Commedia Scene

February 18, 2013 (Monday) Mr. Fearnehough explain to us the Annotated bibliography on how this sources give a right information and give if it is reliable sources to get good information, so for now i don't what my grade is, and for the next time i think i should give specific sources and give some reason for that sources.

February 20, 2013 (Wednesday) Mr. Fearnehough is not there so we started to do our play and finished it and within two hours we finished all the scene and add something about the zanni's in the cinema scene and also in the last scene where isabella and the new guy have a happy ending.

February 21, 2013 (Thursday) This is the day where Mr. Fearnehough will watch our play, and i think we did it better than the past because we actually do our best, just like in the scene where i gave some response to il capitano in our date scene which Mr. F laugh. And the zanni always disturb the scenes so it makes more good that we improvise our scene better, and we should have to put the sounds in our scene what music we gonna use to make our scene perfect.

Water Gun's Puddle...

This week started with Mr. Fearnehough outlining the expectations and mark scheme for our annotated research project bibliography. When you get to the bottom, basic point for improvement it is this: critique your source, tell why it is reliable (why is the drama program at such-and-such university impressive and why should we trust it???). I have recently discovered an analogy that I think works marvelously…you must write your annotated bibliography as if it was being submitted either to the French government or as a CAS proposal…Oh burn!!! But that really gives you all the information you need, leave no room for wondering, just give the reader every scrap of info as to why you made a good choice by selecting that source. I’m actually very pleased with my annotated bibliography grade, so I think I understand the main point. However, I suppose there is always room for improvement so I will delve even deeper into my sources next time just for good measure.

On Wednesday, it was just the 6 of us, the studio space, an unfinished story, and two hours. But surprisingly we actually got on with it, despite the daunting task of having a finished rough version for Thursday. We came up with some funny zanni bits: for example when Pantalone and Jack are talking at the movie theater, Lydia just walks into the scene first with a broom, then with a “hoover”. The funny bit comes when Bekki comes on a third time with an invisible hoover, but is making the noises herself. Also at the beginning of the movie theater scene, we have continued the Mickey/Il Capitano joke with the same audience member from the tango, who will be picked to come up on stage and sit by me. Apart from a slight mishap when I sat on the leaked water from the water gun, the rehearsal went by without many hiccups.

Thursday was the moment of truth and our first “performance” in front of Mr. F. To my surprise he actually laughed! Score! Though it was a very rough version, the emotional feed back from him was very rewarding. Just getting a “hah” from the audience made my stupid jokes worth it. The next step is to finalize the transitions, add in music, and fit in a solid ending perhaps with a choreographed dance to end the whole show.

Week 20: (Almost) The End of Commedia

Monday-Mr. Fearnehough talked to us about our annotated bibliographies and gave them back to us. He gave us a lot of tips on how to make them better and get more points for the RI. He showed us the mark scheme for the bibliography.

• It is similar to a review of each  source
• Be ridiculously specific and spell everything out. (Remember no word limit)
• explain why a name of a place/person is better than/more credible than another similar place/person
• Give credentials of the people you have cited
• Convince and prove the credulence of the source
• State the limitations of the source:
• Time period
• Purpose
• Language
• Ask questions about the source
• Do not use open ended sentences

I got an okay score on my bibliography, but it was not amazing. I am going to have to work a lot harder on the real one. Another thing that I noticed is how difficult it can be to find sources for some of these things.

Wednesday- Mr. Fearnehough was not in class today, so we worked on the end of the play. We played hide and seek as our warm-up. It was not as good a warm-up as we thought it would  be because it did not focus us or calm us down. We were a little distractible the rest of the lesson, but we still got a lot done on the end of the play. In fact, we finished devising and talked our way through the entire thing.
Thursday- We performed the piece for Mr. Fearnehough. It was our first full run-through. It was kind of rough but was awesome to finally bring it all together. It also helped me see a few things that we need to work on.

• scene changes
• what we are going to do during them and  
• they are going to be organized.
• getting the right props at the right time
• there are a few more props that we need as well as some more costumes
• we need to get the music worked in

  

  This picture is me and Halley
   working on our Il Capitano mask.

  
• we need rehearse some more so that we are more comfortable and used to our roles.



This picture is of me
getting into character.

Mr. Fearnehough told us that we will work on the piece a little more after the break, but it is mostly finished. Here are a few pictures from what we have done.



More rehearsing and the process of an actor

Monday 11th February-
Monday we discussed and got reminded that the deadline of our commedia piece was meant to be this wednesday but that was not going to happen! We don't have to stick to official dates in our action plan and I can see why we havn't hit that deadline because we have done a lot of work that was not devising like mask making for example. All of those things though are great ways to understand Commedia and talk about how we took part in theatre in the making. We then went on practising again with the restaurant scene, which we have worked a lot on but I think we have so many ideas for it that it needed a lot of work. I think it is going very well though and I am happy how well we are all working together.

Wednesday 13th February-
this was our double lesson and i felt we got a lot of practical and theory work done!
Mary was director for the lesson and we began with a warm-up of stretching which was good as it was a double lesson of a lot of movement. Mr Fearnehough got out lots of props and stuff for us to work with so that we could get ideas from these props. We started working with the scene where the lovers bump into eachother and meet. We felt that this scene was very short and as it is quite a romantic scene, we felt we needed more humour in it as our super-objective of the whole play is to make the audience laugh. We exaggerated the dialogue of mary and abby so it was very cheesy. We also added in the zanni(me and bekki) to come in like an ambulance when the lovers fall over and we REALLY OVER-EXAGGERATE when abby falls over and we try to put in as much humour as possible in. We then started the cinema scene after which is a scene we are all in! We thought of ways we can all enter for each person and this helped to show off our characters and personality more.
After our first our, we then had a theory section where we spoke about the process of an actor. We have done a lot when making our commedia piece. There are reasons to why we have done everything we did and it is good to reflect on this. for our TPPP's. It shows what we have learnt during the process of being an actor.

• Warm-ups= this is to obviously stretch before doing lots of movement, health and safety reasons but also warm-ups bring focus to our class which is key to get more work done. They can also bring our team together depending on the type of warm-up they are.
• Mask-making= the mask making was a good way to get to know our commedia characters even better but also mask-making was a piece of theatre in the making! Which is experience and also good to talk about for our TPP's.
• Taking turns to direct the class-= this is good because it helps keep the focus of the group by having someone in charge. It is also a good way to understand different roles in theatre.

After our discussion, we went back to devising more and we practised with the cinema scene again.A little accident happened where axel got injured. It was all by accident but it shows that even when we are using props and stuff we have to take into consideration health and safety of everything because the theatre is a very dangerous place. We ALL know now that we have to be very careful when throwing things and using things :)

Thursday 14th February-

We began with a warm-up from Mr Fearnehough which was acting by numbers. I really loved this warm-up because i think it helped me and everyone else to really let themselves go and act! We had to act the emtions we got from 1-10 when watching either romantic, horror or comedy film. It was very funny to see everyones reactions and we all really went for it. This warm-up exercise helped because we realised that the more we exaggerate and go for it, the funnier it is which is what we want for our audience. We then carried on rehearsing our cinema scene and we all really went for it. 

Process as an Actor (commedia style)

This week I began to think more about the process as an actor. Because this is the first time I’ve been in the role of actor is has been especially important for me to understand the process behind the performance. Although in dance, and especially in ballet there is usually a story and thus stage-acting and ballet mime used, however in order to fully grasp the concept between my character of Il Capitano I had to go a step deeper. This “deepness” in commedia however does not stem from the same place as it does in Stanislavsky’s naturalistic theory. However we do use an aspect of Stanislavsky; the use of supe robjectives to drive the motivations of characters in individual scenes and the play as a whole. To begin the process we worked in pairs and researched the different conventions of commedia dell’arte. Since we’d recently returned from seeing “One Man Two Guvnors” in London, we were able to compare and contrast between modern commedia and commedia dell’arte. After our initial research we had a session where we officially “met the masks” of commedia. This practical work allowed us to test out the characters and learn about the basic movements of the stock commedia dell’arte characters. By seeing the masks and trying out the physicality of the characters, it allowed me as an actor to connect more with the personality of the character. This process was aided when we made our own commedia dell’arte masks. By experiencing this theatre in the making, I gained more of an awareness of Il Capitano because I physically built his extreme features (*cough, nose…)

            Once we had our preliminary research, as an ensemble we wrote a basic scenario. At the same time we distributed acting roles, we also distributed tech and design roles. I was allocated control of acrobatics and choreography. Because dance and acro have health and safety risks involved, I needed to make sure that all the members of the ensemble understood the basic vocabulary I’d be using when choreographing. To achieve this goal and to teach them some skills, I ran a master class on acrobatics. This class gave me more ideas of what to do, but helped inform the others in the ensemble about the level of energy and physicality required in the performance. As an actor and choreographer I am now in the process of incorporating choreographed elements into the play. To continue working on the scenario the next step in the process was to take freeze frames of the different scenes. I found this step very helpful because the pictures give us a visual representation of the scenes, and act as a story board that we can work from but then reshape and rework.

            After the basic structure of the story was established, it came time to improvise and begin “playing”. I found it much easier to come up with fun ideas when the whole ensemble worked together and helped by offering suggestions. Although everyone in the ensemble contributes, it is also important to have a leader. To solve to problem of a lack of focus we decided to take turns being the director for the rehearsal. So far it has worked very well. For example, when we were rehearing the restaurant scene Lydia was the director. Even though we were all contributing ideas the scene was becoming unfocused. Lydia took control and came up with the idea for cheesy chat-up lines and refocused the group and the scene. For one rehearsal we wore the masks mainly to test them out, however we decided to rehearse without them to focus more on the story, dialogue, and our reactions (which are easier to do without a mask). However, after we have a more concrete story we are planning on rehearsing a few more times with the masks to make sure we have the physicality of our characters down. The most important part of the process of an actor is making sure that the performance concept is constantly informing your work. With that in my mind, one of my super objectives is to put on a funny, entertaining, and memorable show.

COMMEDIA, COMMEDIA, COMMEDIA

COMMEDIA, COMMEDIA, COMMEDIA

Monday 11th of February:

We started off the lesson with Mr.Fearnehough reminding us that the deadline for the commedia piece or the deadline for a rough draft to show to get some ideas and criticism that was meant to be this week. Obviously that has not happened because we haven't finished devising the scenes and we haven't properly sorted out the technical parts. We decided to then postpone  the deadline to give us more time to work on it.

Wednesday 13th of February:

 

We started the lesson with a warm up from Mary and Mr.Fearnehough took lots of props for us to use during the devising, he took them out so we could use them for new ideas. Abby also brought so props from her home and we all had lots of ideas of stuff we could bring in. We then strated working on devising the lovers scene. We added lots of Lazzi to it and brought in the Zanni to have a bit of fun with the scene. after we did this Mr.Fearnehough talked to us about reflecting on what we have done for the blogs and the PPP's. He then talked to us about then 'Process of an Actor' and what is learned and done during the process of acting and working on that:

 

-Warm ups - getting our bodies ready to do something

- Mask making - see how props are made and help us talk about it in future.

- Devising - going through each scene and giving new ideas and keep going.

- being open minded to people's ideas.
- trying out a lot of different things such as props, costumes, masks to get the feel and get characteristics of characters right.
- having a set director for the rehearsals.
We then discussed about all of this and decided for the warm ups we should be in proper focus, not spend to long on them and use music to set a focus and set a comfortable and relaxing atmosphere to set the focus level.
After this we went back to devising and there was a little accident and we all learnt from that, we learnt we should always be looking out for each other and rehearsals are a bit dangerous and we have to always be watching each others back to make sure no one gets hurt.

Thursday 14th of February:
 Mr. Fearnehough did the warm up and did 'Acting by Numbers'. This was a very good activity and was something Lydia, Axel and myself have already done in TaPS and is a good way of getting focussed and going through all the tension levels. In Mr.Fearnehough's warm up we had to each sit on chairs and be natural, we had to the pretend we were watching a film at the cinema. Our first reaction we had to do was reacting to a love scene and for every person on the chair we had a number and we had to increasingly had to react using the tension level numbers. We then used a scary film and a funny film, Mr.Fearnehough then made the point in telling us that if one person increases it or adds a sound or even gets up off their chair and runs away it helps the others after them to do something better and bigger and they shouldn't feel embarrassed. Because everyone was doing it I didn't feel embarrassed and just went for it and it felt more fun and I didn't feel like I was holding back anything.
After this warm up we then continued the devising on the cinema scene and we have come up with some funny stuff and I really hope the audience will find it funny because we all find it funny.



 

Near to Finish Line

February 11, 2013 (Monday) Mr. Fearnehough remind us the deadline for our commedia piece but then we were not yet done in our scene and also the props, costumes and sounds.

February 13, 2013 (Wednesday) Mr. Fearnehough prepared for the props that we can use in our pratice and when he was doing it, we did the warm up, and after that we started our play with props that can be included in our scene, where me and abby met each other in an accident and we added that the two zanni will enter this scene so it has more comedy words to say, cause i thought it was awkward if me and abby talk to each other only, then Mr. Fearnehough gave as 2 minutes water break then when we come back, Mr. Fearnehough talked about The Process as an Actor.

- Freeze Frames - we do our freeze frames to remember what is the follow of our play or we can call it as a pattern, we can changed it because it is just only a draft and it is just a way so we know what we are doing.
- Masks in Rehearsal - There is a question When? or Why we are wearing mask?, the answer of it is to express and give what that mask do in physical appearance like how they walk and talk
- Dividing Lazzi - can take the responsibility, where there responsibility is to make every scene ruin it in a proper way by giving jokes.
- Taking in turns to direct - warm ups is the one that we need to do before we start our rehearsal because it help us to stratch our body give some energetic moves, and when we are doing this we are not that serious so we need to change it, we need to concentrate on what we are doing, FOCUS is we need.
- Distributing tech/ design roles - It is like putting some acrobatics that halley rose will do it but we should help each other to make share ideas.
- Mask making with art - why? Because it gives a creativity when the mask make.
- Improvisation - Put some thing different in rehearsal like how the zanni enter the scene in a funny moves.
- Performance Concept - It is all about the light, sounds, costumes, props organize.
- Objectives - the stanislavski system  that has 1-6 which we need to go on thru to reach a good performance about commedia play.
- In analyzing this kind of process, for me it is easy to achieve if we give our best, focus on what we are doing and share good ideas that can help our play better.

February 14, 2013 (Thursday) Mr. Fearnehough lead us by starting in warm ups, it is about how we express ourself in terms of numbers, in this kind of warm up we show the different level of acting, so Mr. Fearnehough started up, where we feel that we are in the cinema, where the movie is all about LOVE then i will give the expression where im in a level 1, which is not that kind of inlove people but a simple movement that will know that im starting inlove with the scene that i am watching, we all express it in a nice and presentable way, and the next is about comedy, at first we have different level but this time we have the same level and gives it action, and we know that we can handle it by ourselves and it was a good warm up for us because we think on what we are doing when it comes to different levels. and after this we started to work out in our cinema scene and we apply the emotions.