Here is a little song for you to feast on Click.
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.
