Acting or just being me?

Description

This week we continue working in the creation of our characters for the school play. It was very intense, as german expressionism acting requires to focus on your inner feelings rather than focusing in how you could act those feelings. In the end of the week I ended up with a character that reflects my crazy side as I want to explore a hidden side of me that I don´t usually show and I think it will be reflected interesting at the play. I don´t know why, but I ended up creating kind of a "crazy mother" and I really like where I am going with this character.

Analysis

I don´t really understand how am i supposed to analyse my progress on the rehearsals, so I will just analyse my character and the way I built it.

First of all, they set us an exercise to create an energy. We had to put that energy a colour, a place in our body, an animal and a texture. I came up with colour pink, then with a furry texture, and with the thought of a pink bear. Then, I started to translate this energy from my lower stomach to my hands and the pink bear ended up being a kind of reptile mixed with a dinosaur. I wanted to work with my articulations, specially in all my fingers and in my face, so I started walking in my tiptoes and exploring ways of moving my hand fingers while walking and also exploring different gestures and face expressions always having my eyes exaggeratedly open. Moreover, I started to try different samples of pitches and volume in order to create a voice for my character. I decided I wanted to use dobby from harry potter and gollum from the lord of the rings as my stimulis for my character because I think both of them use in a very successful way their articulations and have a similar way of walking to my character. Also, I think both characters characteristics will work in the play as they are kind of creepy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-V_82VwQQ  What I want to use from dobby's character is its use of voice and part of his phisicallity. I like his face expressions and his pitch; I have a simillar voice but it will definitely help me to find more options for it and for my gestures. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFsUWX-_TGk Gollum will help me as I want to take from him the way he carries all his weight with his fingers, he don´t uses his palms or his whole feet to walk, just the fingers. Also, he has this expansion of his eyes that are very useful for this kind of theatre, and it makes Gollum to be very mysterious. I also want to use some of his mental inabilities as we can see that sometimes he starts talking to himself as he have two different souls inside him and I think it will be very interesting if a character of the play uses some of this mental disorders.

Connections 

I will start by connecting my character to myself. This are some of the characteristics I want to use for my character:

• mental illness
• madness
• instable
• don´t understand completely the situation she is in
• conflictive relationship with her son as she is crazy
• have changing moods and thoughts
• afraid of society as she thinks they will put her on a mental illness hospital

BUT, I want to explore even more and connect more to my inner feelings in order to achieve a better representation of a crazy mom, so, what i need to think now is, in which moments of my life I become crazy?

1. When my parents don´t understand me
2. When I get stressed over too much things to do and no time
3. When I want to do something and  don´t get to do it

So, I decided I want to use one of this and I know that number 2 and 3 are things that I can control, they depend on my will on doing them and organising myself, otherwise, number 1 doesn't depends on me, i just get crazy and that is it. I really get full of frustration and stress when my parents don´t agree with me, i just don´t understand why they always remain so closed into the different perspectives they could have, they just close themselves into new ways of thinking and acting. And the worst part is that usually my arguments are the right ones, but they can´t admit it and I have to accept that i am wrong or i end up getting punished. In conclusion, i decided to use this aspect to help me to find my real madness and achieve a dynamic character in the play and also I decided that I want to show how young generations feel that parents are crazy because they don´t have the same reasoning, which connects to my other connection............

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM! In this type of theatre conflicts between generations is a theme extremely touched, is one of the main ones actually, and i believe that every character should explore the convections and themes of german expressionism in order to understand what you need to do. Furthermore, this idea of showing how young generations feel towards old generations reinforces the theme of clashes between generations. Also, my physicality has exaggerated movements and distorted gestures and articulations that are grotesque, but not funny, they really make you feel a creepy-I-don´t-want-to-look sensation. One of the main conventions in acting of german expressionism is the way in which actors use this theatre practice as a therapy. Actors need to find their deepest secrets and thoughts and explore their inner feelings in order to create their character because in german expressionism you are not an actor playing someone else, you are yourself showing how would you react if you were in that situation by using an experience in which you have felt in that way.

Reflections

I got to connect with myself and I started to reflect about myself. When I decided that in order to  explore my madness I will rely on how I feel when my parents don´t understand me I realised that they are not the only problem. I mean, if I know that I am right and they are wrong, what is the need of proving it? why is it that I need to have constant conflicts with them? to prove them what? and furthermore why do I need to prove them a thing at all? I think that sometimes my inner devil comes and get over me and I don´t know how to control it, because now I see that I am forgetting who is this all about. This is about me. My feelings, My thoughts, My opinions and My reactions. If I really want to prove my madness, I have to understand where does my real madness come from... and I actually do think it comes from my stress and from the fact that sometimes I feel that no one understands me, like literally no one, and then I start to feel alone and confused and I end up being depressed and sad because I start questioning myself if I would be ever understood...but i don´t know, sometimes when I think about how I feel I start thinking it is kind of superficial to feel that way, but it´s how I feel. It´s not like I could control it or something. And also, I constantly get into this battle with myself when I start to question my relationship with my parents. How do we know that we are behaving the way we should? Are there different ways of behaving as a son? and, if there are how do we know which one is the correct one? or does it depends on our parents?

so many questions, but not so many answers.....

I really expect that on my next blog entry I will be able to answers all the questions I have and I have many more:

Are we always supposed to connect in such a deep way with our characters? If we are, are we acting or just being ourselves? Is theatre a therapy always? can it help you to solve your problems? when theatre allows you to find something new about yourself, does it mean it helps you to accept it? what if theatre makes you find your negative side? will it be still useful to you? are we able to decide what aspects go to the negative side and which ones to the positive one? Is theatre a way to know yourself in every chance? when we act, we reflect? when we reflect, we learn? when we learn, are we growing? when i am acting, am i being me? 

xoxo

TheatreGirl.