NO DETENTION PLEASE :(

On Friday October 2nd we went to ICPNA. The play we went to see was called “Opera de Tres Centavos” which was one of the most famous plays by Bertolt Brecht. Personally, it was very useful and out of the ordinary to go see the play. It applied ways in which the Brechtian theatre was supposed to show: the audience should be aware that this is a play. In other words, the audience should not feel identified with the play, but as the play finishes it allows them to reflect about the present. I think that a way to achieve it was in the script itself; it showed the misery of 3rd world countries (Colombia in this case) and the ridiculous ways in which they try to get money to live. The change in scenery is something I didn’t like very much because you could see the scenery being moved by the actors that weren’t even supposed to be in the scene, it was very distracting just as the photos at the back of the stage.(BTW, Roberto told us later that the changes should be actually more evident because of Brecht, so I guess the actors making the sounds from behind the stage was okay according to Brecht.) About those photos I am not quite decided if they were helpful or not the performance: it was distracting but it helped the understanding of the scene. I imagine there could have been another to way to achieve it. There was something I didn’t understand: the crappy circus performance at the start which had nothing to do with the play but I suppose it was in the script because it was usually in the Brechtian theatre. The scenery made a contrast with the costumes and makeup: the scenery was very miserable and close to reality while the costumes and makeup were very colourful and meaningful. For example, Polly’s dad was dresses like a rich man but lived in a house falling into pieces; it was the same as the wife who was also dressed a little bit elegant (especially in the second part) but in her house she had to iron and look really bad. I will be now describing the character that I think was the most impressive to me.
Polly: se may not be from dominicanish but she did a great work with her column and oppositions. The way she stood: arched back, leaning to the side but with the chest and chin up and her hands resting on the hip opposite to the leaning back. It was simply admirable (during the break I tried to do it for like 5 seconds and I FAILED). I also liked her voice, it was funny but somewhat annoying, and it is difficult to talk like that. (MAAAAC?). Her makeup was pretty stunning, although Diego told us later that her face was actually like that (virola I mean),long lashes and shadows “acentuando” her eyes. Her dad also did a good job with the column, his base position was: knees bended and back arched.
The job with the music, since it was an opera was pretty good, but they were too long sometimes as well as the monologues and dialogues, it was sometimes hard to follow and boring, although I think that the intervention of unexpected songs made the audience have more interest, anyway that interest didn’t last long. The light were not
Now I am really curious about this: How can you tell in a Brecht play that the performance that is up on scene was good? I mean, I could have been done by accident, weren’t supposed good actors to transmit feelings to the audience throughout the play? I think that is staniflastik (I know it must be spelled wrong)’s theory. So must we change the way out minds are set and look at that play in the other way around? If it is bad in the stani-hcdksabjcnsacla’s way that means that it is good in the Brecht way? I’m really confused; I hope that I can clear this out the next trimester when we study Brecht.

THE MASK- DEBORAH CORREA

On Tuesday we stayed after school and had a didactic talk with Deborah Correa about masks. She started talking about the column. The column helps you to get the age, the weight and the volume of the character. To get a presence in the stage, you need an extraordinary amount of energy.
When you first see the mask, you should treat it as a face, examine it, and ask: what is he? What does he do? Where does he come from? What does he want? We should get around the idea of us lending our bodies and the mask lending us its face: complement each other.
She showed us different masks that she used all through her carrier in Yuyachkani.

EL CAPORAL in ‘Contra el viento’

the mask has trashy blond hair, light blue shadows over its eyes, swollen pink lips and its teeth are made of little mirrors. The mask covers the whole face.

El Calporal is shown as a military old evil man, what is behind the mask it s supposed to be the devil. He uses a chaleco of golden colors and a full suit in white color, uses coins around his costume to make sounds. Deborah used martial arts to get the character because it helped her energy. The movements of El Caporal are between strength and decrepitude.

After she puts on the mask, I could see a drastic change. You no longer see the person behind the mask; it’s an absolute transformation of the actress. The costume without the mask looks incomplete, I found myself, repulsed by it but at the same time drawn to it.

EL BOCON in ‘Encuentro de Zorros’

The mask has a stone color, it is cover in brownish fabric. The character has a candle which causes in the audience a mysterious atmosphere. He plays the quena to have an Andean air.

To get a humble and bended character, Deborah bases her performance in a dream that Pongo, the character, had about his master. Pongo is a servant and his master treats him like a slave. He dreamed of the master and him, both dead, they were in heaven with St. Peter. He called two angels: one was young and beautiful, while the other was old. St. Peter asked the young one for honey and the old one for feces. The master was covered in honey while Pongo was covered in feces. And so St. Peter said: You are to lick each other for the rest of eternity.

We could see the character again and not the actress, the character made slow movements of the head, that she later on, explained as a way of getting the audience see the movements: if they were too fast, the audience would be lost.

UCUCO in ‘Encuentro de Zorros’

the mask, is practically a waqollo. It has horizontal lines in blue, red and cream, and it is blushed. Its hair is blonde and made of alpaca. The costume is made of alpaca as well; it is black and has horizontal lines of different colours.

After she put on the mask, we could see a funny character, very playful and part child, part adolescent and a tiny part of adult. There’s an extreme interaction with the audience. She pulled three people from the audience and asked to be the godfathers and one to be the Baptist of a little doll.

LA GATA in ‘Los musicos ambulantes’

the mask is a half mask, inspired in la commedia dell’arte from the 16th century.
Since the mask isn’t completely covering the face (in which case the appropriate thing wouldn’t be speaking because the voice doesn’t sound good), Deborah had to focus on the eyes, which could be seen, and the mouth/voice expressions. The costume is the one of a woman from the jungle, a green blouse, a black long skirt and many lazes around her ponytail.

She used the cat’s personality to get an idea of how she would move, and also the way people of the jungle spoke and walked.
Again, the costume without the mask looked incomplete. When she put on the mask, the transformation was amazing.

POCHOLO in ‘Un dia en perfecta paz’

Pocholo also had a half mask, yellow, big cheeks, with big, sort of Chinese eyes, you could not differentiate between a man or a woman. This was done by the costume, he had long trousers with tirantes and a blue shirt.

Two friends fall asleep and have a dream. The story is about a world upside down (I related it to a carnival in Andean theatre), and pocholo (old man) was working in a circus. When the manager asked them if they wanted to stay of leave to the real world, Pocholo wanted to stay, but his friend, Baluco, convinced him to leave.

There is a lot of contact with the audience. Deborah first dressed as a clown/magician and asked someone from the audience to do malabares.


After all this I wonder, if we have so many personalities in the next play, how can we interact in different ways with the audience? It’s obvious that since we are inspired by the Paucartambo celebration, we MUSy have interaction with the audience. The question is how or how much?

It´s all business

I swear I had never sweated so much in a rehearsal! Everything was done, lights went out and, what seemed to be like five minutes of applause, ended. Every face I saw was covered in sweat but they were smiling so big that it was almost stupid I was thinking about it. We were changing clothes when Miss Alicia came and congratulated us. “You did great guys!”


It was so frustrating to try to perform Mrs. Middleton. First it was the move… or the NOT-moves. I tried the best I could to not move, don’t move your feet Claudia, don’t separate your feet Claudia, don’t move your hands Claudia…Then we realized that it would be so boring to watch if I didn’t move. So the voice, facial expressions and partly hands should be my focus. It wasn’t that easy. At all. My accent was so strange that when I focused in getting the accent right, I actually didn’t pronounce the words correctly and people ended up not understanding what I said. Then the monologue. Good heavens, why do you do this to me? I could have easily died before performing that part! First of all, the sentences were so similar to each other that it was really hard to get them right. Then it was the intentions of what I said, I couldn’t get them right. The energy! The hardest thing ever! I tried so hard that I couldn’t get it right! Or at least right enough.
Then in the main presentation, the props failed me. I couldn’t find the money! Money! Money! Money! Fifteen minutes searching for money! Well, honestly, it would have been worse if the others wouldn’t have felt Felipe and me. We were arranging the props we couldn’t find. Felipe came finally with an improvisation of a rat with waipe. We tried to make it look like a rat and we finally did. But when we arrived, the money wasn’t there!


The start point in which I finally became aware of the fact that it was it, it was the real thing, was when three girls came into the theatre and I started to feel nervous, my heart, which at that point was at its normal-rehearsal speed, was pounding much faster. That feeling was doubled when I heard all the people in the audience. Too late to go to the bathroom now. Fortunately, my glasses we used as props so I couldn’t really see the people and their faces, but their voices were much more frightening, I say fright because I had a new feeling of disappointing people. What if I didn’t..? What if I forget..? What if? What if? Even in the muted parts I couldn’t really say my lines right. It was when the third scene was up when I finally found my voice and started. I messed up a few parts and I tried to cover them up as smoothly as I could. I guess you can’t expect accurately how something is going to turn out if a factor is not present. The simple presence of the audience is a huge factor that changed a great deal of not only my performance, but all of ours. I really wonder in what ways did the character limit me from showing energy and to what extent I did it?

It´s all business

I swear I had never sweated so much in a rehearsal! Everything was done, lights went out and, what seemed to be like five minutes of applause, ended. Every face I saw was covered in sweat but they were smiling so big that it was almost stupid I was thinking about it. We were changing clothes when Miss Alicia came and congratulated us. “You did great guys!”


It was so frustrating to try to perform Mrs. Middleton. First it was the move… or the NOT-moves. I tried the best I could to not move, don’t move your feet Claudia, don’t separate your feet Claudia, don’t move your hands Claudia…Then we realized that it would be so boring to watch if I didn’t move. So the voice, facial expressions and partly hands should be my focus. It wasn’t that easy. At all. My accent was so strange that when I focused in getting the accent right, I actually didn’t pronounce the words correctly and people ended up not understanding what I said. Then the monologue. Good heavens, why do you do this to me? I could have easily died before performing that part! First of all, the sentences were so similar to each other that it was really hard to get them right. Then it was the intentions of what I said, I couldn’t get them right. The energy! The hardest thing ever! I tried so hard that I couldn’t get it right! Or at least right enough.
Then in the main presentation, the props failed me. I couldn’t find the money! Money! Money! Money! Fifteen minutes searching for money! Well, honestly, it would have been worse if the others wouldn’t have felt Felipe and me. We were arranging the props we couldn’t find. Felipe came finally with an improvisation of a rat with waipe. We tried to make it look like a rat and we finally did. But when we arrived, the money wasn’t there!


The start point in which I finally became aware of the fact that it was it, it was the real thing, was when three girls came into the theatre and I started to feel nervous, my heart, which at that point was at its normal-rehearsal speed, was pounding much faster. That feeling was doubled when I heard all the people in the audience. Too late to go to the bathroom now. Fortunately, my glasses we used as props so I couldn’t really see the people and their faces, but their voices were much more frightening, I say fright because I had a new feeling of disappointing people. What if I didn’t..? What if I forget..? What if? What if? Even in the muted parts I couldn’t really say my lines right. It was when the third scene was up when I finally found my voice and started. I messed up a few parts and I tried to cover them up as smoothly as I could. I guess you can’t expect accurately how something is going to turn out if a factor is not present. The simple presence of the audience is a huge factor that changed a great deal of not only my performance, but all of ours. I really wonder in what ways did the character limit me from showing energy and to what extent I did it?

"they looked at me with that what-do-you-think-you're-doing-bitch attitude"

Yesterday, we didnt go to "yuyachkani" [i know..:(], we went to diego's house and then went to Universidad San Marcos to watch one of the plays in the "4to Festival UCSUR de Teatro Internacional". We waited around an hour and killed the timeplaying charadaa and playing tiny scenes of "Nelly's guest house" [I found out that one of sandra's characters was a french maid and one of rodrigo's was a cowboy]. the ants invaded us and i discovered thta roberto is a cheater! [OMG!, the girls won anyway]. Then we entered and i wondered if the school theatre could ever be that cool.

The play was called"Dominicanish" by Ayombe from Dominican REpublic. I'n not sure if i liked it or not but i do have both comments about what i think was wrong and very very very very very very...good. First of all, I want to state what i supposed was the theme of the play. The actress, who represented more than one character and sometimes societies, expressed the struggle of countries towards foreigners. in this case, the 'need' to learn english where the native language is spanish. I compare it to the spanish colonization of america. although in dominicanish the language isn't impossed as hardly.

Likes:

• I looooved the actress' performance, she used a combination of oppositions, that as the others said, made look rolly and his moco like nothing [of course, if he is nothing we are..less than nothing], and indu dance. Her voice was strong and her steps were well syncronized. She thought every step she took. she was also, aware of the audience [disappearence of the 4th wall] and made the audience participate.
• The use of light was amazing. the actress could hide in it and it created a sort of mistery. it also focused little parts so we could direct our attention to it.

I'll add a little video of the light and her movements:

Dislikes:

• The video that they put, was unnecesary, it might have had a purpose or relation to the play but it divided the attention of the audience, and i peronally didn't know where to look.
• The lack of other actors made the play uninteresting and without the right amount of action, monotoned and very boring
• I had problems trying to follow the play, and i didnt get some words
• the use of space was unbalanced, there was like 5 square meters left alone.
• the play seem more like a monologe than a play. it didn't really have an end.

In conclusion, what really made me applaud, was the actress' performance, it was visible that she had a good control of her body, strenght and charisma when acting.

The same question revolves and revolves in my mind, is the comedy enough to entretain the audience in 'Las aceitunas'? If they cannot understand the text and just the actions..could they get bored? Itsn't it more interesting to have a combination of both context and comedy?

'Stressed Randomism' could be my new culture

Oh god! this week has been... stressfull, yeah that's the word. We've been studying the spanish golden age for class and each one of us was suppposed to investigate about a subject and explain it to the rest so each one of us had a pretty good idea of what was coming for the school play. My PPP about the antecedents of the golden age were visibly unprepared and so I got the lowest grade I've ever had (well-deserved of course). Soon, the other bad and good presentations passed as well and I could see all we had to do. It is a lot to do and not much time, so we have to hurry up!



Tuesday came and so CAS and rehearsal day. We stayed for CAS first, listening to Katty complaining about drama rehearsals in front of us and assuming that we weren't there. Then we went to the good stuff! Luis Diego didn't come that day so we couldn't rehearse as well as before. I also found out that I sometimes have an explosive behaviour when things don't go well. The problem was that the actors were easily distracted and when it came time to act they didnt get what to do and they wanted us to do all the work for them, i had to tell them several times that they had to think for themselves as well, we weren't suppossed to do our jobs plus theirs. We would help, of course, but as roberto said, we can't teach them how to act. And we definetely shouldn't tell them EVERY SINGLE action they must make. I know I might not be a great actress but I know when something isn't prepared, and we have to work really hard with them. the problem is, how is it the best way to get to them, maybe make them see more movies and plays so they can see how many actions and feelings a person can perform in scene; or maybe we should just leave them by themselves one day and see how they can manage to make a scene without external help? I know I'm not the director but I feel the urge to make this play perfect, maybe it is because now i'm part of it and if something goes wrong i'll feel guilty as i usually do, even when it isnt up to me to feel that way. Anyway.. we're a team and we must stand together and the ib's will try to pull the other up so the play is end up as a magnificent piece of art. But we're still in the first weeks so should except these kind of things, we'll get better as time passes.

Changing the subject, today i was watching Titanic and while Rose and Jack were running away from her fiance, it occured to me a great idea (consider it, it you like it let me know). The idea of the superheroes for the next year play looks great, but wouldnt it be cooler if we made 'the making' of a superheroe movie? imagine a director, kinky actors that change personality - from movie to real set-, a gay modist, camera men, EVERYTHING (it will be a comedy so it will suit perfectly)... we'd need a lot of people and that's what we have a lot of. Just think about it guys and we'll see about it later. Now we have to focus on this year play.

I just think of a problem, how can we make the audience to not fall sleep during the play? talking seriously, the kind of language used there isn't the easiest one, I myself wouldn't get if i didn't read it first. How can we translate the play in a way that doesn't alter itself but that is understandable at the same time? should we realy more on the actions? should we concentrate more on 'scpecial effects'? or maybe both? a balance or more of one and less of the other?

AND IT IS JUST GETTING STARTED!

It's been almost 2 weeks since we stared the rejersals for the school play. In class we've been working on our column and center of energy. Training has to be done every time, it never ends and all this work helps us to get better; so we train every single day we have drama class. It goes from making simple movements to rejersed 'choreographies'.

Now we have to focus on the play and choosing the part of production we want to do. I'll do make-up and be a wife (yay!..) so i'm realy excited. Today we were supposed to make a little lesson for the others, each one of us. So i tried to focus on the voice and the use of the center of energy. Since I have difficulties when it comes to invent noises, I gave the people little quotes from the play. What i forgot was to ask for the IB people to help me with the suppervision. I made several mistakes sush as ignoring when people made something wrong and rushing withour giving the guys time to think about the exploration of their bodies. And most important I have to be an example to the others; i can ask them to do something if i dont give them 'raw materials'. Next time i must lead them in every step to achieve what i'm aiming them to achieve. We are bodiesbut we need to go step by step to make a movement, an action, a scene, a play.

I wonder, how can I improve in my voice and imagination so i can serve as a great example?