Why bothering??

Description

This week was very intense. We realised that we have around 24 days until the day of the play arrives. This means we need to start staying other days of the week in order to rehearse in more deepness each scene. This week, I continue directing and acting in scene 5. This time, there was a big advance from last week´s work. Now we have a much more dynamic scene although there are still things missing.

Analysis 

On Tuesday, we worked on the scene with Katty. We decide on having Micaela and Pamela doing the same actions and Mora and Nathalie being two opposites. In the meanwhile, I started to create a beat in which the father and the mother "abruman al hombre". We came up with this idea of Pamela and Micaela doing the same actions as if there was a mirror between them. This gave the scene a different type of dynamism as it was coordinated. On Thursday, we realised that didn´t work in terms of german expressionism as we need CONTRAST in our reality scenes. So, we changed into having  Pamela being feeling-less and mean and Micaela being lovely and helpful. I think this will actually work better as know they have more things to explore as actresses. We also made a change in their voices as they were stretching the words too much and were getting used to the high pitch. Moreover, we also came up with some actions for them. I like the ways in which these characters react to each other. When Micaela does something, Pamela tries to undo it or makes Micaela stop just by her looking. Their face expressions are also working effectively. While Pamela has this "ew you are a loser" face, Micaela has a "yes we can fin you a new road" one. This helps and goes within german expressionism as there is a clear contrast between them and by setting clear examples of how we want them to be we are getting them to be personal involved to the character. We set up two teachers from school as their models, which will  allow them to explore more as they daily live with those teachers and can analyse their ways of talking and being and there will also be a personal involvement as they will start to act from experiences and occasions similar that they haves lived or watched with the teacher involved. 

Furthermore, we continued with Nathalie and Mora. They are getting better each time, right now they are getting to the pitch and rhythm we want from this scene. We decided to maintain our decision of Mora being a cruel de vil from Argentina and Mora being the little secretary. While Mora has this low pitch voice, Nathalie has a high pitch, almost "chirriando". This will also help with contrasts as the difference in voices has a high impact as there is a contrasting difference that is clearly noticed every time one of them speak. We also started working mainly on the actions they could be doing as smoking and playing with a scurf or simply what will they do or where do they will walk when they say a certain thing. I still believe that this scene needs more expressionist elements because they need to be there for a reason and I thinks they add a totally different view of the scene as you are deforming the formed, which is basically what expressionists do. 

We also continue working with Alejandro. Now his scene has more dynamism and it´s one of the small parts of the scene in which we can see expressionism. Firstly, we can see that Alejandro now uses the "failed" hand which he does not control in a much better way. Now we can see him talking as his hand is acting alone so it really seems as if he does´t have control over his hand. His voice is also getting in the way, as now he is exploring the stretching of words and the velocity of them and their vocalisation. One of the things we found is a deformity for him. Now Alejandro´s character will have a hat covering his whole head. This is unrealistic and specially expressionist as it breaks the conventional way of putting a hat. We also create more actions for Alejandro and decided that in order for his scene to work he needed to do everything more fast and dynamic as this should be one of the funny scenes in the play. I think this scene is quite good, but I really insist on having more expressionist elements in it as in the beginning of the play we have a very effective use of them and I feel as if we had lost it, maybe because we are only 24 days from the premiere and we are getting kind of nervous and maybe we had lost the deformities (specially) in the way. 


Connections

The staff room: Last year performance of the staff room as my character and Carolina´s character were very similar to what we want from Pamela and Micaela. My character was a mean teacher who always saw every children as a failure and Carolina´s character was kind and lovely and always cared for the children and helped them with what they need. This worked in my scene the way I want it to work in the play´s scene. It was a contrasting difference that not only creates a more dynamic scene in terms of acting, but in the atmosphere and the visual part too. Maybe I should rely on that experience to help me to give feedback to them, as I remember that Miss Alicia gave us some advice on how work with two extremes that are completely opposite in order to create a bigger effect on the audience.

 Confesiones: This might be repetitive, but I can relate Micaela and Pamela example of how use a person you know to become a character. In confessions, Ana Correa tells us how she builds a character from an experience. This is basically what I want from Micaela and Pamela by giving them two teachers as an example of what we want to see from there. This also relates to german expressionism as they have a deep emotional way of becoming the character. Som by relating them to a teacher they have known from always, they have more personal experiences with them and they will involve their inner thoughts into their acting process. This will work with the play as they will be doing the correct method of expressionism ways of becoming the character and will go within our expectations. 

Reflections

"One person´s craziness is another person´s reality"   -Tim Burton

This week´s rehearsals made me think on to what extent are we following german expressionism conventions. We are now getting distant from there and as we get closer to the final scenes, we get farer from the distortions. I really thought the exaggerations and distortions were something that add an effect on the audience in order for them to start questioning themselves and start having some reasoning. I don´t expect the audience to understand our purposes and even less to understand the whole play. Maybe they will but if we don´t give them the necessary elements for them to respond the way we want, they won't respond that way. Maybe I am underestimating too much and maybe the audience in this types of play does´t matter. There could be the option of doing this because of the emotional effect that it have on us rather than doing it from someone else. But the question will be, if we were doing it for ourselves, why do we present it in front of an audience? with what purpose? expecting what response? I want the audience to understand our reasons, but as you can see on the previous quote, one person´s craziness is another person´s reality. So, we can´t really be sure if the audience will see craziness and reality from the same point of view that us, and we can´t even be sure if an audience is needed to prove it. Maybe within the play we as directors have different opinions of what is crazy and what is real and maybe as expressionists we have the same view.

So, do expressionism change your ways of seeing the world? do expressionist plays have deformities during the whole play? If they do, are we doing something wrong when we don´t use deformities in a scene? what does this element bring to the scene?  is it really there to break conventions? will the audience be able to understand our purposes? will they think we have a distorted mind? what if they don´t even understand the play as a whole? will that be the directors fault or the audience? why do we bother on doing a expressionist play if we are not going to follow the conventions fully?

xoxo
TheatreGirl.

Welcome to a director's critical world.

Description

This week I was basically in charged of directing my own scene, not the one of the family but the one of the councillors, scene 5. I think this week´s progress was done under the circumstances we were at, without a script and without the power puff girls :( . However, my scene worked very well although I would have liked to have more progress in terms of acting. 

Analysis

On Tuesday and Thursday, we focused on building the scene in technical aspects. Pamela and Micaela started working on their beat, Mora and Nathalie too and Carlos, Alejandro and me started the creation of Alejandro´s second beat of the scene. In beat 1, we have "el hombre"´s monologue and first rejection of the mother and father when they tell him he is no longer their son. This part of the scene is just written, we had never practice it but I have some interest proposals to this beat as I think the idea of rejection and embarrassment is highlighted through it and there are ways of emphasising it like for example mixing the dialogue with music that help "el hombre" to throw all his feelings through his texts. 

Moreover, we worked on Pamela and Micaela´s beat which is beat 3. This beat happens when two councillors appear and try to offer "el hombre" different types of jobs. The interesting thing about this beats are the contrasts created by opposite personalities in the characters. In this case, Pamela and Micaela act very similar from what i have seen and I actually like the atmosphere they give to the scene as they are like two identical twins that are overwhelming "el hombre" with alternatives of work and comments on his mediocrity. I think this will add more dynamism to the scene as Mora and Nathalie are already the councillors that have the "contrast" game on their beat and play more with the devil and angel conscience that tries to convince "el hombre" of two completely different perspectives. So, as Mora and Nathalie are more contrasting, and Alejandro is the funny element of the scene, Micaela and Pamela´s proposal or being similar will work effectively on the play as it will be something different and will avoid the scene of being repetitive and boring. In this beat, the actions are fairly well developed but I think more interaction with "el hombre" is needed and more movement around the stage and levels. This is kind of hard because we are rehearsing on the floor for now and we don´t have the levels the stage have and also we can´t work with the desk because it is still unstable and could be dangerous to use it as a space for walking. What we can do is work with the desk but in another way just to have dynamism in the scene until they secure the desk; we can use it to explore with actions with the hands and arms or any part of the body so that we don´t  necessarily require the walking on the desk at this moment. What I like about Pamela and Micaela is that as humans they are naturally energetic and have a high pitch and are working on a nice intonation of words, so it´s easy to work with them. The only thing that is missing is finding a deformity for them because I don´t see anything expressionist on their beat so this week we will need to work on that and maybe help them to find an stimulus once they have their deformity.

Furthermore, I also worked with Mora and Nathalie that are part of the beat 5 of the scene. In this point, "el hombre" is already tired of all the proposals Micaela, Pamela and Alejandro had made to him and the aim here will be to rise the energy and dynamism of the scene so that the audience won´t get tired of listening to all the proposals and promote the wanting of hearing more of them. This beat have interesting proposals that can be used to create awesome things, but the problem is we have the right ideas but the wrong application of them. We started by defining that Mora and Nathalie´s character will be opposite in order to create contrast. Mora´s character is like a argentinean cruela de vil that really don´t care about "el hombre" and just wants to get out of there and Nathalie is more like the oppressed assistant that accepts everything and wants to help "el hombre" but in the end none of them help him. The problems with this scene is that they still don´t know their lines, their energy and voice is too low and there is not a single touch of expressionism. I think that the characteristics their characters have can give many possibilities of exploration but they are not taking them. From the beginning we worked on becoming your character and it seems as they forgot what they have in the first rehearsals, I think we should do a kind of reminder session to work on that because they also need a deformity and to change their voice and intonation in order for the scene to work. As I said before, this beat should rise the audience´s interest on the scene and its doing exactly the opposite. I want to work more in depth with this beat as I think is crucial in the scene and that it have a lot of potential that is not being explode. 

Finally, we also worked on Alejandro´s beats. He will enter in beat 2 and beat 4 to offer jobs to "el hombre" and this will be consider as the funny and comic beats of scene 5. As this is the end of act 1, I think this beats are extremely necessarily in order to add dynamism to the play and maintain the audience attention rather than losing it. Alejandro´s character is very hectic; he has this deformity that allows him to explore comedically his body and voice in order to cause laughter. His deformity is that one of his arms can´t be controlled by him so it does random stuff. For example, in beat 2, when he offers "el hombre" some works, his hand starts to break the papers or punch "el hombre" before he can even deny or accept the job. Also, we decided that when he returns in beat 4, the comedic element will be mainly the script so that it will not be the same as in beat 2 so that it don´t become repetitive. I think this factor is very important as now Alejandro can explore more in terms on how to say things that make the audience laugh without showing he is saying them so that the people laugh. I am very pleased with Alejandro´s work and I think his character is open to many proposals and variables he can explore and find in order to have a successful scene. I also think the mentioned beats will give more contrast in the scene with the mother and father beats as they are more serious and authoritarian and the other beats will be more playful and funny but all of them emphasise the fact that "el hombre" is a loser and that now he don´t belong anywhere so he needs to find a job, otherwise he will be mediocre for the rest of his life. 

Connections 

Proyección Privada: I can connect some parts of this play to the effect I want to avoid in Alejandro´s beats. In proyección privada there were parts in which the actors focused only in causing the audience´s laughter rather than the way they did it. They didn´t do what they did for an specific reason or for creating a response but just to make them laugh, which didn´t happen as their jokes did not worked as well as they could have if they have a clear view of their intentions and wanting responses. Also, it appear as if they were just saying the funny stuff for the sake of it and not because of an internal reason. This will help me as I know exactly what I don´t want so now I know I want to work on Alejandro´s intentions when he is saying his funny parts as the last thing I want is the audience to feel and think the way I did about this aspect of proyección privada.

Past One Act Plays: I can relate this to the scene as Nicole's character in A Matter Of Dissection and the other Nicole´s character in Split are very similar to what i would like to see from Micaela and Pamela. I want two classy secretary wannabes that act as if they know EVERYTHING and they can´t be wrong in order to have characteristics the audience can relate to. Also, I can relate Mora´s character to Manu´s character in A Matter Of Dissection as she was also Cruela De Vil alike and her way of walking and talking was very similar to what I want from Mora. From a matter of dissection I would also want to connect Eduardo´s character to Alejandro´s. Both needed to have this staccato movements with one or more body extremities. It will be very interesting to achieve a coordinate like eduardo´s to have a similar effect as I thinks that in the one act play it added dynamism and energy to the performance.

Reflections

This week was the first thing I directed a scene in the school play. I was able to use my past experiences in my theatre class to direct it but it is not the same. Here you are dealing with people you don´t necessarily know that much and I think that the main difficult thing is to pass from actor to director. For me, the really difficult thing is getting used to changes. Last years I was always directed by someone and my only contribution to the play was acting. Now, I have to act, direct, write, work on my production task, help with other production tasks and have part of the responsibility for the success of the play. Don´t get me wrong when I say now I have to do more things, I love doing them, but of course it is difficult to adapt yourself to changes and start realising the importance of your part in something. Now, I think that directing an expressionist play is different from directing any other play. You need to have a twisted mind and use your creativity to fin bizarre and distorted elements to add into each scene. To answer some of my last entry questions, now I know that every rehearsal I am learning and experiencing more and more. For me, this is a way of feeding my own acting method because as a director, you see things from another perspective and become technical rather than practical. This allows you to practice and explore more critical skills are as you become more open to criticise and fix other scenes and characters you also become more open into criticise yourself. It is human nature to not be able to see your mistakes and disadvantages as clear as you see others, but when you start developing directing skills, you allow yourself to be able to criticise yourself as an actress and as a character. This is another way in which theatre serve you as a therapy, not only by acting and comparing yourself to your character, but by directing and comparing yourself as an actress to other actors and actresses. 

a single action can change the rhythm of a scene? why dynamic scenes usually work better? is it a good choice to direct your own scene? if it is, do you learn equally as if you were directing a scene in which you don´t act? in order to act you need to know how to direct? or otherwise? when you direct, do you reflect? or you only analyse? or are both necessary to do it? do directors always need to have a concept? in our case, a play with many directors can have more than one concept? or everyone needs to decide on one? 

xoxo
TheatreGirl.