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

Here is a little playlist for you to feast on Click. Suggested by Manu B. here is a link to her blog

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?