Last Week Before Holidays !! :D

Monday 22nd October:
We worked on Influence, Immitation and Inspiration more in class. We listened to a very strange piece of music with lots of different sound effects and wrote down our emotions, thoughts and feelings we got from the music. We then had to immatate the piece of music. This could be done in anyway possible but we had to come up with something. We immatated the sounds and volume of the music by using noises from our mouths or using any object around us.
We then had to come up with something that influenced us from the music. This meant that we took an aspect from the music and used it insomething we produced. We produced a piece about someone being bullied. There was no dialogue but we took the sound effects and noises from the music and copied them again. But we added the actions and emotions of someone being bullied to fit the music and how it changed.
After we were inspired to produced something from the music. We had the emotions we felt from the music and created a piece around it. We created a piece about someone taking drugs and the different stages and emotions they would feel after taking drugs. At the end all emotions come together to haunt the person taking the drugs. I felt it worked very well and we were definitely inspired by the music to do this.

Wednesday 24th October:
This lesson we began with a warm up game called " Would you come on holiday with me". We got put in to pairs and had to persuade our partner to come on holiday with me. Partner B in the first round HAS to say no. In the second round, partner B had to say Yes but... and in the third round, partner B had to say yes and.
The emotions I felt when playing the game:

• First round- No: I felt pathetic, because I just kept getting rejected and it was really hard to carry on trying to persuade my partner. 
• Second Round- Yes but: I felt annoyed because I was still trying to persuade my partner but there was always an answer. It was a little easier though because there was more ideas of what to say next from using my partners answers.
• Third round- Yes and : I felt bored because when we found one idea of what to talk about, we carried on with that idea and repeated it with just changed the context, which is boring. There were more positive emotions though but it was less entertaining for myself and the audience. 

The point of the game was to show how much responsibilty everyone has in the group. We have to help eachother out when they are stuck by giving them ideas. For example if a person in the group forgot their lines, it is important for me or another person in the group to cooperate with them and help them by improvising and giving ideas to help stay in character and to carry on!

Thursday 25th October- Today we got all of our masses of holiday homework :( It is a lot but we have all holdays and more to do it. The work is too:

• Write up all our TAPS notes into our journal and stick in tickets and stuff from thetrip.
• Choose ONE production from what we saw in London and write a detailed evaluation of 1,500 words on it using the 'Pavis Questionnaire" styled essay plan.
• We have to prepare a TPPP style presentation on the TAPS trip.
• Prepare a mini masterclass that is 30 minutes long on an masterclass or exercise from TAPS. Mine will be on immersive theatre. 

So i got a lot of work to do this holidays so I should get on with it now .. :'(

First week in Drama!

This past week has been a major switch for me, it being my first week as a drama student! Thankfully having gone to TAPs was a huge advantage because I'm starting to understand how IB theatre and the class in general work. When we were told we would be doing a practical lesson, I was less then thrilled. At TAPs I found it easy to go for any of the acting "challenges" because I'd never met the other kids before, and therefore I had nothing to lose. However, I decided I might as well give it a try at school as well. The activity was to try and convince a partner to go on vacation with you. The first time the partner could only respond "No", second round "yes but..." and the third round "yes and".

1. No: I felt hurt, rejected, annoyed
2. Yes but: unpopular, frustrated
3. Yes and: excited, bubbly, overjoyed

In the first two rounds, the flow was broken and it was hard to keep improvising. However, by the third round we were able to build off of each other's ideas and keep going. Not only did the energy stay really upbeat and positive but we also worked together as a team. Overall this exercise showed me how harsh a "no" can be. Theatre makes us all vulnerable, so we might as well make the process as painless as possible by being open and encouraging to others.

Week 7: Almost break!

Monday 22

We were given a sound scape and told to imitate it, be influenced by it, and be inspired by it.

• Imitate- we imitated it by using different things that we found around the room to make similar sounds and we attempted to sound exactly like the sound scape.
• Influence- we used the sounds from the sound scape to make a story about bullying. There were no words and we did not use the same exact order or sounds as the original "music". We added affects of our own but the sound still was comparable to the sound scape.
• Inspire- We prepared a skit that was similar to the "Talk to Fred" commercials. It was inspired by the psychotic emotions that the sound scape gave us. It was about a character injecting themselves with something and all of the emotions they feel. How they eventually become so varied it was too overwhelming to the character. There is little dialogue and only one character, even though each of his emotions is played by a different person.

We also discussed imitate, influence, and inspire more. In connection with our homework with "The Scream" by Vincent Van Gough

Wednesday 24

• "Come on Holiday with me!"-We were split into pairs. Each pair would try to get the other person to come on Holiday with me!" and the other person would respond with...

• "No"- absolute refusal. The person trying to convince the other person who was constantly shooting them down got frustrated and gave up easily, espsially since they knew that there was no way to change the other person's mind.
• "Yes,but..."- consideration and refusal. This was almost worse but also almost bettter. The other person actually seemed to consider the idea but then always found something wrong with it. Sometimes they stuck to one problem and refused to let it be fixed.
• "Yes and..."- agreement and building onto the idea. This is the only one in which both people agreed. One person would start off by saying something like "Come on holiday with me and we can go to London." Then the other person would respond with "Yes and we could go on the London eye." Or something like that. It was very encouraging to have the other person agreeing with you and giving you even better ideas. It was easy to do if you and your partner could get in a rhythm and build off of each other, both with ideas and with energy/excitement.

Conclusion: This exercise showed how the way you respond to someone else's ideas can effect the group dynanmic. If one person's ideas are continually ignored or refused without any consideration they are going to eventually shut down and stop trying. When someone feels like their ideas have to be perfect or they will be rejected they will be less likely to offer any ideas at all. When you agree with others and build on the idea from there they will be excited and more likely to be productive.

 Thursday 25-Our holiday homework was assigned. :' (

•  Mr. Fearnehough introduced us to the Pavis Questionnaire and told us to write an essay about one of the productions we saw based on the Questionnaire.
• He also told us to write-up all of our TaPS notes in our journals
• Prepare a TPPP-style presentation about our experiences at TaPS
• Put together a mini-master class on one of the things we learned about at TaPS.

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this is a blog

Week 6: No More TaPS : ' (

Mon 15th- We discussed our "Container" reviews. Everyone got a four or five which is pretty good considering half of us have never taken a theatre class before and this was our first review. It was very nice to have Mr. Fearnehough go over each one with us individually. It helped to find out what I did good and what I did bad on my review.








We also were assigned a project to find a piece of art that showed us after TaPS. I chose Mike Bertino's piece from the Joyful Bewilderment gallery.









Wed 17th- Mr. Fearnehough had to supervise the students taking PSATs so we sat and wrote our reviews for "One Man Two Guvnors". It was a little bit difficult writing about the play after having seen it a week before and three other plays really close around it, but Mr. Fearnehough's notes on my "Container" review and my notes on the play helped me to write the review.



Thurs 18th- We talked about using plays and other peoples work. There are three ways to do this- I could imitate something, be influenced by something, or be inspired by something.




Imitation is copying exactly something I have seen or heard. Imitation is used in Asian drama. All of the actors try to move in a very specific ways that they have been taught through imitation.







Influencing is letting something that I have seen or heard affect my ideas and concepts. When something is influenced by something else the two things are similar, but not the same.








Inspiration is when my idea starts from something I have seen or heard but ends up being totally different. The thing that inspired me may not be visible in the final product.





Each of these methods are useful in different areas of theatre, but there is still the matter of academic integrity. This means I need to make sure I don't try to take credit for something that I actually copied from someone else (sort of like citing things in a paper). Talking about this stuff kind of gets me excited about making my own piece.

First Full Week Back From London :(

Monday 15th October -
Today was our first drama lesson after TAPS trip. We got our Container essays back from Mr Fearnehough with a mark on them. I wasn't too impressed with my mark but it wasn't that bad either. I know how to improve on the next essay now. I need to explain things much easier in my essays and use lots of examples with explanations.

Wednesday 17th October-
For our double lesson, we wrote a 1,500 word essay on "One Man Two Guvnors". We used our notes from what we took when watching the performance and also from what was said in our workshops the next day. In my essay, I involved key moments, three different aspects that were directional, technical and performance.

Thursday 18th October-
This lesson we spoke about the differences and definitions of Inspiration, Immitating and Influence. We learnt about which of these is good in theatre and what exactly each of them are. They are similar but very different from eachother.

Aaaaaand... we're back!

Monday, we trudged back in the drama room, full of memories from Taps and full of envy for all future year 12's.But there we were back to work. Mr. Fearnehough gave us feedback on our theatrical analysis papers. I got a 4, which suits me fine seeing as I am completely new to theatre. However, by using his feedback, I hope I can do better.

Which brings us to Wednesday. Mr. Fearnehough was busy overseeing an examination, so he gave us another theatrical analysis to write, this time on “One Man, Two Guvnors”. I found this one slightly easier, thanks to the feedback from my earlier attempt and also because this play was possibly the best performance I have ever seen. In my review, I wrote about the timing and pace, the opening and ending, the transition of scenes, space, set design, costumes, use of voice, use of body and emotion as well as the director’s concept.

On Thursday, we studied three similar, but slightly different aspects of theatre. Influence, Imitation and Inspiration. After discussing the three ideas at length, we came to the conclusion that Imitation is the exact reproduction of something, Influence is producing something using  one’s impression of another thing and Inspiration is taking good ideas from one thing, changing them slightly to one’s taste and introducing them in something else. We discussed how this is considered plagiarism in other lessons, but not in theatre, where it is encouraged.

BACK IN SCHOOL 

Monday 15th of October: 

Monday was our first day back in  the drama room after LONDON :( this lesson we had time to write on the blog and say everything thing we did in the past week at TaPS, and Mr. Fearnehough gave us back our Container essays and talked to us individually about them. I was really pleased with my essay because when i handed it in i didn't think i did to well but turns out i did just fine.

Wednesday 17th of October:

Mr.Fearnehough was examining that day so we were given work which was to write up 'One Man, Two Guvnors' a play we had gone and seen in London, i was really happy writing this play up because it was one of the most funniest and entertaining play i had ever seen. In the essay i wrote about the Director's concept, Transition of Scenes, Opening and Ending, Set Design, Light/Colour, Use Body, Expression, Emotions and My conclusion.

Thursday 18th of October:

Thursday we talked about Imitation - Influence and Inspiration, and what these words actually mean. Imitation we discussed and we agreed that it's taking someone work and performing it exactly like it was watched. Influence is twisting, making something your own and Inspiration is something that helps you with your own ideas to inspire you BUT in the end the product is different. It was interesting to see everyone's different opinions on what these 3 words exactly mean and how these words are used in IB Theatre. 

TAPS 2012

WENT TO LONDON!

That’s right! We went to the Theatre Arts Programme Symposium at the Dominion Theatre! TAPS is a meeting composed of IB theatre students from around the world, with teachers and IB theatre examiners flying in to give master classes. Most the class went but sadly Mary couldn’t join us. Henry and Halley did though.

We flew out on Sunday 7^th, and after much annoyance with British Rail, we went to see Zoonation’s “some like it hip-hop”.  It was absolutely mind-blowing. It was a spectacle of interpretive dance, using dance and body language to express emotions and speech (using a narrator).

 

Monday 8^th was the day we started TAPS. I was put in Lydia and Bekki’s group and we met our ensemble leaders, Sherri and Anthony. Both were very energetic and hilarious, and much time was spent holding my sides. They lived by one motto, which was incessantly repeated throughout the symposium. “Momentum, energy, risk and joy”. We went through a series of exercises, starting with perhaps what contained some of the more memorable moments of the week, a game called “the Bear game”. Now, the bear game is basically learning how stay absolutely still. The game starts with two people playing bears, the rest play lumberjacks. When the bears roar, the lumberjacks have to lie down and play dead. The bears are then tasked with making people move or react. The ones who do not play dead well are caught out and must join the bears. The point of this game is to increase concentration but it quickly descended into mayhem. 

In the afternoon, we had the first of our two masterclasses .This one was on music. The composer who came in to talk to us made us recreate an exercise she had done with other groups, which was to create a musical piece, using voice and body percussion, from a simple tune. This was great fun and helped strengthen friendships as we worked in small groups for this exercise.

 This was a brilliant ice breaker as it made us work with people we didn't know.

Throughout the week we continued with more games and exercises, each made to develop our reactions to theatre. Every night we went to see a different play, starting with “Oh the Humanity” at the Soho theatre. “Oh the Humanity” is a modern play, meant to reflect the desperation of regular human lives, using a mix witty, eccentric, dry humour.

 

On Tuesday 9th, we began Taps in earnest. As well as studying verbatim theatre, we approached immersive theatre and discussed "Oh the Humanity" at great length. We also continued with the exercices and made notes on different names for things in theatre. This helped me a lot as I am new to theatre. In the afternoon, we had the second of our two masterclassses. This one was on immersive theatre. A man came in and talked to us about different kinds of immersive theatre and setting up games and exercises to improve our knowledge of immersive theatre.

Later, we went to see "One Man, Two Guvnors" playing at the Royal Haymarket. It is and adaptation from a Commedia Dell'Arte play called "One servant, two masters". It shares many aspects of commedia and farce and was a memorable night out.

Wednesday 10th was unfortunately the last day of Taps, and most of that day was spent reflecting on the play from the previous evening, which means we spent most of the day working on slapstick and farce comedy, which was great fun. After our prolonged goodbyes, we went for a quick drink in Starbucks before being dragged into Primark by Bekki and Henry. 

After this we went to see "Damned by Despair", a very interesting play on the merits of salvation. It broke all sorts of rules in theatre but was a great watch. It was an adaptation of a play from the Spanish 17th century by Tirso de Molina.

 

On Thursday 11th, we went sightseeing in Westminster which was nice and then headed for the airport and home.

And so ended a fantastic trip, with lots of knowledge crammed into our heads and an untold amount of experiences to share. With hope we'll go again next year!

  

 From left: Darin, me, Ben, Lydia, Bekki, Josh, Paulina, Elise and Tits (well Titziano really, but everyone called him Tits :)) 

TaPS THEATRE TRIP TO LONDON!

We left on the 7th of October and came back on te 11th. It was an amazing trip! I learnt SO much, I realised so many about theatre and how to reflect and improve on my work. I met so people who became close friends over just aperiod of three days.We had a lot in common and we were all put into the position to make friends anyway haha!

Sunday 7th-
This day we flew and it was our first afternoon and night in London. We went to see a dance theatre production called "Some like it Hip-Hop by Zoonation. I was definitely in my element watching this as I am a dancer. The story was being told through hip-hop dance. It was amazing to understand so clearly a whole story without actors having any dialogue. The only dialogue in the play was by the narrator who spoke about the change of scenes and background stories of some main characters. The whole performance was exciting and there was so much energy. I was so excited to understand the story more but I understand that it was a modern take by using hip-hop on an old story. I absoulutly loved this performance, i couldn't stop smiling throughout the whole show.

Monday 8th-
Today we started our TaPS workshop at 9am. I was a little nervous because i had no idea what we were going to do and who I was going to be with. We then got put into a group that I absoulutly loved. Our leaders taught us the four main things they constantly wanted flowing through the room during the workshop. These four words were Momentum, Energy, Risk and Joy. We began with activites that would raise these words in the room and break the ice between everybody. We did plenty of fun theatre activities and games to get energy up. A main thing I learnt on our first day is what I am as a theatre student and what aspect of the IB learner profile do I want to improve most in theatre class. I realised that I was more of a designer and I wanted to take more risks in theatre class.
A theatre aspect that I learnt about was Lineals. I had never heard of lineals before in drama and i really liked using them whilst performing. Having a thought being said outloud behind the actor, I thought added a very interesting and funny twist to a story that could be boring.

At night we went to see a theatre production called "Oh, the Humanity". The play was about problems and emotions faced in adulthood and trying to find the answers to these problems but really the answers are not found. I did find some of the dialogue quite boring in the performance but I was very interested in the technical aspects like the use of lighitng for cameras. 

Tuesday 9th-
We began with doing activities to get spirits up. We spoke about an practise called flairs which is repeating over and over the same movement and sound of a character. We did lots of activities on these and freezeframes. In the afternoon we had a masterclass on Immersive Theatre. Our class already knew about the basics as we had a presentation from bekki. We made up short performances and had a member of our ensemble that was not in our group to play a role on the spot in the performance. It was interesting to hear their reactions, mostly they were confused as they didn't know how to react to actors talking to them.
At night time we went to see the production "One Man, Two Guvernors". I LOVED this play. It was hilarious. It was taken from Comedia Del Arte and was very slapstick. There was no fourth wall which improved the comedy more.

Wednesday 10th-

Today was our last day in TaPS, i was SO sad :'( I really didn't want to leave. We learnt about levels of tension by pretending there was a bomb in the room. Everyone really got into it on their own and it was interesting to see how comfortble everyone was acting. We had a long talk about PPP and it gave me a lot more help that will come in handy for next year.
At night we saw a production called "Damed by Despair', the play was very grim. At the beginning it was very boring but it gradually got more and more interesting as it went on. There was some dark humour in the play but i didn't really find it funny as I thought it killed the dark atmosphere at times and made it difficult to get back into the humour. 










Thursday 11th- 
Today we left London and I really didn't want to! We had a little tour of London just before we left which was nice.
In all, I can defintely say that I learnt A LOT about the IB theatre course. I learnt A LOT about myself as a theatre student and I learnt A LOT about theatre in general. My confidence as an actor has improved and I made incredible friends and memories. 
I wannaaaa go back :'(

2nd Week of October 2012

I started research about Stanislavski that was given by Mr. Fearnehough because i couldn't go with them in ISTA TAPS in London. :(

When i started my research, i found that Konstantin Stanislavski, is an actor, a theater director and yet he founded the Moscow Art Theater, i can't believe that.

 

So about the Film, base on my research he made two films only, theres no more, it is about Stanislavski and the russian theatre, and he made

 

- Actor Prepares

- Building a Character

- Creating a role

- Acting the thruth

 

And he also wrote his own bigraphy in his book: My Life in Art.

I don't think if it is interesting maybe if i love art.

 

Stanislavski has many Quotes he do, and i really do like it, this is some of the quotation of stanislavski.

 

- "If you know your character's thoughts, the proper vocal and bodily expressions will naturally follow."

 

- "Imagination creates things that can be or can happen."

 

The System of Acting of Stanislavski, it has 2 types, it is:

 

1. Emotion Memory

2.The Method of Physical Actions

 

This two acting system has a meaning when it comes to a drama, because it can develop your artistic on stage during performance and it was good, and it will become better if you put emotions and feelings when you perform on stage.

 

It was good for me to know this and also to my fellow classmate because  we can do it right now, so it is not more difficult to us when we actually perform in front of many people.

 

I learned alot of things from stanislavski specially his system of method, i think this is the most important thing to us as an IB Theater Student. :) xx

Back from LONDON L

The ISTA TAPS trip was from the 7^th to the 11^th of October and it was AMAZING! The most interesting and fun-filled trip I’ve ever been on, I learnt so much about theatre that I didn’t know and I met people who had the same interests as me from all around the world, and to see there different views on things was interesting and it gave you more to think about different aspects of theatre and different ways theatre students analysis a play or performance.

Sunday 7^th:

Was the day we flew to LONDON! That night we went to see a dance musical called ‘Some Like it Hip-Hop’ by Zoonation. Which was set in the 60’s and was about women not being able to get jobs as easily as men get them. I really enjoyed this play because I really like dancing and singing and it was a play that I would want to go see again. The dance and singing skills was amazing and I really got intrigued by it. This play was mostly dialogue from the narrator and a few other characters whenever there were freeze frames during the play. At the end of this performance the actors got the audience up on their feet singing and dancing which was very enjoyable and everyone joined in. What I also liked from this performance was when the actors bowed they got to do their own dance putting their own stamp on their character and I really appreciated this in the performance.

I was in such a good and inspired mood after this performance which then got ruined when we got ripped off in a local Indian restaurant.

Monday 8^th:

Was the first day of TAPS, I didn’t know what to expect and I was a bit anxious about being in such a big ensemble. After 5 minutes after we started I felt fine and comfortable with everyone I was with. Our two ensemble leaders were Sherri and Anthony and they were so confortable to work with. They always went from one activity to another which kept us going and we never got bored because we were always on our feet doing something interesting to do with theatre.

Our first morning we did warm ups:

-          Banana Song – to get us started

-          Positive Yes exercise- to get the energy levels in the room high

-          Eye contact game –mingling with people in the group and get to know people better.

-          Bear and Lumberjacks game – which helped with the concentration of the people playing the game and showed that with even any type of distraction an actor has to be able concentrate to be able to focus and perform. A BOAL activity.

-          Pair activity – thinking about what type of performer we were – interesting to see what other people thought about what type of performer they were.

The afternoon

-          Playback Theatre – Observation someone during the lunch then re-enacting it out.

-          Lineals – shows emotions and what a person is really feeling and can have an effect on the audience.

We then had a master class on music and we were shown different rhythms and we had to create some ourselves and gave us activities with singing and beats.

That night we saw ‘Oh, the Humanity’ which was a very thought provoking play and showed different perceptions on how people felt. Even thought it was a go performance and the acting of one women especially was amazing, I saw that she really got into the characters she was playing and her emotions she portrayed stood out. I didn’t know what to expect of this play and when I heard what other people’s views they had on them were very interesting and varied to mine.

Tuesday 9^th:

We mostly continued doing warm up activities and different types of games to do around theatre. We talked a bit more about lineals and went through emotions of lineals. We then talked about immersive theatre and discussed a few aspects before our master class we were going to have in the afternoon. And we also had  a mini talk about comedy with Sherri who is specialised in that because she is a stand-up comedian.

The master class we had in the afternoon was very interesting and interactive, before we went on this trip I had to do a research on it and I got really interested and thought it would be really good to go see one, so doing a master class on it was really enjoyable.

That night we went to see ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ which was one of the best performances I’ve seen. It was so enjoyable and there wasn’t a dull moment in it. It was a play about a man that manages to get two jobs and have two guvnors bossing him around. We could really see the comedy throughout the whole play and the audience were always laughing and enjoying themselves. The music played brought a joyful feel to the whole theatre and put everyone in an even better mood. The only thing I was disappointed with was when I found out that some of the audience that were picked were in fact real actors. It kind of got rid of the whole comedy of the play and the real audience getting involved. And I think it would have been funnier if they were just audience picked at random.

Wednesday 10^th:

The whole ensemble had an overview chat about the play we saw the previous night and everyone thought it was hilarious and entertaining and really enjoyed it as much as I did. We then had a serious talk about the Research Paper and the P.P.P we will have to do in our second year of theatre. I think this talk was very helpful because I got a clearer idea and help from what I was told about what im going to have to do in my second year.

That night we went to see Damned by Despair, which I think if I was more awake and more into the type of theatre that was portrayed I would have found it much more interesting. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy it I thought the sound and projections used throughout the play were interesting and created a dark and intense atmosphere.

Thursday 11^th:

Bye Bye London, Thursday was the day we had to go L we were all really sad about leaving and we wished we could have stayed for another week if we could. We all learnt lots of new things and we were able to share what we learnt and look back on what an amazing and unforgettable week we all had.