Devising and improvising our play!

Monday 28^th of January – We handed in our annotated bibliographies. I found this task to be quite hard as I have never done an annotated bibliography before. Its length was the part that annoyed me the most, as there seemed to be a never ending list of sources that each needed explaining. I also had a bit of difficulty finding each source.

We spent the rest of the lesson working on the beginning of our play. Mr Fearnehough helped us realise we needed a LOT more AUDIENCE INTERACTION.

Also, we really need to keep in our Commedia masks, which I think is something we’re struggling with a bit.

These two things are vital to the play’s success as a Commedia Dell’arte play.

Wednesday 30^th of January – We spent two hours perfecting our first scene. Because I am not in this one meant I could sit in the audience area and give feedback. It was hard to improvise and we only got to about a minute of the play, but all the advice and feedback off Mr Fearnehough will help with the rest of the play.

Personally, it was a great experience seeing the play as an audience member because it showed me what we had to work on, which was turning our faces toward the audience.

I have problems with this because my instinct is to look toward the person I am talking to.  Other than that, I think it went great and we added lots of really funny stuff in, like the “BOO!” from the Zanni in the fight.

Thursday 31^st of January – Mr. Fearnehough wasn’t there so we decided to work on the guitar scene. This was good because we gave the Zanni a bigger part in this, as they are the most important roles in Commedia.

Halley and I weren’t in this scene, so we sat as audience members and gave feedback. Both Abby and Mary did really well, with the horrendously bad guitar playing and singing (on purpose of course!) and some great physical improvisation.

Lydia and Bekki did really well, especially with the audience interaction in the beginning and the mix up with the song.