Week #20 Almost at the end of year one

Even though the year has not ended yet, next week we will have to present a type of mock orals that will act as our final exam for the theatre course and will be 10 minutes shorter than the real thing. So in order to prepare myself for this I will start to reflect on everything we did this year on the theatre course.  I will post the first part today and the second part next sunday. Today I will reflect on the two plays we did this year and some of the plays we watched and what I learned from them.

The first thing I have to say is that this year has taken everything I thought I knew about theatre and destroyed it in order to rebuild it in a better way, it is clear that what I thought I knew is nothing compared to what I know now and what I know now is nothing compared to what I will probably learn in the future and what I can learn someday. First of all I learned something that I have yet to put in practice and that is not to leave anything to the last minute, because this I am doing at the last minute and I thoroughly regret it. Now on a serious matter starting with Shadow Queendom I have to say that in past plays I have not felt as pressured to do something as in Shadow Queendom, its mostly because in previous plays I was not in charge of much apart from knowing my lines and maybe helping one or twice with production. Apart from the fact that Shadow Queendom was our first real production job and it was also very production heavy, masks had to be made as well as puppets and for that we had the help of Martin, whose last name I cant remember right now, but he helped us with the making of the puppets. Before Shadow Queendom I knew that production was not a walk in the park but what I realized in the school play is that we are set free and we are supposed to do it all ourselves, something that apparently none of us realized because we just couldn't get things ready. I have to confess that I am no proud of my work in the school play because I know I could have done better and even though I did do a couple of masks and puppets, my job was doing the scenery and I did not give it as much attention as I should. From that I learned that when working on a play in the way we did, you should help with as much as you can but never take your head out of what you are supposed to be really doing, my focus was supposed to be scenery and in the end it looked like it was masks or puppets.

After Shadow Queendom we had the one act play, that is where it all fell apart, we lost a man out there, it was not a good time to be part of theatre. With the one act play we were told that we had to do it all ourselves. I got costumes and it was stressing to say the least, doing costumes I spent two full days from 9 am to 7pm working on the one act play. Waking up on a saturday at 8 to go to Gamarra in order to buy half of the clothes because you spent about one hour getting there and you need to get back to school at 3:30 to rehearse with the costumes that you dont have is not something that calms you down. I believe that I probably redeemed myself because I worked hard on costumes in the one act play, doing the designs and running to buy everything and getting the right colors for the cloth on the table and the clothes and all at a reasonable price, I guess I did a good job even though I was supposed to have a parter who really did the least possible to help me.

Week #19 Stand up Comedy

Last week in class a question popped up, "can standup comedy be considered a type theatre?" it was a question that we could not formally develop because it would take us more than the whole class to do so. Fortunately yesterday I had my first stand up comedy workshop and I learned a whole lot of things about the matter that will get us closer to answering that question.

Lets start by naming the parts of a Stand up act:

• The Comedian
• The Text
• The Audience

These are the 3 essential things you need to have in order to have for stand up comedy to be stand up comedy. This was the first thing Walter Chullo (who is leading the workshop) told us about stand up comedy; he then proceeded to tell us about the history of stand up comedy, which is not very relevant to the question, but it would be helpful to say that stand up comedy may have derived from theatre traditions like Commedia Dell'arte. The next thing we did was an analysis of comedy:

1) What do we laugh at? What makes us laugh?

• Mundane Situations
• Mundane Characters of life
• Stereotypes 
• Disgraces/mistakes
• defects/gestures
• the physical/Physical aspects
• Jokes
• Nicknames
• The unexpected
• Words
• Tabu
• Old words/play on words
• double meaning
• misunderstanding

2) What don't we laugh at? What doesn't make us laugh?

• Sensible topics

3)Elements of comedy

The elements of comedy is in a way the structure of a bit.

• A Truth(a true starting point)
• That identifies/mundane(an absolute truth)
• Loss of status(with a higher status the funnier the loss of it)

Exercise #1: Say a truth that identifies and looses status

For example we could say something like: We have all been in the same situation, we have all been in the bathroom an realized that there is no toilet paper, and we have had to walk out an look for it with our pants down. 

Here we have a truth (we all go to the bathroom) that identifies (we have all been in that situation) and loses status (having to walk out)

We then went on to learning how to choose our theme:

1. Personal Context
2. Physical characteristics
3. psychological characteristics
4. Fears
5. Hates
6. Social Context
7. A place
8. historical moment
9. the new and/or nostalgic
10. any other theme

Homework #1:

Develop three themes for each point mentioned above. 

I will have to do this for the next class and for example something I could do could be talk about my size(Physical characteristics) or talk about public restrooms (A place)

After knowing how to choose a theme we then went on how to structure a monologue, the techniques on how to write. 

1) Setup Punch

1.1 - setup, the previous part, build the situation, the absolute truth that identifies, not necessarily makes you laugh. the setup has to be written in the same way as you speak

1.2 - The Punch; the funny part, surprising, short, efective, unexpected, may be obvious, has to be funny

1.3 - Comedy's magic number is three

1.4 - Punch over the Punch - a technique where you continue to do punchlines over your original punchline.

2) Comparisons: 

Comparisons have to be proportional

• "while you ... I ...." or "before it was like... now it is like..."

3) Representations

• scenes/dialogues
• present characters
• create atmosphere 
• presents yourself as you are
• mime

4) Classification

• classificate any situations that causes laughter or develops content: for example, things that happen when you use the combi "there is always a woman that thinks she knows more than the driver...(use the representations) there is always a man that comes in and says ...."

5)Lists

• Making lists going from the most obvious to the most funny: for example, things not to do on a first date "ask her to pay, make unfunny jokes, tell her about the dead hooker in the trunk of your car"

6) Contrast attitude

• take the theme one way and surprise with the punch

7) Audiovisuals

• a video, picture or song

8)Props

9)The Callback

• something that worked before and is used again

10)The absurd

• start with something real and DEGENERATE it into something absurd

Homework #2:

Choose 3 of the themes in HW #1 and develop 1 using the previous "tools"

Tips to write standup comedy:

1. write in the first person
2. write how you speak
3. structure of the monologue

• present yourself
• present the theme
• develop the theme
• leave

1. use punctuation
2. write in a group

That is all we learned the first day and as far as I know it is not as close to theatre as i thought it was and even though it has some elements of theatre there is no direct connection to it. I think that as the course goes on I will find more connections to theatre.

Week #18 Life and Death

Last week I did a review (to put it that way) of the production of the one act play; this week I want to go a little bit deeper into the whole story and try to take out as much as I can from the play. The main reason I am doing this is because the form IV students had to do their reviews for last week and I think it was monday or tuesday when I got spammed by them with questions like "what was the concept" or "what was the theme" and even though I did know the concept was "Death is at the center and Life is on top" I really did not have much to say about our theme, was it Death or Life and Death or What happens after death.
I dont want to make this entry emotional and what follows may not be very relevant to the course but I really want to write about what I think about death at least a little bit. I dont know if I am afraid to die or not, I am an atheist so I dont believe there will be much after death, as a matter of fact I dont believe there will be a thing after I die, that does scare me a little bit because if you think about it after you die there is nothing, but how can there be nothing if there is so much here. There is never a moment ever where nothing is going on, right now you could stop reading, close your eyes and try to think about nothing...you cant, nothing is something and there is nothing you can do to make nothing nothing. We think about something every second of our life so how can that be turned into nothing when you die, where do all those thoughts go, what do you do, does everything go black and thats it? do you know when you die or is it just something that you never notice. I would really like to write more about this but this blog is not for me to write about my thoughts its for me to write about what I learn in the course so I will probably write about this somewhere else.
Death is something that I believe is seen differently by everyone because everyone lives a different life, because of this people might have gotten different ideas from our plays theme. In poems there is always what the author wanted to say and what the reader thought the author wanted to say, I believe that no interpretation of anything is ever wrong because if there is one thing I think that no one can be wrong about is an opinion, there may be opinions that are stronger or better or more coherent than others but that does not make lesser opinions wrong. Where I am trying to get is that if we were to thoroughly analise everything to do with death in our play we can get many different opinions and different interpretations of it.
Lets just focus on death in each of the characters for the moment, because one of the ways that you can interpret the characters in the play is that none of the characters was really alive ever. Starting with the boy, this character is dead because it is always connected to his technology and never takes part in what goes around him, he is socially dead. We have the farmer and his wife, he is dead because all he thinks about is his farm, another character that may be considered socially dead. His wife the mother in law appears twice and then dies just like the grandmother that only appears once and dies, but even though these two characters were very energetic they can be considered dead because they were never developed as a part of the play, no one really cared about them when they were there because the only one who cares about the mother in law is the father in law and her daughter and they are never there with her, the same with the grandmother, the only one that would have cared about her was McRobbie but he is dead; these characters are not really "dead" but they alone and when you die you die alone and going back to what I believe about death, they were alone with nothing around them so maybe they were very alive but their surroundings made them in a way "dead" because they were alone. The doctor does not care if they all die because he is already dead inside he also looks dead and does not know what is right and what is wrong, he is morally dead. Then we have the lawyer and the administrator, they both seem to hate their jobs and cant stand anyone but themselves at the end they can be considered the ones that are alive out of all the characters because they leave together but that was something that was done in a rush at the end of the production process. The administrator can also be considered morally dead because she does not care about the dead in the same way as the doctor, and that can be seen when she bangs the corpse with a hammer. Both nurses are dead because of the same reasons as the grandmother and the mother in law, because they can never be together, they are dead because of separation  and they may only be considered alive if they are together which they never are. The Ex-wife is the one that feels the loss of the husband so she is dead when he dies because she really loved him and his death "killed" her, she cant be with him so she is emotionally dead. The priest and the new wife are both dead because of greed, their greed cant make them live a normal life because they just think about money, the new wife just wants to open un her husband and get whatever is inside so she can get the money from the insurance company. The lawyer also wants this and the priest too so the three of them can be considered blinded by greed and in a way also dead.
The character that is really dead is McRobbie and because he is dead he has been freed from everything that makes the others dead, separation, greed, emotions etc. so in a way apart from the fact that he is already dead he can be considered the only one that is really alive.

Week# 17 One Act Play

Its finally over, we are done with the one act play and even though there were some mistakes and some things that could have been better it all went better than expected. The things that needed to be changed were not part of the final product, our play was good and the audience liked it so I feel that in the end it was more than what we were expecting. As far as the production goes, there are many things that I learned:

1) Dont do tomorrow what you could have done 2 days ago: never leave anything for the last day because then it will screw you up. There was one mistake in the play and that was that one of Stefano's breasts fell and that was because the decision to deflate one of the balls was made just when we were leaving for Hiram Bingham so we never got to actually rehearse with the new "Implants" so even though Stefano did a good job fixing it on stage when the breast fell, it is something that didn't need to happen. Also I think I should have gone to gamarra to buy everything before because we had many rehearsals where the costumes were not 100% ready so we couldn't know how it would all look like and in my case I didnt know how uncomfortable the doctors clothes really were until I actually tried them on 2 days before the play.

2)Don't be lazy: I admit that because of our laziness the designs for the costumes had to be done 4 or 5 times because we presented things that were either not done correctly or done very badly and because of that the process was stalled a bit.

3) Work Fast: if you dont work fast you loose time and with a thing like this time is very important because we actually had very little time to do everything and we did not realize that until it was too late and then we had to stay in school rehearsing until 7 pm

4) Learn your lines: that one is self explanatory

5) Work as a team: Many things happened throughout the whole process of doing the play that made us loose time, starting with the designs for the costumes, because of the costume team (Nicolas and I) we lost a couple of classes redoing everything and we could not go on with the makeup, sound, props and scenery. Also without mentioning names some people (including myself) did things or didn't do things that  made everything go slower and made all of us loose time.

Apart from all these things I believe that our play came out very good, with people saying that "It was the best one act play of the bunch" "It was the best one act play ever" and "Mejor Obra que he visto a lo que EVER! Felicitaciones!" so yeah it went better than expected.

P.S. I went to watch the other plays the next day and they were not all very good. The one from Markham was about 7 jewish kids, it was slow and boring, its game consisted mainly of projecting an image on a piece of scenery but it did not work. Maruf the Cobbler from St. Georges was a kids play so it was fine, it was cute and the little kids did a good job, a little bit too long though. The Gilded Bat from San Silvestre was good time but not necessarily good, aesthetically I really liked its gloomy look because it had a Tim Burton-ish feel and I believe they were going for something like that also because of the way they moved and the makeup helped the look very much. The only problem with this one is that it was fun at first but after the first few minutes it died down very quick and did not pick up so after 7 or 8 minutes I already wanted it to finish, it was the best out of the 4 though. The last one was from Hiram Bingham, it was simple and some of the acting was fun but apart from that it was dull and repetitive, I was really looking forward to this one and maybe that is why I disliked it so much; it had funny lines but it was an already scripted play so no props can be given to the school for that :/.

P.P.S. Hiram Binghams head master congratulated us for our play the second day saying that it was "the only play written and produced by the students" but we all know he meant "It was the only play worth paying for"

Week #16 types of comedy

Trying to get everything ready in time is going to be a big challenge now; I just realized that we have 5 rehearsals left and we dont have the play ready. Even though it is clear that now we are working faster than before and it is not like we are very far away from getting everything ready with time to spare, but what I am worried about is that we may get it ready in time but there wont be enough time to polish the play.
Apart from this I believe that the play is coming together better than I expected, it is mainly because there is one scene in the play where we use slapstick and I am part of it and first of all it is very entertaining to do, second I think it looks very good and third it adds that comedy element that I think the play was lacking. I say this because even though we do have some jokes here and there, they are very few of them and the ones that are there are very lame. I really believe that the slapstick may be the most memorable part of our play because if we are going for a comedic performance this kind of comedy is the one that will be most popular with the audience.
A couple of weeks ago I was discussing with a friend about the different kids of humor in different places, doing this we came to the conclusion that humor in Europe (specially England) is sarcastic and smart, humor in the united states of america is "realistic"or talks about real life situations, we can see this in sitcoms or stand up comedy shows where the comedians mock different real life situations. We were not very sure about how comedy was in places like Japan or China but we had an idea, it is more outrageous, what we meant by that is that for example if you watch prank videos from that part of the world or even game shows you can notice that they are very over the top, with things that would never be accepted by people from this side of the world.
Then we had to decide what comedy was like here in Peru and it was not hard at all, comedy here is mostly slapstick, people here like seeing other people get hit or falling down or geting a pie thrown at their face, and as far as verbal comedy goes we like very simple and raunchy jokes sometimes even being very obscene. We like to see a guy dressed as a woman calling another man a homosexual while falling down the stairs.
That is why I think that if we stick with the slapstick, even though the audience is part of the BSP their perception of comedy is influenced by the country they live in and if we have stupid, simple and raunchy jokes like for example a man dressed as a nurse with big boobs we will have the audience laughing because that is what people here really enjoy, including myself.

Week #15 Game Changer

The last time I wrote an entry it was before Paucartambo, and I could write about it right now but with the one act play in a month I think that it is better to write about it right now than Paucartambo. That does not mean that I wont write about Paucartambo, it just means that I will write about it but later, maybe next week or the week after the one act play because right now we are against time and there are other things to write about. Also we will be doing the Paucartambo thing later this year and there will be plenty to write about then. 

Color Scheme

This past week we continued where we left off with the one act play(appart from the fact that we had already sent in our scenes for the script, that will most likely be completely changed) on tuesday we started with the planning in class and later that evening we continued with a little bit of rehearsing and changing some lines around. On wednesday in class our production tasks were assigned, I got costumes and because the game was supposed to be characters with two sides(each side representing a different character) I had to design costumes that represented two different characters one for each side. For thursday I did the male/female nurse and the doctor. 

Salad Fingers

The male/female nurse had two options it would have been either having the male(nurso) use the blue/green from the color scheme and the female(nursa) use the green from the color scheme and have both use classic male nurse hospital clothes but each side having a different color. Option two would have been the same for the male nurse but the female nurse would have used a white short skirt and a white blouse. The doctor will use a white long over coat, a white shirt, a purple tie, black rubber gloves and a black apron. 

Freaky Fred

Katz

Later on thursday we continued with the rehearsal and worked on our characterization, my first approach to a character was salad fingers that is a character from a youtube series, salad fingers has a soft voice and gives a very creepy vibe that I thought would go well with the coroner(doctor) because of the way he speaks. Then I thought about Freaky Fred, Le Quack and Katz from courage the cowardly dog but I didn't try them so I just went for an angry doctor, maybe I can incorporate them to the character. But the same day we realized that the game would not work and decided that we had to change it to just everyone having two characters and dressing in a different way for each. That meant that the ideas I had for other characters had to be changed. Having to change the game means that the costumes cant be very complicated and we may be looking at another play that used the black base and just another item of clothing. 

Le Quack

The designs I have finished up to right now are the boy, the Father in law and the mother in law but I may need to change them because of the black base that may be used. Im not sure if the black base thing will work for this play because in shadow queendom there were a whole lot of characters and it made sense that we would do that because for example half of them used the same clothes or the arch bishop used a big robe so it did not matter and we had masks so it worked, but in the one act play it may look like the characters are missing something. It is true that we did focus more on the puppets and masks in the school play and in this one we are focusing on characterization so maybe it wont matter if we have a black base and some pieces of clothing on top, but maybe the lack of clothes makes the characterization harder to understand or less effective but we will have to see. Maybe the characters don't have to be in full costume to work, and if they do what is the thing that makes an actor be the character appart from saying his lines and doing the actions properly if its not the looks? is it the presence of the stimuli in the characters or maybe how the actor looks with or without the characters costume? what about me I am a big guy if I try to do a character like Salad fingers, Freaky fred or Katz would it work for me or do I have to look a certain way first?

Week #14 Pre-Paucartambo & one act play

Here is a little playlist for you to feast on Click

In less than a week we are leaving for Paucartambo and I have yet to decide what I will research when I get there, I was thinking of doing something like the use of the space or the use of the masks. If I can I would really like to focus on something like a single group like for example just do it all about the Maqtas or the Qollas, but I dont know if that would work for me because I would be missing out on the others by focusing just on one, however if I did want to do it about one group of characters it could be the Maqtas because they are always present. Focusing just on one would be really hard and knowing myself I will do a better job if I focus on a less specific aspect of the festival like the role of the audience  or costumes or anything that could be applied to all the comparsas for that matter. One advantage I will probably have will be that altitude does not affect me as much (or it did not affect me as much the last time I was there) so I wont have to worry about fainting or feeling sick and if I do all I need is a mate de coca and im back on my feet.
When we get back from Paucartambo and the vacations end we will have to continue with the one act play and I am not supposed to talk about it yet because its still in development, so I will just say some things about it. We already have the setting, the characters and the game, we have some of the story maybe and outline of the outline but we already have something to work on. We have had two meetings, the first one was bleh a little bit slow we did not get much done, I would not say it was a complete failure but we did not get much from it appart from the setting and maybe some other ideas like the characters. The second meeting was productive we came up with the game we assigned which characters each one would have and its safe to say that we are ready to start planning the story and all the rest. We have two meetings left before we leave for Paucartambo, so I guess that we really need to step up our game because we cant go to Paucartambo with what we have right now.
The game could be compared a little bit to last years game because it has something to do with "two sides" and a little bit with the game used in "The other side" because it also deals with two different personalities but not of the same character. We are just starting with the one act play so I am not very sure of what to think about it right now but it seems like its going on the right direction specially because we are so many in the group so we wont have the problems other groups had before of having to call people from other grades to help, we are calling someone but it is not because we need more people to play more characters, in fact we have a 13 characters in total: a doctor, a lawyer, manager, a grandmother, a good wife, a bad wife, a priest, a little kid, a mother in law, a father in law, a male nurse, a female nurse and a dead man. So lets hope that we can pull through and live up to the reputation our school has had for years.

Week #13 Good dialogue

Here is a little playlist for you to feast on Click

I am not a big modern dance fan or a big dancing fan actually, maybe that is why I actually did not understand what was going on last thursday when we went to see the "Ballet de Londrina" that is a modern dance group from Brazil that was presenting one of their acts in the ICPNA and to be fair I did not like it very much. I am a big movie buff, but I like movies with a good dialogue and even though movies and plays are not the same thing I like it when plays have a good dialogue, I like it when I get out of the theater or the movie theater and I am able to repeat the great dialogue they had in the play/movie. I have literally watched the first 20 minutes of pulp fiction about 50 times because of the diner scene, the royale with cheese dialogue, the foot massage debate and the interrogation scene; one of the reasons why I like Tarantino movies so much is because he writes the best discussions out of nothing, he can take a simple conversation starter like "you know what they call big macs in Paris?" and make it one of the most iconic scenes in movie history and towards the end of the conversation Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) asks Vincent(John Travolta) "and what do they call a whopper?" and Vincent gives him one of the most simple and real answers I have ever heard in a movie "I dunno, I didn't go to Burger King" and all of this with jungle boogie by Kool and the Gang in the background, for me that is just brilliant. There is another scene in the movie that has great dialogue, here is an excerpt:

                                     JULES
                         Goddamn Jimmie, this is some serious 
                         gourmet shit. Me an' Vincent woulda 
                         been satisfied with freeze-dried 
                         Tasters Choice. You spring this 
                         gourmet fuckin' shit on us. What 
                         flavor is this?

                                     JIMMIE
                         Knock it off, Julie.

                                     JULES
                         What?

                                     JIMMIE
                         I'm not a cobb or corn, so you can 
                         stop butterin' me up. I don't need 
                         you to tell me how good my coffee 
                         is. I'm the one who buys it, I know 
                         how fuckin' good it is.  When Bonnie 
                         goes shoppin;, she buys shit.  I buy 
                         the gourmet expensive stuff 'cause 
                         when I drink it, I wanna taste it. 
                         But what's on my mind at this moment 
                         isn't the coffee in my kitchen, it's 
                         the dead nigger in my garage.

                                     JULES
                         Jimmie –

                                     JIMMIE
                         – I'm talkin'. Now let me ask you a 
                         question, Jules. When you drove in 
                         here, did you notice a sign out front 
                         that said, "Dead nigger storage?"

               Jules starts to "Jimmie" him –

                                     JIMMIE
                         – answer to question. Did you see a 
                         sign out in front of my house that 
                         said, "Dead nigger storage?"

                                     JULES
                              (playing along)
                         Naw man, I didn't.

                                     JIMMIE
                         You know why you didn't see that 
                         sign?

                                     JULES
                         Why?

                                     JIMMIE
                         'Cause storin' dead niggers ain't my 
                         fuckin' business!

               Jules starts to "Jimmie" him.

                                     JIMMIE
                         – I ain't through! Now don't you 
                         understand that if Bonnie comes home 
                         and finds a dead body in her house, 
                         I'm gonna get divorced. No marriage 
                         counselor, no trial separation – 
                         fuckin' divorced. And I don't wanna 
                         get fuckin' divorced. The last time 
                         me an' Bonnie talked about this shit 
                         was gonna be the last time me an' 
                         Bonnie talked about this shit. Now I 
                         wanna help ya out Julie, I really 
                         do. But I ain't gonna lose my wife 
                         doin' it.

                                     JULES
                         Jimmie –

                                     JIMMIE
                         – don't fuckin' Jimmie me, man, I 
                         can't be Jimmied. There's nothin' 
                         you can say that's gonna make me 
                         forget I love my wife. Now she's 
                         workin' the graveyard shift at the 
                         hospital. She'll be comin' home in 
                         less than an hour and a half. Make 
                         your phone calls, talk to your people, 
                         than get the fuck out of my house.

                                     JULES
                         That's all we want. We don't wanna 
                         fuck up your shit. We just need to 
                         call our people to bring us in.

                                     JIMMIE
                         Then I suggest you get to it. Phone's 
                         in my bedroom.

Scenes like this one are the ones that make me want to watch a movie its because they are not what you expect to see. 

There is another movie that I think has very good dialogue and its Superbad, I think I know about 80% of the whole script and its because I identify with every single line of text in that movie and its because the characters in that movie are just like my friends and I, for example: 

                            EVAN
                      (reading the card)
                  Okay Mr..."McLovin"? What kind of a
                  stupid name is that? What are you
                  trying to be, an Irish R&B singer?

                            FOGELL
                  Well, they let you pick any name you want
                  when you get there.

                            SETH
                  So you picked McLovin?

                            FOGELL
                  It was between that or Muhammad.

                            SETH
                  Why was it between that or Muhammad? Why
                  didn't you just pick a common name like a 

                  normal person?

                            FOGELL
                  Actually, Seth, Muhammad is the most
                  commonly used name on earth. Read a 

                  fucking book for once

                            EVAN
                  Have you ever actually met a guy named
                  Muhammad?

                            FOGELL
                  Have you actually ever met a guy named
                  McLovin?

                            SETH
                  No! That's why you picked a dumb ass fucking

                  name.

I feel that the reactions that Seth has in this movie are the same reactions that I would have and that is what I like in movies and plays to have a character that represents you or to listen to a conversation that you could have with a friend. That is why I liked "Mas pequeños que el Guggenheim" so much because it had very good dialogue. 

For the one act play I would like to have a play that has good dialogue, one that does not have lines just to get the play movie *cough*Santhagar use your magic*cough* I would like for every pun and every twist to be there because it was placed there not just some big buildup for a pun that makes no sense and I know that (pardon my french) I will get shit for trying to have a play that sound like a movie or has movie-ish dialogue but that is what I like and maybe if I dont get the chance to do it for the one act play I will probably do something like it for the independent  project. 

And that is why I did not like the ballet so much because it had no dialogue and when it has no dialogue or bad dialogue its hard for me to remember a play because I dont enjoy it. But even though you dont need dialogue for a good play or even a movie how dependent is the play of the dialogue? and can a play be made with a movie script? and if it can could it have the same effect on people? would pulp fiction work as a play or is it just made for a movie? can you make a play about the little differences?

Week #12 Our last School Play :')

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My first play was in preschool and it was based on the children's book "Are you my mother?" by P.D. Eastman,I was 4 years old at the time and I played one of the animals. My only line was "No, I am not your mom" and I remember standing in the middle of the class and not being able to say a single word and just crying my eyes out because I could not see my mom in the crowd, until she popped out from there and helped me with my line. My second play was that same year and it was also based on a children's story, this time it was "Goldilocks and the three bears" and I did fine that time, but I do remember having to act as goldilocks, that was the first humiliating role  I ever played. I did not act again until third grade when I played King Duncan in "Macbeth" I did get killed early on so I did not say much. After those humiliating events I did not act for 7 years when "Down to Earth" came along, I remember going to the second "get together" before the play and being asked what character I wanted to play, the only thing that I could think about at the time was Fatman a fat version of Batman. A couple of days later I was walking to my locker and Diego Lobaton asked me if I could act as a Squirrel and thats how it started. The thing that I remember the most from the play has to be at the end where Fatman had to flick Quicktongue and I missed my shot so Felipe that played Quicktongue turned around and said, "HA! you missed!" I didnt know what to do so the only thing that I could do was kick him and it worked. That is how my Newton school play started, after that I participated in other plays and some other projects.
Now this years school play was the last school play where I will act and this year it was hard. To be honest I was really expecting a bad play, I was not very sure that the puppets would work and last week we were really behind I really cant believe that we did it, as far as it goes it was not the best school play the our school has seen but at least it is not the worst and im happy with that. The first day was the worst in my opinion mainly because in one of my scenes I forgot my text and I couldn't remember what to say, my mind went blank and I could just think about that time in preschool when I could not say "I am no your mom" it was awful, the second and third days went way better and I am proud to say that I had just one more error and it was my shadow in the seventh scene.
Now that I think about it the one act play will be our last chance to act ever so we have to make the best out of it. 

Week #11 Less than a week and less than a month

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As of right now Sunday June 17th we are 4 days away from presenting the play and compared to previous years we are far behind, this could be because of the fact that we may have not done our best at finishing everything, maybe the play need a lot of production because of the masks and puppets or maybe its because we have a week less than previous years, but it is probably a mix of the three elements. It actually looks like we are almost done with the masks and the puppets and on thursday we got the black shirts and pants that go as a base, but because of how rushed this past week has been I really dont have much to write about apart from this, but I will try.

One thing that I am really excited for is our trip to Paucartambo that is in less than a month and I am excited because of two reasons 1) I really like Cuzco and the Peruvian mountains because when I was younger I used to go on road trips with my parents and now every time I get the chance to go it is nice to remember everything I used to do as a kid, plus every time I go there I get this calm feeling and I just feel very relaxed, but it just may be the lack of oxygen. 2) I really want to learn more about the festival because from what we have already seen in class it looks like it will be an experience that we wont forget and it really looks like a bonding experience and something that we will probably need after the play. I hope that this year our group does do the Paucartambo re-imagination at school thing that they do every year because last year the group that had to do it did not get a chance to do so and it really looks like fun and it probably is one of the things that I want to do the most this year because it is a way of taking the festival to newton and because it is something that will probably be embedded in our memories for the rest of our lives it would be nice to re live it again. 

But if we are struggling with getting the play done and with the one act play in september will we be able to do it? and if we do have time what could we do?

Week #10 What came first the chicken or the need?

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During one of last weeks classes we were learning more our upcoming trip to Paucartambo, out of the blue we stated discussing if the need for something comes before the thing itself, I don't remember how or why we started talking about this but it generated a debate that lasted about 20-30 minutes. I know that this may not be very relevant to the course at first sight, but in this course we need to analyze topics thoroughly and this is a topic that can lead to debates that could last hours, as a matter of fact if we could tackle this question again in class we would definitely spend at least 2 periods on it and we would not get to a concrete answer; I even heard two of the people that were part of the discussion talking about it after class.
The question is be "Does the need for something come from the thing or does a thing come from the need?" I will try to say my own argument. I strongly believe that the need for something comes before the thing itself, I am not saying that everything that exists is created because everyone needed it but it is fair to say that it only takes one person or thing to need it for it to be created, by a thing I mean for example when earth needed a way to purify oxygen trees and plant were created, this example could not be taken seriously because it is a broad statement that cant be used as proof but it is just an example that explains what I am trying to say. Another example that can be used is found in theater, saying a thing comes before a need is like saying that a play comes before a stimulus, you cant write a play out of nothing because nothing from nothing leaves nothing.
An argument used by one of the people in class was that for example people buy laptops because they want then and not because they need them and that people don't need laptops they just want them because they exist, but this is wrong because laptops were created because people needed them people needed a better and faster way of transporting their computer so that is how laptops were created because people needed them. After saying this another thing was said, "I don't need it" and it is true people don't need everything that is created but it only takes one person to need it for it to be created, because nobody says "I have just created this from the top of my head, now I need it" nothing ever has been made just because it is made, people make them because in some way they need them. Sometimes you need something because you want it and that is something that sparked up a little bit of tension "want and need are not the same thing" and that is completely true but when you want something you need that thing, for example I want a new dog and I don't need a new dog, but if I don't get the dog I will have an empty feeling because I don't have what I want so to fill that empty feeling you need a dog.
I will now do something that should never be done when debating but I really think that it fits in with what we are trying to understand, I want to mix religion in this. Religion is something that you cant touch, something that you cant see, it is something that some people feel; I feel that religion is a way for ancient people to explain what was going on around them and what everything meant, for example, why do we fall in love? we fall in love because Aphrodite created love. And why do I like that girl? you like that girl because you are under Eros' spell, and so on and so forth. Ancient people, in this case the Greeks needed religion to explain everything and that is why they created religion because they needed it.
I would like to continue discussing this but there is no one to give me an opposite opinion on this. But can things appear from nothing?

Week #9 Pre-PPP (PPPP)?

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During the IB Theatre course one of the main pieces of work that we have to present is the PPP, where we get a stimulus and analise it with the purpose of presenting the idea of a play from it. About two weeks ago we were given a stimulus and we had to analise it, it was either a composition by Mozart or a painting by Szyszlo; the one that was given to me was the painting and because of time issues I did not get to present my analysis, but I will try to make a brief analysis of the painting here.

I got mixed ideas from the painting but the ones that stood out where:

• Blue is Sad, Cold
• Use of colors, connection to ocean
• Gradient: calm feel
• Faces and Bottles: longing, nostalgia
• Gradient: Horizon, Time passing
• Overall feel of passing time

Blue=time 

Now a brief explanation of each bullet point. The first one is self explanatory, we always use the term feeling blue when we feel down or sad so when I saw the color blue I made an instant connection with sadness, also blue is a cold tone. The use of blue colors is almost always connected with water and the ocean. There is a sort of gradient in the background, gradients may emit a calm feeling because a gradient is slow and connecting it with the last bullet point that is the ocean it would be a slow motion of the ocean and that is a calming sound and sight. In the towers we can see some bottles and faces that I connected with longing and nostalgia mainly because of the color blue because it is a sad color and longing and nostalgia are sad feeling, like when you miss someone but you cant go back in time to be with them. The gradient also means time because its slow and time may be seen as slow. So if you put it all together  it shows time passing, sadness and cold, but if we look at the gradient and the time passing we can interpret that the time is passing slowly so it can mean a long time or a lifetime. The connection of blue and time is not very clear the first time but what I mean by that can be explained in a diagram:

Blue ---> Water ---> Flow ---> Time

Depending on the flow of water time is different: 

• Really Fast water = seconds, minutes or hours (rapids)
• Fast water = days or weeks (river)
• Medium water = Months (creek)
• Slow water  = years or decades (drops of water)
• Still water = a lifetime, century or no time passing (lake or pond)

That is as much as I could get from this as a stimulus because we never analyzed it more or tried to make a play from it.

The other stimulus was Mozarts 25th symphony, I did not get to analyze it but from what we looked at in class there was one idea that stood out and it was that because the composition has different instruments playing the same tune they would be mirror images of each other. We were told to think about the idea of a play from what we got from this stimulus, it could be a play that already existed or a new invented play, I chose to invent a new one because I believe that if a person will try to use an already existing play as a base it has to be a great job and if its not its disrespectful and also it is very hard to do so; for example I did not like "La Cocina" very much but I bet that the original is a great play that I would enjoy very much, or even last years "re-imagination" of Snow White in the One Act Play or Roosevelts "Romeo and Juliet" that even though comes from a school that has had really good plays in the past, calling it crap would be an insult to bad plays, so because of that I decided to start fresh. 

I thought that the idea of having a person look at himself in a mirror and seeing himself in a different way or having two people acting as the same is too cliché so I decided to make it different; it would be about a person that unconsciously sees himself in other people and judges them, these other people could be really different, black or white, men or women, it does not matter but they all have something from the main character. Everything would be black and white and only the thing that represents the main character and the main character himself would be colored, do for example if one of the "extras" speaks in the same way he/she would have red lips and if someone is close minded and sees everything as he/she wants it to see he/she would have a blue hat. 

After presenting this in class we came to the conclusion that this would take place in a waiting room where they are all waiting to get their IDs and there would be eleven people in the room, the main character, five "extras"(the people that represent the main character" and 5 bistanders. The scene would go mute every time the main character judges an "extra" and at the same time he would show how he is the same way but wont notice. All the "extras" and bistanders would be speaking with each other giving different points of view of something that the main character did before, and at the same time they would judge him so it would be a mirrored judgement. In the end a name would be called for example "Tom Smith" and the main character and the "extras" would stand up and go get their ID not noticing that they are all the same. 

I like what I have right now and how it is starting to come together, I would really like to make it a real play even though it is just a Pre-PPP and also see if I could incorporate something from the other stimulus like time passing, maybe the different "extras" represent the character in a different period of his or her life and they are all what he used to be and now hates. But if I were to incorporate the different aspects from the other stimulus would it fit together with this one or is it complicating it too much? Would two different stimulus that give out two different ideas fit together in one play?

P.S. I found a little pig that does the same thing that we need for the market scene and I bought it and it is awesome and I liked it, it was good, very interesting and it is boss.

Week #8 Faceless People and Maskless Faces

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mask, 
a form of disguise or concealment usually worn over or in front of the face to hide the identity of a person and by its own features to establish another being. This essential characteristic of hiding and revealing personalities or moods is common to all masks. As cultural objects they have been used throughout the world in all periods since the Stone Age and have been as varied in appearance as in their use and symbolism. - encyclopedia britannica

A mask is something that is present in our lives every single day, but it is one of those things that when asked to define you simply can't because it is to familiar, for example it is almos impossible to describe the word "the" or a color and this is simply because we are so used to it.

 I think it was on wednesday's class that we tried to define what a mask was and at the beginning we all the same basic idea of what a mask was, "something used to cover your face, used to hide and/or change your identity", so you might think that it is not that hard to describe because the description is very simple and even though that description may be correct and probably is the one that can be found in a dictionary it is too shallow, a mask is more than that. After merging together some more ideas we developed the definition a little bit more, it changed to "an object that covers any part of your face, to change and/or disguise the appearance of the person using it" something around those margins, but that one is also too shallow, mainly because I think that it cant be something that covers any part of your face; first we have to define what we mean by face, if we count the ears as part of the face would that mean that headphones or even earphones could be considered masks? and what about a mustache? a mustache can be grown naturally, does that mean that every person that has a mustache has a mask on? and the same goes for the eye brows and the nose, what about a clown nose is a clown nose a mask? questions like these are the ones that make the definition of mask be something complicated to come up with.   After a bunch of brain storming and after continuously modifying the definition I noticed that there was a reoccurring segment in every single definition, "To change and/or disguise" this cant be correct either because for example, if i make a mask of my own face and put it on does that mean that the mask of my face is not a mask when i wear it but is a mask when someone else wears it? I am not changing my face it is the same face under the mask, yet it is still a mask, and that takes us back to our first simpel definition, a mask has to be something that cover your face, but when we were really mixed up we finally hit the bullseye, a mask is "something that FIXES an emotion or expression on your face", that is the definition I like to stick to because it takes a little bit from every definition we had up to there, it is something that covers your face but it does not need to change the way you look it just needs to give you a fixed expression, a mask cant change so you need to express yourself with your body. 

But there is one thing that I am still not sure about, if a mask can move mechanically or by any other means giving the mask different face expressions and moods, does that mean it is not a mask anymore? and if that mask has my face on it and it is considered a mask, does that mean that my face is a mask?

Week #7 are we really biting off more than we can chew?

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A few weeks ago I said that we may be biting off more than we could chew, but I actually feel a little bit embarrassed now. We are getting there, each day we work on the puppets we get closer and closer, the puppets are starting to come together and even though I know that I have not been the one that has helped the most with the puppet making in some aspects I do feel accomplished,  I feel like we have all worked hard for this and that when we are done(its still a very long shot from here) we will be proud to say that we did it. Yesterday we also went to see a couple of plays, one was a peruvian play that I liked but did not enjoy and that I will go as far as say that even though I did like the actions, I found it hard to understand because it was a little bit confusing, a thing that I totally hated was the seating of that particular auditorium, I always have the same problem when we go there it is like they make the seats for people half my size(I am a big boy) and I can't never fit in there. The second play was great, it was a mexican play called "Mas pequeños que el Guggenheim" the only thing I can say is that it is my kind of play, lots of funny dialogue, common expressions, pop culture references, good music and a little pinch of drama, I loved it and I almost went again today but I had no time, if I get he chance to go again someday I definitely will. 

Going back to the puppets I want to say again that the puppets are working better each time and also now that we already have the structure of the puppets ready we had some time to experiment and explore with them and they are coming together perfectly. Going back again to another blog where I spoke about the body as a tool, I realize that it can not only be used with the mask but also with the puppets, using the puppets as an extension of your body, this is a way to connect the puppet and the puppeteer and make the puppets movements very natural. 

As of right now I'm starting to feel a little bit more confident about the puppets and I am starting to realize that maybe we could think of more ways to do puppets and try to incorporate them in the play but only if we have time, but is it too risky to do this? Are we really biting off more than we can chew or are we ready for a bigger bite?

Week #6 Using your body as a tool

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I have never taken physical work very seriously, as a matter of fact it wasn't until last week that I took into consideration trying to concentrate when doing it. I had done this kind of exercise before but I had never focused on it as much, rarely feeling what was intended and basically fooling around when doing it, but as I do this more and more it is easier to concentrate the energy in one pat of your body and then having every move come from that point. This takes me to my main argument, concentrating on every movement, having every movement originate from a center of energy and knowing where and how every part of your body is moving really helps you become a better acorn(mainly with the physical part of acting). 

I am trying to take as much as i can from these exercises because one of the characters I'm playing will be using a mask(the archbishop) I really need to know how to move and express myself physically to create the effect that is intended, because just like last week when speaking about handling puppets I said "a little thing can ruin the whole feel of the scene. "  with masks it is just the same, for example if while acting i do a head gesture and don't finish the movement or the masks eyes are not looking at the proper direction the whole feeling of the character and maybe the scene will be lost, and as a person that has been on both sides of the stage (as an actor and a spectator) i know that it is really hard to make and audience focus on something but really easy for them to loose focus.

Now that we are already in the topic of masks, I would like to say that even though we have not started with the mask making or the using i can already notice that it won't be as tough as the puppets in both the making and the using so that is something that makes me calm down a little bit and it won't be as stressing. But really, does physical work make you a better actor or is it just a way for the actor to use his/her body more as a tool?

Week #5 we are biting off more than we can chew

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I never knew that puppets where so hard to handle, I always thought that it was a very simple thing to do but now I know that it is a very complicated craft and I fear that some people won't be able to do it in the play. Last monday we had our last workshop on puppets, we got to handle the puppets a little bit and learn how to use them but it is not as easy as it looks; first it is really hard to make the puppet look alive because you need to articulate every movement it does to make it look real and most of the times when you are controlling a puppet you focus on something like the hands or feet and forget about the eyes, or focus on the eyes and forget about the feet and so on. 

The difficulty of controlling the puppets made me realize not only that puppets are no joke but that we need to really work hard on how to use the puppets with the people that will use puppets in the play, specially the little kids because it is really hard to make them focus and last monday we saw that a little thing can ruin the whole feel of the scene. 

All this took me back to last year when we did the Kabuki play, we practiced and learned most if not all of the movements of a kabuki actor in a short period of time, and that was the main reason why the play worked, if we could do this with this play and teach every actor how to "be one with the puppet" (including ourselves) we will have a great play but if we can't achieve this goal it is obvious that the play will fail because we will use a technique that we have not mastered and that will look terrible when done. Another thing that made me realize that we are maybe biting off more than we can chew is that using a puppet is exhausting and i don't know how many of us will be able to use the big puppets in the play, I say this because the puppet that I chose to use was the biggest one and it was really tiring and we were two people using the puppet and also I am a big guy so if I get easily tired while using one of the "muñecones" it will probably be worse for some of the other people using them and we may have to get the physically stronger actors to do this. 

We also faced another challenge that was that when using a puppet between two people it is harder to coordinate with them on how to use it, for example when Mateo and I had to use the big puppet it was complicated to make the body and the arms move in a synchronized way making it look very stiff at times and not real at all, but this is something that  can be fixed with more practice and it is less of an issue. Even though we had some trouble with the big puppets i feel that the puppets that used the actors legs were great, they did not look complicated to use at all and it is something that all of us can master with ease, but they do look a little bit difficult to make and that means they probably are. Overall what we need to do is practice with the puppets and everyone because that is the only way to make these puppets work, right now I feel that it is more important to master the puppeteering instead of trying to get the scenes ready because if we have the scenes but a poor use of the puppets the play won't be a good play, but the problem is that right now we don't have puppets apart from the ones we made and we need to make more soon. 

I guess that some of us will have to stay after school and make puppets so that this can work properly, but i really want to know, are we biting off more than we can chew? Is this going to work as a whole? 

P.S. Roberto I am really sorry, it was not my fault and I really didn't want this to happen but last week when i took my puppet back home my dog, Lolita, thought it was a toy and tore it apart, she is deeply sorry for this and says it wont happen again. If you give me permission to take some materials home and do it again I will do another one but dont get angry at her it was not her fault, once again she is really sorry for this and so am I. She said it was too fluffy and soft.

Week #4 Let's dance to Joy Division

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This past week we had 3 days where we learned how to make puppets for the play and how to use puppets, a couple came to school and they taught us. We started by first learning about the different puppets of the different cultures in the world; I learned some things about Bunraku during the presentation. We then went to the theatre where we saw two plays with puppets, a long one that we just saw half of that was about a woman and her dog and a short one that was about Ian Curtis the lead singer of Joy Division. After this we learned how to make our own puppets from scratch and we are still working on them currently.

                I really enjoy making puppets because it is a really “free” type of art, when making a puppet you can do many different things and make it as personal as you can. What I mean by personal is that when you are making a puppet you feel like you are just doing the puppet and not thinking about how to do it, so you actually make original puppets and you don’t need much skills to do it(you do need some tough). But right now we have just made hand puppets and not really many puppets like the one we saw on the Joy Division show that was a puppet with no strings and where the actors using it were seen. I would like to find a way of using this type of puppet in the play but on a bigger scale if possible.

                This past week I also changed from helping with the costumes and masks in the play to helping with the puppets and scenery, focusing on the scenery. I hope that I can do a better job in this area than in the other one (even though I was not doing a bad job with the costumes)

                As of now I hope that my puppet ends up looking good and I hope it is on the play even though I think it won’t be used and if it is it won’t be used for what it was originally made I am still hopeful that it will end up looking good enough. But making the puppets makes me thing that maybe puppets are more personal. So my question is, when making a puppet is it really that personal? And if it is, should the person using the puppet be the one making the puppet?

Week #3 "if you could walk into this entry and shout something you would probably get an echo"

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It is the third week of blogging and I must say that my blogging skills have not improved at all or maybe I’m so humble and modest that I have not realized how good I really am. But seriously, as I said last week I find it really easy to rant about something that is off topic because maybe it is a way to get me to express my feelings towards anything, that does not involve doing work or thinking about how to connect what I did during the week, but as I also said last week this is a tool and I need to use it as much as possible and it needs to HELP me. I could try to imitate what I did last week and write about everything that I managed to do, but I wont, I will just focus on one thing because what I have learned about blogging is that if I write about every single thing that I did this week I will just end up writing a simple diary that in the end will be useless to me so I will try to focus on one topic and one topic only, and that is the school play. (And I do know that I should at least write something about “la Cocina” and I will very briefly, I liked the choreography and the characterization, but the story was a little boring and I felt that it was hard to connect with the characters. Overall it was a nice play that I do not regret watching, but I will definitely forget about it in about a week or so. The “Chiclayo” gag will live on though)

The first thing that I can say about the school play this year is that I already know that it will be time consuming but it will not only take over my time but it is also starting to take over my mind, it has become impossible to see a mask or puppet without saying “I need to take a picture, I need to talk about this tomorrow at school, this will look so good on the play”, but well at least I am thinking about the play outside of school and that could only be good.  I never knew how time consuming the production of a play could be and how it can take over your life; the funny part is that it has not started yet.  

I do know that up to now this entry is very empty and that if you could walk into this entry and shout something you would probably get an echo, but it is because right now I don’t know what to write about, sure I could write about “la Cocina” but I really don’t think that it is worth my time to write another review about a play that I almost slept through, I will have enough time to do so when I write the review. (I’m really sorry if I offend anyone but I really disliked the play) I could also write about my research but right now what I have is very superficial and I will not write about something that I don’t know about and that I have not finished.

Well continuing on with the school play, this week I had the chance to “direct” a small “scene” I was actually supposed to act and manage the little kids, but when I finished doing the “direction” it was time to act and I couldn’t memorize the things we had to do. But overall it went very good, I liked the outcome of the scene and I got different ideas for masks; the scene was about the cooks and maids in the palace, and if these are characters that will stay in the play I really think that I have very good ideas for them. I imagined the cooks with masks that expressed happiness and playfulness, while the masks that would be worn by the maids would be gloomy and sad, maybe just use the classical two masks used in theatre. I will probably get a small sketch book and start drawing different mask ideas throughout the day because I feel like I’m really missing out on good masks.

Overall this week was not very interesting and this has definitely been a very boring and empty blog and I’m sorry for that but right now I really don’t know what to write, so if I can really get something out of this week is, how can we improve our ideas on masks? Am I really going down the right track with the different mask ideas I have? Will writing a blog be this hard every week? 

Week #2 Hero in Lumine and the play

Here is a little playlist for you to feast on Click 

Having to write a blog every week will be something that I definitely won’t enjoy at all, I have been told by many people who are doing the IB and who have already done it that I don’t have to see the writing of the blog as a chore but more like a hobby and I do understand what they are trying to tell me and well it is true because as a matter of fact I am enjoying myself right now and it is easy to rant about what you dislike in life (like how irritating is to have to write a blog when you could be doing something else or reading a book for school that you don’t want to read) but that is not the point of anything at all I really need these blogs because they will help me with the course. So future self, if you are reading this please forgive me this is only my second entry and I know I need to improve but I guess you already did you handsome devil.

This second week was pretty long, we went downtown to watch a play called “Vedova in lumine” that I will try to “review” later on, there was also a whole lot of brainstorming about the play and about how to research topics, we presented our research on our selected topic and the play rehearsals began.

Vedova in Lumine

Where can I start, I did not enjoy this play it was boring (at least for me it was) it is just one of those plays where you cant really understand what is going on and you just want to stand up and say “What is this that you are trying to show me” as a matter of fact I think I did not enjoy it because I was expecting to go and see a great play and just got a mediocre play. But actually to get on the brighter side of things if you were to tell me that I need to judge this based on its dance and choreography I would actually would have said that it was good but it is something very superficial that does not make the play better in my eyes. There was one thing that I did enjoy about it; there were a lot of puppets and different ways to use them and even though it is not what I am in charge of in the production of the play it gave me a whole lot of ideas on what to do with puppets something that I was not expecting to happen. So the play was pretty bad but I really liked the use of the puppets and it made me wonder, what other ways of using puppets apart from the traditional ones are there?

My presentation did not go as planned, mainly because I did a poor job with the research and it really is my fault that it went wrong. Knowing that my research was bad and that the amount of information I had was very limited now I realize that I should have been more prepared for it. At least I learned something from this, never be unprepared for anything and if you think you are it probably is because you are. My next presentation is on masks and puppets in other theatre traditions and I chose to do it about some African tradition but I’m not really sure which one yet, it is something that I need to do it quickly because I am running out of time.

And speaking of running out of time the first “rehearsal” of the school play was last week and what I mean by running out of time is that after the first weeks of the school play it seems like time just flies by and you are already acting in front of the whole school. We did what we do every year (or at least what we did these past 2 years) we played the usual games and they explained how the play will be like, nothing different.

The last thing we did this week was watching the movie “Hero” and as a the film buff that I am I liked this and did see the connection with the play and how they want it to look like, but I really found more connection between it and last years play “miyuki y los tres demonios” but mainly just because it was Asian and its look but not because of the story. One of the things that I liked the most was that many scenes had perfect contrast between the light, colors and scenery; there was one scene where a woman is in the forest with yellow-orange leaves on the floor and wearing a red dress that made perfect contrast with everything in the scene. There was also a scene with pieces of cloth hanging from the ceiling where it made the room look smaller when it was actually a big room (something that would be great in the play). I really liked the movie and I hope we can use some of what we saw in the movie on this years play.

As I said before this week was very long but at least I learned something from it. I hope that the play that we will watch tomorrow (La Cocina) is better that “Vedova in Lumine” and that we learn from it and are able to adopt some elements from it. In the end the thing that made me think this week was, how can we use puppets in ways that are not so conventional? How can we make the puppets look alive? What do we have to do to make the play work?

Week #1 OH THE HUMANITY

Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

I am not a religious man (as a matter of fact I am an atheist) so you may ask yourself "Why would he quote the bible if he does not believe in God" I am doing this because right now we are formless and empty, we are in the beginning... of our first year of IB Theatre, but before I tell you about what we did this week I just have to say that even though I hope this year will be like THIS, I know it will be closer to THIS. But all jokes aside these two years will be tough and I will have to do my best. 

Our first class was on Tuesday and it was mainly just an introductory class the course was explained to us and we were introduced to what IB Theatre was going to be like.  We talked about what we will be doing this year and the next: the school plays, one act play, Paucartambo, PPP, Independent projects etc. All our questions were answered and we got an idea of what we are going to do for the next couple of years.

Wednesday March 7, 2012 was our first day of training; we revised what we already knew about the hidden Italian discipline known as Commedia dell’arte and then we were assigned one of the lost arts to study and master so we could pass it on to our fellow warriors to use in their journey through the valley of despair. I was chosen to discover the secrets left behind by the Romans many years ago, and I shall share my wisdom with my kinsmen when the next day of Thor comes around using the magic known as the power of the point. So wednesday we revised commedia dell’arte and I have to make a PowerPoint presentation on Roman Comedy for next Thursday.

The next day, Thursday we started thinking about the vision of this year’s play that will have something to do with the queen of England and we will be using masks and puppets.

Friday was our last class of the week and we continued to work on what the play will be like; focusing on the different conventions and games that we will use in the play, one of the ideas was that one of the characters is represented by the audience and the actors speak to the audience. It seems like our sensei liked the idea because when presented with it he stared at the empty space over our heads and replied “hmm…re-chicken”. We also compared the different conventions in kabuki and theatre for children, e.g.  There is less contact in kabuki and more contact in theatre for children. With this we ceased our doings for the week and returned home to prepare for our next encounter.

Well that was my first week of theatre, not very interesting but I try to make it sound a little bit exciting. The only thing that I need to know before I continue with this dangerous mission is, will it hurt?