able to mark out three major areas, the cigarette shop, the outdoors area(park+market), and the minor building(contains all the random places). I then drew out a scale drawing of what I wanted, the two buildings on opposite sides with a courtyard in the middle with proportions. Then on this scaled drawing I added gimmicks to create a real set. Thanks to this I was able to come up with plenty of ideas that didn't really conflict for space (by the way, I'm trying to conserve space, I ended up writing a page on a summery of the different elements so I really don't want that to go up here) My plans end up sounding really cool, but then came the part of the project that I knew I would fail at modeling the stage. I actually know a fair bit about craft work and modeling but I lack the hand coordination so.... yah, right idea, really bad execution. There is a reason why I was good in CAD, there were machines that cut it as you had drawn it on the computer. Overall,(beyond the horrible end product), I found the project to be really fun, but I was really surprised when people just jumped into the design and in some cases into making it. In Richard's case, this attitude resulted in a very very large bridge and what looked like a tiny lamppost, not that I can really say better...
I really wasn't sure what to put for a title, maybe a Double dose of Demanding Drama would have been better... Or I could have just gone with Double D or something... Meh Two weeks = Two Titles
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