Bunraku and IP

This past week has been spent on a new chapter of our IB theatre course! Not only are we starting a whole new project on Bunraku, we also looked at the IP. We spent some time with Mr. F. making sure that we understood all about the IP, marking schemes, facts about theatre projects. Having it explained like that really helped me understand exactly what I have to do.
Mr F. also made it very clear to me how things like footnotes and proper references are very important as the presentation is worth a whole quarter of my IPP


Thursday 19th September:

We made sure that we were all clear on the deadlines for the course and learnt some more theory on the basics of Bunraku.




Friday 20th September:

Today we spent two hours on Bunraku. We have already learnt a bit of theory about Bunraku due to our presentations and today we were going to be doing some physical exercises. It's all well and good to do the theory but at some point, you're gonna have to work at it practically to understand it.

We began with an exercise where we were put into pairs (I was with Bekki) and we had a piece of paper between us which had to travel from the top of our head to our feet, then back up again, Not using our hands!Sound easy?Nope! This was very difficult but Bekki and I nailed it in the end!Of course, this was after many, many fruitless attempts. We sorted out a technique and managed to shimmy it up and down. The real tricky part was when he asked us to all stand next to each other and make the paper go from my foot to Abby's, whilst going up and down everybody else.Now that was tough. But it did teach us a lot. We struggled to do this for more than twenty minutes. Bunraku puppeteers learn their craft through 30 years of hard work. First, they spend 15 years doing the legs. Then they spend another 15 doing the left arm. After this, they can finally upgrade to the right arm and face. The relative difficulty of our exercises puts this all in perspective.

One thing we discussed was being reserved as an ensemble. As an ensemble, we have to try not to be reserved because we have to work with each other as a team. At the beginning of the year, I was much more reserved than I am now but I realise that it will take one or two goes of a task to become comfortable. 

The next task we did was balancing a pencil on our fingers. This task was really difficult but it required a lot of concentration. I didn't manage to balance a pencil on the tip of my finger more than a second but I did realise some points whilst doing it. Although I didn't manage it (try it, you'll see), I realised that by moving it was (slightly) easier to balance the pencil.

 

However, we transitioned from a pencil to a broom handle and that was much easier! When i was a kid I used to balance bamboo poles on my finger so I already knew the technique. As long as you concentrate on the top of the stick and keep moving with it, it will remain balanced. However, Lydia and Abby had probably never known this so they didn't manage immediately. One very important thing we did take from this though is that with encouragement and constructive criticism from the rest of the ensemble, they really progressed and nearly manage to balance it by the end of the session. Another very important aspect of this is group concentration. I found it much easier to concentrate when there weren't any voices around me to listen to. This is useful knowledge to have, as we know now that in future projects, group concentration is key.