But I'll just have to teach you it quicky

The rest of Stanislavsky! We might continue the workshop next week for another lesson, but nothing's set in stone. Although the first part of the workshop was mainly talking, today we had a little more chance to act, which is always fabulous. Today we focused on an aspect of this method that has to do with tension. We had different levels of tension, from the most relaxed at 0 to the incredibly tense at 7. All of us were told to lie on the floor in a certain yoga position and relax each part of our body. This was stage 0. Then we were told to imagine ourselves in a certain situation ( spending a pleasant day in London with a friend), and as she told us certain things that we had to portray, for example getting ready , going out and asking for directions, our levels of tension slowly but surely had to increase. Our highest level of tension was at the Tube, when there was a bomb attack and our lives were in danger. At this point, we noticed that people showed extreme fear in various ways; some were petrified in shock and others ran around hysterically.

Next we had to do an exercise in which we were stuck in an elevator. Each character has a level of stress from one to five. My level was two, and I did my best to show the audience how relaxed i was through my unclenched body posture, slow and calm tone of voice and also the way i whistled calmly to myself. Mihika was at the other extreme; she rocked back and worth, wailing, on the edge of hysteria. The audience had to guess at which level we were at, and it was surprisingly easy. Perhaps we're just very good actors? :)
The various levels of tension make the action on stage suddenly much more realistic, as people are all different and react in different ways.
Stay unique!

Love & Sunshine

Soph

The fabulously rude play :)

Living in a muslim country, it's not often that we have the opportunity to act in racy or daring plays, so acting out the first scene of "Too Much Punch For Judy" is a great change from ecology and humanity! Not that I don't care about all of those causes, of course. It's just that it's fun to do a play that isn't about a subject that is rammed down your throat so often. Right: Too much punch for judy is actually a tragic play about a sister who drunk drives and gets into an accident that kills her sister. But as the first scene has to be a contrast to the rest of the play, the silliness must be exaggerated to the extreme. We were separated into two groups, and our directors were Meghna and Alyazia. Meghna took the male characters, and Alyazia worked on Celine and I. I enjoyed working with Alyazia because she let us act and improvise until she decided at certain points to change certain aspects, rather than telling us what to do and not letting us have any input. The only trouble that Celine and I had was that we took the text to the extreme and for the next lesson when we will work on this play, we have to tone down our movements and learn to synchronise them.
Can't wait to continue with this play!

Love & Sunshine

A happy actress!

My first shot at directing (bossing people around)!

And it was probably the most interesting lesson so far! Not only was it just us grade 12 chicas (which frankly makes me more comfortable, although that's gradually starting to change), but directing? Always wanted to give that a try, but since everyone in our class has wanted to for ages, I had to hold back to give everyone a fair chance. Until today! We continued our theme of humanity (and were told that we couldn't escape it, as it was IB theatre art's official theme for a couple of years... ) and one by one, were asked to direct!

The first director was Farah, and it was unlucky for her, because she couldn't learn from anyone's mistakes. Her vision of it was one people, one tribe all joined together in a celebration which involved different levels, tones of voice, sounds and movements. From her method of directing, we learned that directing a whole group at once turns into chaos most of the time, and it's far better to split actors into two or three groups, so that they all focus on their task rather that try to tackle all of the beasties at once (applies typically, but not only, to children). We also learnt that it was important to have a fixed idea of what you wanted in your head, but also how to communicate it properly to your actors without them getting too confused. And another thing: although some actors cannot work unless they have been given strict orders, most actors love the chance to experiment and improvise. And it's also great for directors who have run out of ideas! That's why I used some improvisation when i directed. I had a clear idea of what I wanted the actors to do, I told them exactly when to enter and when to freeze, but however I only told them a continent that they had to portray, rather than telling them what they had to say and do, because I wanted to see what they would come up with. They surprised me (in a good way), especially Alyasia the Australasian, who declared that she liked koalas, kangaroos and SEX. I think that if I have another chance to direct, I would definitely let my actors improvise.

There are three types of directors, we learnt, the dictator, the compromising director and the free for all director. The first is Hitler on a stage; not the type of director that I appreciate, but that type is sometimes necessary, for example as with actors who love following instructions but don't have much imagination. The compromising is the type that knows what they want but allows their actors to give plenty of input, so that they work together as a team, rather than director v/s actor. And the last director flirts with disaster and utter chaos by letting his actors run around like maniacs. Because most actors are a little touched in the head, otherwise they couldn't be as passionate and dedicated about their art :)

Love & Sunshine

A COMPLETE MANIAC

What is humanity?

This was only a single lesson, and what with ramadan timings, we didn't have time to do a whole lot. A poem about humanity was read to us, and we had to write the first words that came into our heads. At first it was very easy, but as we kept going, it became harder to find words to think of to describe what we felt when hearing this poem. Afterwards, we wrote down our initial idea about how to present this poem. The list of my words and the sketches I made are enclosed below :) Enjoy!

Love & Sunshine

A human

It'd take me an entire term to teach you Stanislavski...

This lesson was almost entirely spent on talking about Stanislavski's system of acting, which is basically the only and most effective way to train actors. According to wikipdia, Slanislavki's method is "based around an actor "living the part" but always staying one step away from complete belief. He felt that it is important that, whilst the actor should experience and show the emotions of the character, it is very important the actor still stay detached. The system was made as a flexible structure, a thing that actors may use as much or as little as they please in their rehearsals, and was intended to be modified for the individual."

Our teacher explained to us that in order to really portray a character realistically, you must have this character's goals in your mind (what they have and are and are about to do) and become this character. The play may begin as soon as you step on stage, but the character's life does not; he has a past that influences how he acts in the future. This lesson we concentrated on entrances, a few people were asked to make entrances depending on what happened to them before, for example one student who had a madman with an axe chasing after him.

As Mrs. Slav said, it would be impossible for her to teach the entire method in a term, let alone a lesson, so expect to hear about it in the future!
Da svidania...

Love & Sunshine

A blogger :)

Going green...

Frankly, I was a little disappointed at the stimulus that we received today. A poem on ecology? Been there, done that, then repeated the whole process at least three times. We've talked about saving our planet and recycling in almost every subject (next thing you know, they'll replace trigonometry by ecology in maths class!), so it's no wonder really that most students were not the most enthusiastic they had ever been when presented with it. But anyways, this blog isn't really meant to be a complaint to the IB Theatre Arts board, so I might as well get on with what I have to say.

We were a full class today, and this time I was so prepared for it that I jumped in with half a dozen ideas as soon as we were put into groups after reading the poem. We had to imagine a piece of theatre that we could draw from this stimulus. Our group's idea was good, according to our drama teacher: My Apocalypse. It's the story of a boy who loses his grandfather and who feels as though the world has stopped spinning; that this is the end and he cannot do anything about it. The world (represented by Celine, Farah and I) turn around him, egging him on by whispering and drawing closer as he becomes more and more agitated. The child in the middle, played by Dan, eventually realises that the world must go on and that this should not affect the rest of the people around him. I was disappointed because we hadn't rehearsed much and some of us forgot when exactly and where they had to move, when they had to whisper, and so on. Another thing that annoyed me was when our teacher pointed out that it was terribly cliche to have a character in the center and building up tension with movement and noise around him- because it was true. So next time I'll try to learn from the mistake of using very obvious theatrical devices and go for something a little more subtle.

What I did like about this exercise was that each group drew something completely different from the poem; ours was about the end of the world for a little boy, Meghna's group portrayed an idealistic world, and Marta's group was a comparison between people who believe that they have problems and others who make them realise that life is in fact, worth living.
So live life to the fullest! :)

Love & Sunshine

Soph

Remove the mask!

Our second lesson was already much easier. Having expected the grade 13's to be with us, I had promised myself to open up and provide the rest of my group with a little input, but as soon as I realised that we would only be us 12's, I breathed a sigh of relief. It takes time to adjust to new people and to their presence! I hadn't noticed how important that was to me before, but working with a group of people you feel close to is one of the most important things for you to be able to develop and grow- because you're not scared of going out there and making mistakes. Today's stimulus was a picture of an African mask. The gold and emerald green are what struck me the most about it, but in the end, it was the aspect of covering our true faces that we used. We drew inspiration from an experience that our TOK teacher had talked about in class that day; about how in one school he taught in, all of the new students entered the school as individuals, but they came our of their years of learning all the same as one another. To portray this, we used rhythm. We stood in a row and each one of us had a specific movement that separated us from one another and allowed the audience to get an insight into our personality. For example, I was an exuberant dancer. As time went by, however, our movements became increasingly stiff and uncoordinated, and all our movements became similar: we had adopted the same mask and become identical. This lesson, we also had to do our first pitch. Having no idea what they were, we introduced our piece by using a series of repetitive words, such as "identical, identical, identical," rather than actually explaining what the piece was going to be about.
The other group used repetition as well, with their phrase "remove the mask!" that they said over and over at diffrent tones of voices and either in canon or unison. I found this very effective as it really emphasized the point of their play: to be yourself, no matter what.
Advice we should all take :)!

Love & Sunshine

This actress

First Theatre Arts Lesson!

Summer is over, and we've now come to this time of the year. School has started- and with it, theatre arts! The weather is finally starting to cool down in Dubai which makes outdoor performances and wearing backstage all-blacks finally possible! All of us were really looking forward to our first theatre arts lesson- but it didn't live up to everybody's expectations....

First of all, having been used to a very close group of drama students that all considered each other family, it was difficult to have to adjust to acting and sharing concepts with people that we hardly knew. I thought that it would be easily overcome, but I was uncommonly shy and unwilling to share any ideas that I had. Our stimulus was a nonsense poem (see below), and we had to create a piece of theatre that included all of the nonsense words. The point of the exercise was to interpret the meanings of the phrases by speaking them out loud and listening to how they sounded. Our group decided that the poem sounded like a dialogue between members of a family who are getting ready in the morning, and that is how we presented it. However, as we spent too much time deciding which phrase meant what, I didn't really have time to decide what character I was going to portray and ended up being a grandmother but not acting like one.

For the next lesson, I will try to organise my time better and, more importantly, come out of my shell and become the Sophie I usually am!

Love & Sunshine