Week 29: Guest Director Workshop

Monday: Mr. Fearnehough gave us more tips on the TPPP and our blogs. 

TPPP Tips

• Use lists to show the things that I have done in the course
• Work from the markscheme-analyze, synthesis, and reflection. 
• Have a pattern e.g. make a point, connect it to theory, connect it to other parts of the course
• Make room to talk about several important points in depth, but leave out some less important things things 
• Talk about the process that were used- action plans Link the freeze frames that we  used in Commedia to the stage picture that Brecht used

Blog TIp:Be more specific. Do not use general statements like "it was successful" or " it was bad" explain why this is true and how it happened. 
We also picked quotes from the excerpt from Brecht's work that described his theatre best. This is mine.

"We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses  possible within the particular historical field of human  relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself. "

This quote tells about Brecht's aims and purposes with his theatre. It displays his true intentions.

Wednesday: Today was the workshop with Helen Leblique, the director from London.

We did three exercises. The Stop Game. We were instructed to walk around the space. Then we were given different directions, "stop" "go"  "touch the floor" "clap" "act like you are in love" "act like you are angry", to do while moving around. Then, the meaning of the directions were changed. This made the activity more difficult, because what the words meant to us was not what they meant during the activity. Ms. Leblique compared this to acting. When we did what the directions meant that was like naturalistic acting- it was realistic. When did something different than what the words  meant it was like Brechtian acting, because it was odd and unfamiliar rather than realistic. The second exercise that we did was an analysis of how we moved. Each person walked in front of the ensemble and the group would tell the person each thing they did that made their walk look different. Then they would exaggerate this feature. This was the most uncomfortable part of the workshop. I hated walking in front of everyone, and having them stare at me, but what was worse was the anticipation of how much I was going to hate it. This shows how irrational my fear of being in front of people to be even more irrational. After this we got into pairs and each person would analyze their partner's walk and do their exaggerated walk. This part was really weird as well, and difficult to copy the other person. Then we practiced removing our movements from our walk to create a "blank walk" that could be adapted to a new character. We practiced moving in and out of our walk and the blank walk in degrees. This was difficult to be partially me or partially blank, it was also hard to tell if I had erased each of my movements or not, since I could not observe myself. The final activity that we did was make a skit using our exaggerated walk. This scene was of two people who had not seen each other in a long time. Halley and I worked together. Her walk was very quick and mine was slow and awkward with a limp. We made a scene of an old father meeting his son in the street. Then we were told to make sure to include a social message and to narrate each action or line as we acted it out. The narration was difficult as we had to move in and out of character constantly. I found it difficult to change voice, but Halley and I did very well in our skit because we were both very deep into our parts and we made up a good story. This skit was a definite success, and the strangest part was that I was barely nervous when we performed it for the group. After that we sat in the drama room discussing "Mother Courage", we read through a scene and discussed different ways of annotating it and of directing it. Ms. LeBlique told us her directing techniques and helped us brainstorm. 

Thursday: We wrote down the three most important things that we learned from the workshop, and discussed what we liked and disliked in the workshop.