Week 10: Master Classes and TaPS TPPP

Monday: We did some euphoric poetry. Mr. Fearnehough had us close our eyes and imagine that we were back at one of the performances from TaPS. He asked us to imagine how we felt, how we sat, and a lot of other things that had happened during the performance. Then he had us write down what we remembered from it. I did "Oh, the Humanity!" and most of the things I wrote down were emotions. He then told us to make a poster showing these moments and memories from the production. He read us a quote from Peter Brook's "The Empty Space", "I know of one acid test in the theatre. It is literally an acid test. When a performance is over, what remains? Fun can be forgotten, but powerful emotion also disappears and good arguments lose their thread. When emotion and argument are harnessed to a wish from the audience to see more clearly into itself – then something in the mind burns. The event scorches on to the memory an outline, a taste, a trace, a smell – a picture. It is the play’s central image that remains, its silhouette, and if the elements are highly blended this silhouette will be its meaning, this shape will be the essence of what it has to say. When years later I think of a striking theatrical experience I find a kernel engraved on my memory: two tramps under a tree, an old woman dragging a cart, a sergeant dancing, three people on a sofa in hell – or occasionally a trace deeper than any imagery." This quote explains what a theatre acid test is.

Wednesday:I delivered my TaPS TPPP presentation. It went okay, but I got kind of nervous and did not talk long enough. Then we had a discussion about audience perception. We discussed how people perceive experiences. Many factors affect how you interpret and observe theatre. The class came up with six reasons people perceive things differently.

1. Gender
2. Age
3. Culture(where they are from)
4. Preconceptions(previous experiences/empathizing)
5. Space (intimate or anonymous theatre space)
6. Mood (how they felt before the production)

After this discussion everyone took a freeze frame pictures of our euphoric poetry. Then, I taught my master class. I did it on slow motion. I taught the class what I had learned in TaPS about slow motion. The movement, the different uses. We did the Silver Thread Game as a warm-up and also a slow motion combat game. I thought it went okay, but I am not sure if everyone got all of the concepts I tried to share.

Thursday: Mr. Fearnehough gave us more information on how to do our Acid Tests. Axel taught his master class on Verbatim and Lineals. Verbatim is when you hear a story and then recreate it with exact detail. Lineals are when one or more actors act out a characters mind and what they are thinking. Axel had us try to act out an emotion that he gave us and then he had us try to act out a story, each person doing a different emotion or section of it. These exercises were to teach us how to do a lineal. Axel gave us a lot of criticism to show us how it would really be if we did a verbatim piece. Then he split us into two groups and each of us made up a short skit using lineals. Each group did it differently. One group had one actor who was trying to make a choice and they had two lineals that were representing each choice. The other group had two actors interacting with each other and one lineal that spoke for both of them. Then Bekki told us a story and we tried to recreate it as a lineal. We figured out that it is difficult to only do the story and not try to make it more interesting by changing it a little.