Description
These two
weeks we worked in the structure of the play, as we discussed which scenes were
going to use or take from our stimuli. We also did a further study in Grotowski
and poor theatre. Moreover, we had the first rehearsal of the school play.
Analysis
To begin
with, the structure of the play for me was quite hard to separate or select
scenes because I was in charge of the act I and in that act all the scenes have
key events as they introduce the characters and explain the play as a whole and
the purpose of the actions of the characters, as well as given us background
information of their origins. This would be such as the witches, the main
character reaction and his thoughts for the future. I just managed to take one
scene from the act as it was irrelevant but we also merged scenes into bigger
ones instead of having to make more scenes. I think that perhaps this process
is long but it makes it easier just to extract scenes from our stimuli rather
than creating our play, which is a longer process and it is hard to get all the
production team agree on it.
Furthermore,
we study Grotowski and the idea of poor theatre that involves the fact of
having less elements or over produced, such as makeup, scenery, costumes, props
and just having the essential. This is because Grotowski believes that the
theatre was trying to be more like films rather than theatre which in this case
have to focus more in the acting and the actor as a whole. He describes how the
audience has to empathize with the actor in some point of the play. It was
quite interesting to see the relationship with the audience and how he tries to
destroy conventional theatre and the proscenium arch and states that is better
to have the actors amongst the audience.
Moreover,
we did the first rehearsal of the play! For me it was at first demanding to be
in charge of younger actors and have to direct the rehearsal. But as a team we
made the usual games and introduction of the play and the commitments for each
participant. We also saw the kids acting which led us to think of the kind of
character they could act in.
Connections
The first
connection of the year I made was having a stimulus of the play although we
always use this for each of our play it made for me a strong connection to the
one act play because we have to look for a game, type of theatre, etc.
The second
connection was the fact that poor theatre has some similarities with german
expressionism because they have the theory of having your face as a mask.
The third
connection is with paucartambo because of their relationship with the audience
was they don’t have a fix stage but they act next to the audience. This gives
another connection to ‘sin titulo’ because the actors didn’t have a fix stage
but the audience moved and saw from different perspectives.
Reflections:
Although I
was absent for two explorations of poor theatre I think this type of theatre is
quite interesting and im very excited because I like to explore in depth the
conventions as they are reasons behind why the do things the way they do. Also
because I share the idea of having the actor as the main element because
overall we are losing focus and rather prefer more visual stuff than what the
play is actually trying to transmit. I also really like the fact breaking
tradition and having the characters be next to the audience rather than doing
something conventional and separate the
actors with the audience. It would be a wonderful and unique experience if we
manage to do this with discipline and train our actor to get fully into
character the whole time.
Moreover, I
think we are doing well in the production of the play because we had a great
start and ideas are flowing and everything is exciting right now. The first
rehearsal for me was a success because we manage to control the situation and
the children have great potential and are very excited about the play and they
want to contribute and I think this would make it a wonderful experience and we
are going to have a great play!
Questions:
To what
extent can we interact with the audience without losing concentration? How can we last more time doing acrobatics?
