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?