Set Design, PPP and Love Wins All

Wednesday 22nd May-

Continuing our Brech studies, we created our own set design action plans for his play, Mother Courage. We shared ideas for the action plan and agreed that although some of the necessary steps had already been done, it was best to jot them down for potential reference in a TPPP. As a group, we decided not to have deadlines on the action plan as each of the ppoints in the plan can be achieved by the same deadline. In fact, some go hand in hand and cannot be accomplished as separate tasks.
This task is a very creative one and I think my inner theatre student can greatly benefit from it! I say this but I can't help but fell kinda overwhelmed by how huge this is. And, joy of joys, we have a PPP as well! Woohoo...

To follow this up, we got some general feeback on our TPPP's. I originally thought that mine was nowhere near as good as I could have made, particularly as I sort-of involuntarily scripted it, which is a big no-no. I think that double sided page of advice Mr Fearnehough was paritcularly helpful in addressing the problems we all had with our TPPP's, and I am very happy to have them for my next attempt! Everything on the list was well explained and also helpfully illustrated by Mr Fearnehough.  The feeback concerned itself in our content in particular, but also madea point of addressing our composure and presenting style.All in all, I'm very happy to have had this as it has bolstered my confidence. Soon, I hope to have my personal in-depth feedback on my TPPP so I can get my grade up to a 6. Mr Fearnehough has already given me some tips on how to do so, but I know now that this is on me.

We stayed after school on Wednesday just for an hour to practise our play, "Love Wins All". We made damn sure we had everything but focused on going over the performance and relearning our jokes. We only had an hour so everything was pretty rushed and although it helped a lot I still feel we should have done this practice session earlier. For me, it just upped the nervousness of the whole thing. I am mostly to blame for my lack of motivation and the main thing I take from this is to ne a lot more energetic and enthusiastic in the future!

Thursday 23rd May:

Today we were given our mock PPP project. IN this, we have to come up with an entireplay, and yes, that does mean EVERYTHING! We discussed it at length with Mr Fearnehough, specifically what makes a good PPP and what we can use to produce it. We have 4 weeks to create it but it has to be done in our homework time as class time is used for the set design. I like the idea of the PPP, it sounds really fun and creative but it is also another huge assignment in a period where we have to work even harder as, and to paraphraseMr Fearnehough on this: "At the end of the school year, we don't slow down, we move up a gear". The problem is this is the same in all the subjets and I am starting to feel a little smothered. Go do IB, they said... It'll be super-fun, they said...
We were given the stimuli and although I have yet to research all of it, a I do like Dali's painting. Then again, I am a big fan of surrealism, so I guess that's what appealed to me most.


Lunch time on Thursday. Go time, zero hour, D-Day, this was it. We performed "Love Wins All"!

I felt very nervous as this was my first time performing an actual play as an actor, but overall I was quite pleased my performance. One thing I do regret though is that I didn't play with the audience, a direct contradiction of our Commedia performance concept. However, when we get given back the feedback that we did and seeing reactions, it makes me wonder why I get so nervous because I actually really enjoy performing "Love Wins All".

I need to remember how I felt before and after the performance for the next performance we do in any project because I think it was give me the ability to perform as best as I can.
I felt that the performance did go well as we achieved our super-objective, which was really quite simple, to make them laugh! And laugh they did!

PPP & SET DESIGN

Wednesday 22nd May-
Today we created our own set design action plans for Mother Courage. We shared our ideas for the action plan and have already done some that are on the action plan. We havn't got any times or dates on the action plan as we probably would not be able to stick to them but the action plan amount seems fair.
It is a very creative task and I think it will be a really good experience and different role for everyone in the class.I don't think it is going to be easy and I think I might struggle at some points with the creative side but I think I will find it interesting and enjoy it.

We got some general feeback on our TPPP's too. I think that double sided page of advice and feedback is very helpful! I will be able to look back on this when preparing for my final TPPP and I know exactly what not to do! Everything on the list is explained well and we went through it with MR Fearnehough with helped me too because he gave some good examples. The feeback was informative about the content but also about how we present ourselves and the look of our TPPP's, so it covered all areas.
I didn't have chance to get personal feedback about my TPPP because we ran out of time but hopefully I will because I would like to know what I can do to make it a 6 for all my work in theatre not just the TPPP.

We stayed after school on Wednesday just for an hour to go over "Love Wins All". We made sure we had all the props, went over the performance quickly and practised our dance number at the end. We only had an hour so everything was pretty rushed but I found it very useful to quickly remind ourselves about eveything and the little jokes as we hadn't done it in so long. When practising, I was nervous for tomorrow when we were going to perform but also very excited.

Thursday 23rd May:
Today we were given our mock PPP project. We discussed the PPP and what makes a good PPP and what we can use to produce it. We have 4 weeks to create it but it has to be done in our homework time and class time is used for the set design. I like the idea of the PPP, it sounds really fun and it is our own personal ideas that we can create. We were given the stimuli and I have researched all the ideas but I think that I like the song called Frankie Teardrop the most. It has a really emotional story and everything about the song, the effects and the music were very intense and I had a lot of ideas for costumes, story, lighting, choreography... when listening to the song.

Lunch time on Thursday: We performed "Love Wins All"!!
I felt nervous before we started but as soon as it did start, I got into it straight away and REALLY enjoyed it. When we get given back the feedback that we did and seeing reactions, it makes me wonder why I get so nervous because I actually really enjoy performing "Love Wins All". My character is very fun and it is a really fun piece.
I need to remember how I felt before and after the performance for the next performance we do in any project because I think it was give me the ability to perform as best as I can.
I felt that the performance did go well and it was one of our best. There were a couple of "lines" and jokes that we missed out on but it didn't really matter in the end because it is commedia and we still got the reaction we wanted and got our superobjective!

Week 28: SO MANY PROJECTS!!

Wednesday: Today we were assigned a set design project on Mother Courage. We went over action plans, discussed possible set ideas, and different ways of doing it. This project seems fairly easy, but I may have misjudged it. We also got group feedback on the TPPP's. Mr. Fearnehough gave a piece of paper with the front and back covered with things to improve or add, things such as: limiting the amount of abstract images and collages, cautions about how to introduce you going into the theatre program, if you use a convention or theory then make sure that you are correct in you usage, and many other points. This feedback was very informative and each point has something that can be applied to my TPPP, which is kind of disappointing, but the fact that there was very little positives was kind of  depressing. I had been very worried about my TPPP because I very strongly dislike speaking in front of people, specifically in a serious setting, and I dislike speaking about myself, what I have learned or how I have changed. This is something that I will need to work on to become a better theatre student and a better speaker. 

Thursday: Today we were assigned a mock PPP to do at home while we do the Brecht project in class. This arrangement worries me because I feel like it will be difficult working on two big, and kind of similar projects at once. Mr. Fearnehough gave us the stimuli and told us that we need to pick one by monday. He then gave personal feedback on the mock TPPP. This feedback  further convinced me that I need to work a lot harder on my next TPPP as well as rehearse it more. I also need to maintain a better stage presence, not saying "crap" when I  lose my spot, and even memorizing my "lines" better. I am really disappointed in  how I did in this exam because I wanted to do well because it was the end-of-year exam and because I wanted to be able to not stress about my real TPPP, but this presentation showed me that I have a lot of work to do in the future, and it also showed me the specific areas that I need to focus on. 

A good thing to think about and reflect on during theatre

Friday: We finally performed "Love Wins All" for an audience. Before the performace I was worried about forgetting "lines", missing parts, and mostly completely freezing. So judging from this criteria I would say that my performance was a success, though, being the negative, self-deprecating person that I am, I am relatively convince that beyond this I was a complete failure, but practically thinking I think I did ok, there definite room for improvement, but I did alright. Also everyone else did amazing!!

Halley's Blog

This week in theater started off with general feedback on our TPPP presentations. There were several things that I could improve on, some dealing with the actual presentation and some dealing with the content of my presentation. As far as the physical presentation is concerned I need to title and number each image and make sure to reference the image throughout the presentation. For example during my mock I forgot to mention the image showing me in character as Mickey from “Love Wins All”; in the future I will make sure that the image adds something significant to what I’m saying instead of just being a background. Additionally I can/should annotate around the images, in ways that I can then explain during the presentation. In my mock I could have labeled the different high school stereotypes to better prove my point to the examiner/audience.

               In terms of the way I presented my TPPP, I tried to get my audience to laugh by using a funny entry from my blog entry, however I’ve been advised not to use humor in that way (seeing as the TPPP is a formal assessment). Although my mock was pretty strong in terms of synthesizing different aspects of the course, I could have spiced up my narrative by using quotes from theatre practitioners. Also it is crucial to mention the conventions of the specific form , such as the conventions of commedia dell’arte and the difference between that and modern commedia. Lastly one of the most important elements is explaining and connecting the performance concept with all the other aspects of a production.

               The ensemble stayed after school on Wednesday for a one hour rehearsal of “Love Wind All” for the performance the next day. Thursday morning we got individual feedback as well as began work on the in class set design project for “Mother Courage”. I began working on the map of the stage to show all the different sets that move on and off the stage.  Throughout the morning I fretted about the school, very nervous the lunchtime performance of our commedia piece. Once we had our audience in the “safe” theater room we began…surprisingly I had great fun! The audience was laughing at our jokes and seemed to be really enjoying the performance! Lydia and Bekki even took on the spirit of commedia by improvising and had planted an actual map in the audience (with audiene member Isabelle). When I said my planned joke “Does anyone here have a map?”, she said yeah I do!! I was taken by surprise but I took it from her and continued with the scene, happily have overcome the challenge of audience interaction/improvisation!

PPP

May 22, 2013 (Wednesday) Mr. f gave us feedback for our TPPP where at first i though in our presentation it was great but then their are many thing that we need to do and don't do when presenting, we make many mistakes in our presentation and i learned many thing in presenting a TPPP  and this feedback gave us knowledge how to do a TPPP in a presentable way.

May 23, 2012 (Thursday) We talk about our PPP, which how we will do it bas on our Action Plan that we make, so our PPP is about Set where i am not good in designing, i just started my PPP not on grid but i will start by knowing first how they used the set design in Mother Courage cause i'm not that sure or if they will be a mistake if i do the grid first, this is my first experience to do a set design which an this point i can express my idea and after that i will be learned what i've done and knowing my mistake afterwards.

Wednesday 22nd of May:
Today we were given feedback on our TPPP's and i realized that there was a lot of things that were picked up that some of us did, whilst i watched and did my own TPPP i thought we were all pretty good and did what was told but in fact we didn't, there was a long list of things we did wrong or shouldn't do during the presentation. I think that it's normal that we did quite a bit of things wrong but i think as a whole we did every  good. The long list has made me realize that we need to work more on following the grade boundaries, although we thought we all did well and had some good points in our presentations would have to be worked on or changed. It would of been helpful if we were provided with a list of positive things we did during our presentations and we could use this to make our presentations better in the future.

Tuesday 23rd of May:  
Today we talked about our PPP's and what should be included during the process and how it should look like at the end as an end product. I'm actually really interested to do this because although i'm not a very arty person I've never really done a project like this before and i am intrigued to see how my own ideas will develop and how i will show my idea throughout the whole process.
After this we started on our grid map for Mother Courage Set Design - at the moment i'm not quite sure what to think about this because as i just said i'm not good at art but i am willing to try and put all my effort in to make something that looks ok ahaha

Monday 13th May 2013:

Mr.Fearnehough told us in advance that he was not going to be here and he has already planned what we were going to do.  Normally we had two hours set for our TPPP’s but since we weren’t hear we could not do them. So we worked on reading and annotating three extracts about Set Design theories. And after that we were then told to annotate and start on ideas for the set design for the play we have just started ‘Mother Courage’. – Just going through these extracts helped us broaden our knowledge about set design and specifically Brecht’s ideas on set design and how he used it which helped him create the A-effect.  

Wednesday 15^th  May 2013:

Today was the day of our TPPP’s, I was quite nervous because I wanted to do well but I always have a problem with speaking in front of an audience.  Whilst preparing the presentation I struggled at first with what I was going to say and then struggled with what images to choose. As soon as I found a photo that was quite relevant to what we had done I felt more confident because I found that I had a lot to talk about for all the photos, but because I was on a time limit I had to shorten things down. When I first timed myself at home I went a little over time at 22 minutes and found that there was a bit much, so I decided to cut it down which got me quite close to 20 mins.

Whilst watching everyone else’s TPPP’s I saw ideas in their TPPP that I had in mind so I thought when I went up that it would go well.  We got our grade very quickly back on (Wednesday 22^nd of May ) and I’m disappointed, I thougth I did well on :

-         - Timing (was the closest to the 20 minutes set out of everyone else’s).

-        -  I thought the things that I mentioned related specifically on our Commedia piece – which was what this mock TPPP was set on.

-        -  I thought my images were appropriate and along the lines of what this TPPP was focused on.

-        -  I showed theatre in the making

-        -  I explained my technical role in our Commedia piece.

-        -  I felt that I reflected and used different images to show how I felt at the beginning, middle and end of our commedia project.

-        -  I explained my experiences that I had before IB theatre at the beginning of the presentation.

What I didn’t do so good on:

-         - Used too many collages

-         - Said ‘umm’ and ‘errr’ quite a  bit

-         - I didn’t link to other theories or practitioners

-        -  I mustn’t use a script – INDEX CARDS

-        -  I feel I rushed at the end because I saw I did not have much time left so started to panic .

For this TPPP Mock I predicted myself  a 5 and am really disappointed that I got a 4 – I feel I did well and related everything to the commedia project – which I thought was the idea and focus of this TPPP Mock. 

Brecht Set Design & Our Mock TPPP's!

Monday 13th May:
We were meant to do our TPPP's today but instead we worked on annotating/reading three extracts about Brecht Set design theory. We then had to think and note ideas for our set design for Mother Courage.
This project helped us to start off on having a set designers role and also learning about Brecht style and how this he used set to help his theory and create the a-effect.

Wednesday 15th:
Today was the day for our mock TPPP's. After watching the year 13's and i saw how confident they were, I told myself that I have to be as confident because it makes the whole TPPP sound more interesting, passionate and better. I did get quite nervous though before performing my TPPP.
When making my TPPP, i felt like i struggled to find images but I think it is a lesson learnt because I know now that we should take more photos when doing exercises and projects in drama! When I rehearsed my TPPP, the timing was a little short at 18 minutes but I knew that on the day, i would talk more which I did!

ON REFLECTION of my TPPP, I thought that it was alright. I understand partly where I have gone wrong and I know that I will be able to improve for my final TPPP.

Positives about my TPPP (I think):

• good timing
• I felt like i had good explanations and relfected on my images
• used the right amount of images
• had main focus of commedia project
• Showed theatre in the making
• Good images

Negatives :

• too many umms & errrrsss
• i giggle a bit in it, unformal. 
• Used too many collages
• No links to other practioners 
• When I state theory, explain the theory.
• need less notes and need to memorise my presentation more

I predicted myself a 5 after listening & also from doing our predicted grades sheet in PSHE.

TPPP

May 13, 2013 (Monday) This is the day where we will present our TPPP but Mr. Fearnehough has an important appointment so he gave us an assignment about BRECHT and annotate it and get some important information to describe "Mother Courage".

May 15, 2013 (Wednesday) This is it! We present our TPPP for the end of the year, where i am the last person to present, i am really nervous and i don't know if i can finish it until 19-20 mins. When i am presenting i just want to visualize that i'm just practicing and their is no people around me. My TPPP is about everything that we do as an Theater student from the start of the year and refer it to me as an IB theater student and talk about our Commedia Play, about what we do in our play and what I've learn from it. I'm really nervous i didn't use my script and just talk that what my mind wants to say and i look at the time its only 10 mins and i am done explaining the images and i was like i don't know what to say and something came out on my mind that i can say about what i felt in the 1 year course as being a Theater Student.

Week 27: Mock TPPP's

Monday: Mr. Fearnehough gave us an assignment to read and annotate several texts about Brechtian theatre and use the information to sketch set designs for each scene of "Mother Courage". This project will get us to think as designers and learn about Brecht's work from a practical angle. Although we were originally scheduled to present our TPPPs today, Mr. Fearnehough had an appointment come up so they were postponed to Wednesday.

Wednesday: Today was a day of infamy. We presented our TPPPs. Before we began I was very nervous, I was worried about messing up and getting a terrible grade as this was our end of year exam and I was also worried about saying something completely stupid or too personal. The point of the TPPP is to reflect on theatre and share your personal experiences, emotions, reactions, lessons learned... When I began preparing for this presentation I was worried about having enough material. After all TWENTY MINUTES is a looong time! But when I practiced my presentation it was actually too long, this helped me feel more confidant but made me worry about it being too long. To make sure that I would not forget my points and so that my presentation would be long enough I made a super long outline. This really helped, but it could have been better developed. I used five pictures that were photographs of what things that we had done in class. In retrospect I could probably have found better images that would have let me say more things and may have been a little more interesting and useful. During my presentation I was not very well organized, I got a little lost in my notes as well as having some ideas while presenting, which were more distracting than helpful. This meant that my presentation did not flow well. In future TPPPs I need to remember to pick specific events/elements to speak about in depth instead of touching on everything kind of randomly. Another thing I could have done better at was referring to the images specifically, as "image 1" or "image 2". I had some nervous "tics" that I need to make sure not to do next time, I played with my bracelet, I said um... and so... when I was uncertain of what I was going to say next, but overall I think I did decent at not allowing my nerves to affect my presentation.

One thing that I think went well was going first. I volunteered to go first so that I wouldn't have to see everyone else doing amazing and get more nervous, so I could get it out of the way and done with (like ripping of a band-aid [plaster]), and so I could pay better attention to everyone else's presentations. This worked I was able to concentrate on the other presentation much better and I didn't have as much  time to get nervous while I waited to go. I liked my pictures of me before and after theatre, I could have elaborated on them a little more but I thought they were pretty good.

Final Exam TPPP

This week we presented our TPPP’s (mock) that acted as both practice for IB assessment next year and as an internal final exam. Although we all focused on the same experience (our commedia-inspired production of “Love Wins All”) we could relate the rest of our year back to that focus. I’m never nervous for a presentation and even enjoy presenting. For me, when I’ve prepared something, have the opportunity to clearly explain my ideas, and get to be myself (no acting involved) there is no reason to be nervous. Additionally I’d figured out the timings in my head, so I knew I had roughly three minutes to spend on each image in my presentation.

            I had to make sure that each of the aspects of the course I mentioned could be related back to “Love Wins All”, so I started my presentation discussing my technical role as the acrobatic instructor. I made sure to emphasize the importance of movement and physicality in commedia, a concept that I then related to my second focus of body positioning. Because each commedia stock character’s mask has a specific movement I discussed how they way they moved helped the audience recognize their role in society. This allowed me to mention good old Etienne Decroux and his three principles of movement (of which I’m very familiar with, after learning about him at TAPs and then presenting a masterclass about it at IST) Additionally Brecht recognized the importance of body position and movement in what he called “gest/gestus”. I then moved on to discuss how the symbolism in Brecht’s Epic Theatre mirrored the symbolism used by Edward Gordon Craig in his set designs, BOTH ideas relate to the fact that commedia characters are symbols themselves.

            For my next focus I took a figurative approach to explain how commedia mask work can really be considered similar to puppets. At this point I was at liberty to discuss the master class on puppetry I’d taken in London, and how the principles of puppetry can be applied to mask work. My last two images went into more depth on the other roles I took on for “Love Wins All” such as the role of actor (Il Capitano) and the role of choreographer. My discussing the influence and inspiration of clowning, stand-up comedy, and “One Man Two Guvnors” hopefully I got across just how much theatre in the world I knew and understood.

            Overall I feel pretty confident with my performance, now I suppose we must all wait to know results…

Week 26: More Brecht

Wednesday: We discussed gest (or gestus). It is a combination of gestures and body language. It is gestures plus an attitude. We learned that Brecht used pictures and films of rehearsals to looks at his work and to look at things that need to be changed. This method seems good, we could film our work and then look back at it and compare old versions with new ones. We also learned about "stage pictures". This means that one look at the stage should communicate everything, therefore meaning there is less reliance on dialogue. We explored the use of gestus by attempting to show emotions. We learned that details can change the entire meaning, for instance the angle of the eyes can make an action seem sweet or forced, the use of height is important, emotions can be very strong or weak this needs to regulated. The angle of the motion is very important. Brecht was attempting to make a theatre that crossed cultural and linguistic boundaries. We drew on our cultural knowledge to do this activity so we may need to work on it more if we do more Brecht.

Comparison of Brecht and Commedia dell'arte

Both use exaggerated motions

They use stereotypes rather than fleshed out characters

Reflection: the same methods are used but for similar reasons, but different purposes, for they are used to be very clear and easy to understand, the characters are supposed to be easily recognizable, but the reason for this in Brechts style of theatre is because he does not want the audience relating just recognizing and he wanted a simple story. 

In Brechtian theatre scenes stand by themselves, they do not necessarily tell a chronological story and the super objectives of Stanislavsky do not work, although the actors do need to keep track of the message they trying to send. In Brecht's plays he only presents the action, there is no explanation as he not trying to excuse  or condemn anyone's actions. Brecht uses a narrator to tell the story so that when the scene is acted out the audience wonders "how" not "what". This way the audience is more concerned about the situation than the characters. Brecht attempts to show the truth from society while Stanislavski tries to show the truth from the characters emotions. 

We tried to use what we had learned in some skits. First we tried to do a group of losing soldiers. We used a triangle marching pattern to show the fear of the soldiers (the scared people were in  the back and the braver ones were in front). We had some people running, some charging, and some dieing. We discovered that we did not show how we were losing as much as we should have. Then we did one about the management of a big factory giving themselves a raise and refuse to give one to the workers. We were supposed to show how selfish the managers were. When the managers began yelling at the workers we learned that the angrier they got the more scared the workers would get (An inverse ratio). 

Truth in Acting

Stanislavski: wants to convey the psychological truth (the emotions of a relatable character)

Brecht: situational truth (eg. bosses are evil and horrible, workers are good) he may use masks for the A-effect and to show the characters better e.g. a pig mask for the boss

Commedia: truth in characters (stereotypes must be relatable)