Marching for Fausa - Reflecting TPP Style

Essential elements in African Theater

• Narration (telani tells her in her own perspective, speaks to the audience)
• Use of African music
• Use of native language
• Addresses local issues
• African chants backstage
• Flashbacks (Telani remembers what she has experienced)

How did you apply skills and concepts of "essential elements" in fausa? How do the elements work together? How do elements work together?

Being an army officer, I was having the aspect of narration.
As a police officer, I had to dance as one of the essential elements.

These elements are about a community and talking about community issues. 

Differences and Similarities between fausa and "stage sisters" or other plays recently seen?

 -Narration
-Contextualization at the end
-Heavy use of stage props
-Time (non of them was linear)
-Language (both use langages appropiate with their own plays)
--Address local issue

For criterion B

How did you experiment with and apply the "essential elements" skills and concepts of fausa?

Gestures where something that you had to experiment with African theater.

Your critical reflections on the production of Fausa.

I think it was good. People liked it, some people told me I looked like Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. I think a way I could have done it better is to look at dictators of Africa actually, instead of just imitating dictators that I was already familiar with.

Your connections between your work in Fausa and the course as a whole?

I used stanislavski learned last year mostly for fausa. Also the growing movements were useful during the speech for the army officer. High status was also something that I used for the officer, which meant, slow movements and high voice.

Mini-tppp (presentation)

Mini-tppp on Prezi

The laramie project - after all

We performed the play twice: on the night of Thursday and on the night of Friday. The first night, the play did not go as expected. We skip three scenes of the play, but after asking the audience afterwards, I didn't hear anybody saying that they actually noticed something was wrong with the play.

The night of Friday was much better. I, myself, could feel that there was more energy on-stage. All the ensemble was feeling the mood of the scenes and following the rhythm.

After the performance, we received very good comments from the audience. I heard somebody say they liked this play even more than the movie! Somebody else said that they were really impressed that, regardless the large size of the ensemble, the play could keep their attention, somebody else, a teacher who has been on campus a long time, said that it was one of the best productions she had seen on school. We were all very happy with the compliments, and we managed to do this in 10 days! It was really a combination of the big motivation of the ensemble and excellent leadership skills of our teacher.

However, every time they said all these good things about the play, the very first thing is to feel very very motivated and eager to make the next production even better; but after it feels like all these compliments are going to something they do no longer exists. It's like, we produced the play but, that's it. It's done. I didn't feel this kind of attachment to commedia dell'arte but it gives me a little bit of nostalgia knowing that the whole thing is done and... it's not like an essay, that you have it there and you can look back at it if you want to. It's difficult to describe why but it makes you feel a little bit of nostalgia.

Because of this, I realize how an actor can develop a personal relationship with the character, and it is something that a professional actor should take care of, to learn how to make a clear separation one's own personality from the character.

Here are some pictures from the performance:

I actor - after laramie project

I 'actor'

Stanislavski/Meisner techniques/processes used effectively.

1. Emotional memory --- I used the emotional memory technique in both of my characters.

• One of my characters is Doug Laws, a Mormon leader. In the lines I say, he says what it is right and wrong according to God. He also says it to somebody who is relatively new to them. I tried to think in a situation where I felt similarly, where I was with somebody relatively new to me and I tried to explain to them what was right or wrong. I found out that I could use the start of this academic year to create that emotional memory: so many people with different views where here that subconsciously I tried to express to them what was right or wrong.
• The other character is Matt Galloway. He is a very young, outgoing and extroverted character, a character that will want people to pay attention to him. He thinks he is very important in this whole thing, and, in my opinion, he thinks he is going to be famous for this. So for that, I tried to recall a moment where I did something I thought was important and I though I was going to be famous for this: this was when I won a departmental competition when I was about 13 years old; I was young and naive, I thought what I had done will be known by everybody which is how I think, Matt Galloway felt. I used this emotional memory for the first lines of Matt Galloway.

2. Repetition --- I tried to use this technique for both characters too. I performed repetition before the performance but I would also repeat this phrases in my mind while I was sitting

• With Doug Laws I did repetition with the phrase "they need to know what it's right." This phrase is also kind of my objective, so it definitely helped me to coordinate my body language with the things I was saying and the pase and tone in which I was saying them.
• For Matt Galloway, I repeated the phrase "I am going to be in Wikipedia" before going into stage. This helped me get into the mindset that I was going famous, that everybody will know about me.

3. Before time --- I also used this technique with both characters, although stronger with Matt Galloway.

• For the very first line that Matt Galloway says, what I thought as my before time was that I was in the back of the bar, somewhere where I was not visible, washing the dishes or cleaning, something mechanical that did not require a lot of mental concentration. Suddenly, they called me and they told me I was about to testify for Matthew Shepard. My first thought was that I got very excited, but then I realized that I had to be careful of what I said to them because I wanted to impress them. --- For all the other scenes I tried to think of my before time as having been talking with these people who want to interview me a long time; because basically that's what Matt Galloway does during the whole play.
• For Doug Laws, in his only scene, I thought of my before time as having been reading the bible, making about it, something that required a lot of my concentration... and then having been knocked on my door so that we could start the interview.

What kind of actor have I become?

The techniques I found most effective where emotional memory and repetition. I didn't feel like before time made a great impact in my way of acting and I couldn't figure out how to apply magic if in any of my scenes. Taking into account the Stanislavsky exercise that we have performed, I think I have become the kind of actor who likes to feel the environment of the scene. I found that very effective, and I think it achieves a high degree of realism on stage. However, to correctly apply the emotional memory technique into acting, lines should be learned very well; but this is something I had trouble with every rehearsal, knowing my lines very well. I think I have become the kind of actor who likes to play with emotions, I found it very fun to explore emotions while saying my lines.

Homework next thursday:
prepare a micro-tppp 8-10 minute oral presentation on your Theater journey in Year 1 Focus on 2 productions you have been involved in. Include 5 images (pictures/photos) in your presentation.

The Laramie project

To end our Year 1 Theater course, We were not sure of which play to perform. However, after careful thought and discussion we agreed on doing the Laramie Project, a play about the crime committed against Matthew Shepard, a homosexual murdered in Laramie, Wyoming. We are going to perform only 2/3 of the play, as we have little time (less than two weeks) to perform the play and performing the whole play would be insanity. Our teacher had the kindness of taking his time to choose which scenes to perform and assign characters to the whole group.

The play is from the verbatim theater genre, it is not realistic theater, which is the genre for which Stanislavsky's techniques were developed for. Verbatim theater is a very wordy kind of theater, so we will have to memorize a lot of lines. My two characters are Doug Laws and Matt Galloway.

Doug laws is the leader of the Mormon Church; I picture him as a man of authority, a man who wants to make sure everybody else knows the word of God. I haven't had a lot of interaction with Mormons, I just remember seeing a lot of "missionary's" back home on the streets who are very well dressed people that go to different places to spread the word of the lord. The fact that they are very well dressed makes me think that the leader of this church may think of himself as somebody who always says the truth, somebody in authority. That makes everything possible to sound as convincing as he can be (I presume this is why missionaries dress very well, to be convincing when they are talking to other people about God).

Matt Galloway is a barman of the last bar Matt Galloway was seen in. I always think of barman as very friendly people, they are always friendly people to make their customers keep coming. I tried to find information about Matt but the only information I could find about him is on this blog: http://laramieblog.blogspot.com/ where it says:

"There was Matt Galloway, who runs his father's bar up in Casper, and who still feels the sting of guilt for not having stopped Matthew from leaving with Russell and Aaron that night, and who (repeatedly) made the point of telling me how proud he is that his bar is a place where his gay friends can come in and feel comfortable being who they are.  This from a former small-town frat boy who didn't even know that he knew gay people before Matt was killed.  He remains a funny, talkative, thoughtful and huge-hearted person. "

This blog seems to be run by "Tectonic Theater Project" so I think it may be the blog of the producers of the play with entries of while they were conducting the interviews and preparing the play in general. 

The guilt that Matt Galloway feels towards not having stopped Aaron and Russell is genuine according to this journal entry. In the line where he says:

"Ultimately, no matter how you dice it, I did have an opportunity.... If I had - amazing hindsight 20/20 to have stopped.. what ocurred... and I keep thinkin' to myself "I should have noticed. This guys shouldn't be talking to this guy. If I hadn't put my head down for 20 seconds while I was washing the dishes. This I could've done.. what was I thinking?"

I thought of interpreting this line in a funny way, like he was just trying to lie to the interviewers of how much he cared because he wanted attention. But this piece of information tells me that he seems genuinely sorry he couldn't do anything. I think this goes in align with the fact that he is a "huge-hearted person." With a big ego, as Steve told me, but huge-hearted. He is a person who likes this attention, a person who is very excited that he will be interviewed by this group who wants to take his opinion and make it famous.

The guilt that Matt Galloway feels towards not having stopped Aaron and Russell is genuine according to this journal entry. In the line where he says:

"Ultimately, no matter how you dice it, I did have an opportunity.... If I had - amazing hindsight 20/20 to have stopped.. what ocurred... and I keep thinkin' to myself "I should have noticed. This guys shouldn't be talking to this guy. If I hadn't put my head down for 20 seconds while I was washing the dishes. This I could've done.. what was I thinking?"

I thought of interpreting this line in a funny way, like he was just trying to lie to the interviewers of how much he cared because he wanted attention. But reading the piece of information above tells me that Matt Galloway seems genuinely sorry he couldn't do anything. I think this goes in align with the fact that he is a "huge-hearted person." With a big ego, as Steve told me, but huge-hearted. He is a person who likes this attention, a person who is very excited that he will be interviewed by this group who wants to take his opinion and make it famous.

---

The first few rehearsals were with script; mostly to get used to the way the stage will be organized and how the organization will change in different scenes. The first few rehearsals didn't have any focus in the way we were going to say our lines itself. An important thing that we did during this first few rehearsals was organizing the things that actors who were not talking were going to do and at which cues like pretending to be reporters, pretending to be protesters, the church, etc. All those things that add on to the play while other people are performing their lines and monologues.

We also focused on staying neutral while other actors where talking.

---

This Sunday, we performed an exercise that would let us get more involved in our characters. Our teacher asked us to divide in groups of three. We separated in different groups and, in character, we asked questions about each other's characters. The point of this exercise was to make us feel into character, to make sure each one of us could handle each of our characters and had things like before time, objectives, and different things clear. Speaking in character gets you used to the state in which you should be while saying your lines, it lets you invoke your character in different situations and, as you know how to invoke your character in different situations, you get a more holistic view of the character which you can then apply when saying your lines.

I felt that, during the exercise, not only my body language and tone of voice changed but also the vocabulary and the structure of my sentences. Each character on stage has a distinct personality that the actor should represent; and this personality includes a whole range of things. An actor has to be able to incorporate all these things to himself.

---

The play takes place in Laramie, Wyoming, a place in the United States. For this reason, it is most likely that all of the characters will have an American accent. I tried mimicking an American accent and in fact I did some rehearsals trying to speak in that accent but then I got feedback from some of the other members in the ensemble; I can't really mimic it :P The fact that I have been living in an English environment for less than a year I think limits me a little bit from learning the lines fluently and being able to speak them without focusing thoughts on them.
"
During the rehearsals, we kept on doing the "putzika" exercise. This exercise focuses on different sounds that are important while announciating. I have taken a video of myself doing the exercise below: (apologies for the poor sound/video quality)

The point of this exercise is focusing on these three sounds, and make sure to emphasize them while on stage. This I found that focusing on those specific three sounds, I could make myself much more clear while speaking, not only on stage but also while carrying out conversations every day! I found it really helpful because I started applying it to every day conversations and I think it makes other people understand me clearer as a non-native English speaker.

The other exercise that we did for voice was the "maaa" exercise, which focuses on projection. For this exercise, we have to open our mouth and start creating a "maaa" sound and projecting it to the farthest point possible. You can watch me doing this exercise in the following video:

This exercise was not as useful personally, given that I think I don't have any problems with voice projection (sometimes my overly loud voice has got me into trouble in the past xD)

God (a play)

A group of people in our campus, most of them theater students, prepared a play written by Woody Allen called "God." The play was comedy; it started with two philosophers talking about the existence of God and those common "philosophy topics." However, as the play progresses, the audience is brought into stage and hilarity comes from the fact that the audience are 21st century high school students and the other characters are some sort of Greek philosophers.

The play was adapted for our campus audience. The play included some references to the things we do in school and our academics. It also included direct references to the audience, which made it funny because they were references to something we knew and are used to it. Commedy is very effective when it involves something that you can relate to, and this play had a lot of those things you could relate to. I had a good laugh.

Another reason why it was a very funny play is because there were a lot of unexpected things. One of the characters was the "writer of the play" and he claimed to even have written the audience! Then another character was God, and was doing silly things. A lot of unexpected things. Very good acting too.

Applying Stanislavsky's techniques to playback

For the this term, I have been doing playback theater as an extracurricular activity. Playback is about interpreting the audience emotions, is about celebrating the audience's stories. The actors are responsible of representing this stories and emotions into different forms.

The actors need to make this representations of emotions and stories very quickly, right after the person tells the story or the emotion. It is useful to think about different ways of representing emotions before, but at the moment of the performance it is completely improvised as it depends on what the person shares.

I have tried to use repetition and I think it works to represent the emotion as clearly as possible. Emotional memory is not very effective in this case because there is a very short period of time for the improvisation. However, repeating the emotion that is about to be represented or a phrase that relates to that emotion can let the actor feel more identified with it and come up with more creative representations of what this person has just said.

Repetition Exercises

Aim of Task:
To practice "repetition," a very important technique developed by Meisner.

Description of Task:
Meisner was the person who, in the 20th century, developed method acting in the United States. Although he based his techniques on Stanislavsky, his techniques did not require a lot of psychological involvement from the actor like Stanislavsky's techniques do.

So what we did to practice Meisner's repetition exercises is first, find a partner. Now, once we had a partner, Steve showed us what the dynamic of the exercise was going to be. We chose a phrase both of us would take turns to repeat. So partner would say the phrase, then partner B would repeat the same phrase, then partner A would repeat the same phrase and so on and so forth until our teacher told us to stop. We did it for about 2 minutes. The exercise seems very simple, but it can become hard! Repeating the same phrase over and over again can confuse you and make my your tongue tangled. It can also become a little bit annoying to listen to your partner say the same exact phrase over and over again. It seems simple but it's complex once you do it!

Then, Steve told us that each one of us would pick an specific phrase. Partner A and Partner B will choose an specific phrase, like an observation about the environment, and repeat over an over again; Partner A will say his phrase then Partner B will say his phrase and so on and so forth. We repeated our phrases for about 2 minutes. This one was less annoying than the other exercise, perhaps because phrases were alternated between each other.

Now, our teacher told us to change the dynamic a little bit. We would keep on saying things repeatedly but now, we would not repeat the same phrase but we would change the phrase as we felt it was appropriate. Impulse is the word Steve used for this, he told us to keep on saying things repeatedly but only change the phrase if we felt an impulse to do so. We did this for another 2 minutes, approximately. I basically only changed my phrase when I noticed something different in my partner, most of my phrases were like an observation I was making about my partner, like "your hair is black" or "you are short." At some point though, I started saying "you are annoying" and "I want this to end" because I was becoming desperate of hearing my partner talk to me repeatedly.

Other classmates went to the point where they started shouting at their partners things like "leave me alone" because they were so annoyed by them. Another interesting comment that one of my classmates made is that it was hard for him to change phrase because most of the time he would feel an impulse to change his phrase only halfway while he was pronouncing his phrase, so he ended up not changing his phrase because by the time it was his turn to talk again, he had lost the impulse. Our teacher told us that, in that case, we shouldn't say anything because the impulse was already gone. I felt a little bit like this sometimes, but I changed my phrase anyway.

Now, after doing this, we changed the dynamic a little bit. My partner and I established a relationship and a role each one of us would use. We decided we would be co-workers. Our teacher told us that one partner had to go outside, I went outside. The other partner had to stay inside and perform a task that requires mental focus, like doing homework. Now, the ones who were outside, our teacher told us to imagine a before time, something that had just happened referring to the relationship we had agreed on. After we thought about our before time, we went in and did the repetition exercise again.

The before time I thought about was that I had been talking to our boss and he was not very happy about the performance of the company and he would have to fire one of us. So when I came in, I started saying "the boss" to which he replied "what." As I felt like he was not paying, I had an impulse to change my phrase to something he would pay more attention to like "one of us, danger." I felt a little bit of frustration as I couldn't capture his attention. My partner also changed his impulses as the exercise continued.

Now, after approximately three minutes, our teacher stopped us. He told us that the same partner that had gone outside of the classroom should go out again. Now, he told us that we should think about an objective, something we should convince our partner about.

The objective I thought about was that I wanted to convince him that we should go and talk to our boss about what had happened, so that none of us had to leave.

I went inside and I started my phrases pretty much the same. I felt more involved though, because I now had an objective. My facial expression changed as I saw that my partner did not pay attention to me, it was a face of kind of being worried and frustration - worried because one of us might have to leave his job and frustrated because I didn't feel like my partner was paying me attention.

I felt like the exercise I did with my partner was good but perhaps not as involved as the exercise other people did. I could see other people standing up and shouting and each other. Their rhythms, tone of voice, changed. I didn't feel a lot of change for our couple, though.

Reflection:

I think this is a good exercise to get into the emotional state of the scene because it really forces you to focus on what you want to do. In "real life," most of your actions are motivated by an objective, things are normally done for a reason. By doing these exercise, you get used to that, to remember that since this is realistic acting you should also have an objective on stage. Objectives are also useful on stage when you may forget your lines: if you know your objective, you can still communicate the same message. Focusing on the objective also makes your body language go according to your words. It can be as powerful as Stanyslavski's emotional memory but not as hard, psychologically.

Conclusion:

I think something that Meisner and Stanislavsky have in common is that they both try to get you fully focused on the current moment, they both try to coordinate your physical actions and what you say with what is happening at the moment; and that definitely helps making the scene more realistic because in real life, as things happen naturally, you are always in the moment.

Emotional memory exercise

Aim of task: To experiment with what Stanislavsky called emotional memory.

Description of task: Stanislavsky developed a technique in that he used when training actors which is called "Emotional memory." Emotional memory consists on recalling event's in the actor's life that are similar to the events performed by the character. So for example, if the character just found out that his friend had been lying to him, the actor would have to recall an specific event in his life where he felt betrayed, and recall the emotions the actor was experiencing to use them when impersonating the character. Stanislavsky thought that actors should rehearse all these emotions so that they could later re-create them, on stage.

So what our teacher, Steve, told us to do is to organize ourselves in groups of four or three, and prepare a small scene that included a lot of emotional involvement. Prodhi, Shari, Naswa and I made a scene where Nashwa was my wife, I was her husband and Prodhi and Shari were our children. For our scene, we chose to do it related to an issue that is very problematic in Guatemala and many conservative societies: domestic violence. The scene would focus on me shouting and hitting Nashwa. However, to make it as emotional as possible, Prodhi and Shari, who were supposed to be Naswa's children, were going to be seated, with Prodhi and Shari fixing Nashwa's hair while she told them a story. A very calm and warm, family environment. Then I would come in shouting and Nashwa and asking her about "my bottle." Nashwa would try to defend herself, while the children would show expressions of angst because they weren't sure of what was happening. The children would start to cry after a while, and try to stop me. It's a very emotional scene; I think family scenes can easily become very emotional because of the strong bond that there is naturally between family members.

So we prepared this scene and practice it by ourselves a couple of times. After that, Steve called us to go inside. He told us to spread around the classroom and lay down. Then he started giving us several messages that would relax us: "feel each part of your body sink into the floor, feel how your whole body sinks into the floor..." and "imagine you are in a beach, the wind is blowing..." several messages to make us relax a lot, for about 5 minutes (it was so relaxing that I could even hear people snoring!). After all that relaxation, we were very deep in our subconscious. At this point, Steve told us to think about the main emotion that we where going to represent, and then he told us to recall a moment in our lives where we really experienced this emotion fully. I, being the abusing man in the family, would feel very angry. I would feel irrationally angry. I guess it is very personal, the specific event I recalled, but I could recall an event where I was specifically angry towards a woman, which is the same emotion I would have in this scene.

After we recalled the emotion, Steve told us to go to our groups and do the scene again, with the emotion we were currently feeling.

I could keep the emotion inside myself. This emotion of anger changed my facial expression, the way I was walking, my posture... everything. And I had it very vividly, I could keep it in myself.

And... even though other people where crying, they were in the bathroom crying alone because the emotion they had recalled was too strong. Even though that was happening, I would normally empathize with that and feel their sorrow.... but I couldn't at that moment. I was just... full of anger.

Now that I think about it... the exercise was extremely effective to recall sad emotions on people, a lot of people where crying in the bathroom.

After a few minutes, when people where more calmed down. Our teacher told us to come into the classroom again. He told us that this the fact that so many people where crying in the bathroom is an example of one of the disadvantages of using emotional memory; the psychological process which you enter is so intense that could cause you problems if used continuously.

He asked three groups if they could perform in front of the class, including our group, to show the whole class their scene. Initially we said we couldn't perform, because the emotion of one of us was too intense that she wasn't sure if she could perform. However, after a few minutes she calmed down and we performed for the whole class.

The first group that performed performed an emotion of happiness. They had music on and they were just jumping around, drawing in the board. They had three members, two of them seemed really happy but the third one was not really happy -- apparently because she had recall a bad memory while doing the exercise.

The next group was about the death of a person, it was like the death of the daughter of a couple because there was somebody laying down, then a man and a woman standing up, crying, and then somebody else kneeling down beside them, crying too, like if she was the sibling of the person laying down. It was kind of impressing the way I could empathize with them. I almost forgot of my emotion when I was watching this performance, their crying seemed so genuine that I immediately started empathizing. I could feel the sadness of loosing something important that will not come back.

Then, we performed. I had almost forgot my feeling of anger by this time but I took a couple of minutes to recall it. Once I could recall it, we started. We did it, it came almost naturally, I didn't really have to think a lot of what I was doing, it was almost entirely emotionally driven.

After that, the whole class sit on a circle. We gave feedback on each other's scenes. They really liked our scene, apparently. Somebody in the class said that they liked the contrast that we did between a very innocent frame with the mother and her daughters and then an angry man coming in. It felt good that they actually liked it, that we could make a performance that could engage the audience and make them feel something; because I think that's quality entertainment.

I enjoyed the exercise in general. For some reason, it is easier for me to act out anger than any other feeling. After the lesson, I was still feeling a little bit angry, which kept through the whole afternoon.

Reflection: These method of emotional memory can be very effective for actors; the performance was so much natural and easy after I got into the emotion. However, it took a long time and it can be psychologically dangerous if done repeatedly.

Conclusion: The fact that you can recall an experience in your life to reproduce an emotion that you can use while acting, gives us the impression that there is a limited set of emotions that repeat themselves in different situations. I think this is very interesting, although I think it would be very difficult to give names to each one of these specific emotions.

Before time - analysing a picture

Aim of task: To discuss before time in a picture.

Description of task: Our teacher showed us a picture we had in our handouts. It was the picture of a woman holding a sign that said “Stop the seal slaughter.” She is very well dressed, carrying a purse. She seems like a high class woman, her appearance is very neat. There is also some bushes behind. The sign that says “Stop seal slaughter” has a “peta” sign at the bottom. It seems like a sign protesters would use to stand outside the office of a company that profits our of seal slaughter.

What Steve told us to do is to try to guess where she was coming from and why she was doing what she was doing, holding the sign. We started brainstorming, perhaps she was walking by, coming from work and she had been asked to hold the sign so that they could take a picture of her. Or she was looking for a family member and she was holding the sign so that she could make it into the crowd. A lot of ideas were given, we did not think she was part of the protesting crowd given that she was dressing very nicely, probably not a good outfit to spend the whole day standing up with a sign on her hand. She was probably coming for work, probably she is a woman who works regularly during the weekend and has a family.

Reflection: This is exactly what you need to think about when doing before times. In this case, it wasn't very clear what the lady was doing before, but it gave us an idea of what she might be doing, and we started to draw conclusions about what kind of person she was. This is what we have to do in realistic theater on-stage, we need to make our before time give the audience an idea of where were we, what were we doing.

Conclusion: In real life, each person experiences his life in a set of continues events, that go one after another. However, in theater, only certain events are show, with gaps that are not shown on stage. This is why before time is important, to give an idea to the audience on what happened on that "gap" of events.

Rhythm exercises (pretend there is somebody we hate)

Aim of Task: To know be introduced to the concept of internal and external rhythms.

Description of Task: Our teacher explained to us that there is two type of rhythms: external and internal rhythms. Internal rhythms are the inside pace of the actor, the pace of his emotions. On the other hand, the external rhythm is the pace of the physical actions of the actor. So for example, a situation where there is a lot of tension would have a very fast internal rhythm, but if the tension is created by the waiting of some important news, there wont be a lot of physical movement so it would be a slow external rhythm. In a running competition, for example, there would be a fast rhythm, both external and internal because of the excitement and the quickness of physical actions.

So, to put this into practice, we experimented with an exercise that would require us to have a very slow external rhythm but a very fast internal rhythm. We grouped into partners. Partner A would pretend to be a person Partner B really dislikes, however, Partner B will try to be as condescending and "nice" as possible to Partner A. Nashwa was Partner A and I was Partner B. I pretended I was on the canteen table and then Nashwa came to ask me some questions and ask me if I wanted to go out to get bubble tea. My internal rhythm increased a lot because, inside, my emotions where bursting, I didn't really like this person. However, I couldn't show this because I was trying to be nice, so my external rhythm had to remain calm, slow.

Even though I really tried to remain with a slow external rhythm, my external rhythm started to increase slowly, as Naswha kept on insisting. I also started to look for ways to get rid of her, which kinda increase my external rhythm too.

Reflection: As an actor, I think having fast external and internal rhythm, or slow internal and external rhythm, is not that difficult to do, one comes with the other normally. However, a combination of slow/fast internal/external rhythms comes only in some very specific situations. It's rather uncommon, and this might be the reason why it is the most difficult one to imitate.

Conlcusion: External and internal rhythms normally have a same pace, because our bodies express their emotions naturally. However, sometimes because of societal norms, we shouldn't really express this emotions. But as we are more and more pressured, these expressions will start to show, regardless of how much we try to oppress them. Stanislavsky focuses greatly on emotions, and with this exercise, we can pay attention to how the rhythm of our internal emotions affect the rhythm of our external actions.

Given circumstance - cooking and burning...

Aim of task: To experiment more with given circumstances.

Description of task: Today, our teacher asked us to spread out in the classroom so that we could find our own space, where we would pretend cooking a meal. To do this, I imagined a stove in front of me, with one cabinet on each side. I started by miming taking a couple of vegetables, putting them on the cabinet, chopping them and putting them on a pot placed on the stove to cook them. Just a simple cooking process, like I would imagine it in my mother's kitchen.

After that, Steve gave us a given circumstance. He told us that now, we should imagine that our parents had told us to make dinner, although we didn't really want to, and repeat the miming again. While doing this miming, my movements where a little bit bigger and stronger, as if I was trying to show some anger because of being forced to do something I did not want to do. My facial expression also changed, my eyebrows remained frowned. My movements weren't as careful as precise as in the original miming.

After being done with this miming, Steve gave us another given circumstance: imagine a very close friend had just died and you had to prepare dinner for everybody to came to his funeral. With this given circumstance, it was really difficult to even do anything. I was really slow, my head tilted down, and my whole body felt heavier; my shoulders where lower. I stopped at times, I didn't even really want to continue, I just wanted to lay on the cabinet with my head down. I had no reason to keep on cooking when such a bad thing had happened.

After this one, Steve told us a new given circumstance. Now, we should imagine that we were preparing dinner for somebody we really liked and that was going to come over. For this given circumstance, the rhythm increased a lot. Unlike the last given circumstance, now I felt a lot more eager to prepare dinner. I was also trying to be really careful with whatever I did, I even pretended to call somebody for advice on the cooking. The pattern of my movements because faster, and there was a smile on my face.

Now, Steve gave us a different scenario, we had some papers we wanted to burn. For this scenario, I imagined a several big piles of paper on the floor. I took a bunch of paper and put it on a separate part, took out some gasoline, pour it over the paper, took out a lighter and lit the paper on fire. Then I started taking bunches of paper by chunks and putting them on the fire.

After completing the scene “neutrally,” Steve gave us a given circumstance, that the paper we were burning was a lot of waste paper. My actions didn't change that much for this given circumstance, I just took the paper and put it in the fire, like before. I tried to pick bigger chunks this time though, given that I knew all of this was waste.

The next given circumstance Stave gave us was that the paper we were burning were letters of an ex-partner and we were burning them to forget about that ex-partner. For this given circumstance, I wasn't very sure whether I wanted to burn the paper or not. I tried to pick up a letter and read it, but I couldn't do it because I knew I had to get over this. So I started burning, rather slowly, with a slow rhythm and then, after I had put all the letters in the fire, I sit down just watching at the fire and with one hand on my face, trying to cover my eyes.

The last given circumstance to this scenario was that the paper we were burning were very confidential documents of the FBI or a very cautious organization. In this given circumstance, my rhythm increased a lot. I started looking around because I knew this documents were highly confidential and they couldn't catch me. I had to get this done as soon as possible without anybody I noticing. I sit down, so that nobody else could see me from far away. I tried to make this as fast as possible.

Reflection: I found out that for each given circumstance, my rhythm increased. I think it is true, in real life, that the rhythm at which you do things is different for different situations. And this rhythm can change with a very sudden circumstance like receiving a phone call with bad news or experiencing something unexpected. It can be difficult to imagine a given circumstance if it is too far away from something that could really happen to you. For example, when I was burning the confidential documents, I felt that this was a situation that I could never be in. However, I tried to imagine how this situation would be and I tried to combine different situations I had been in: doing something I did not want other people to take notice of and doing something quickly. I realize it is very important to do a lot of given circumstance exercises because that is what realistic theater is all about, pretending a given circumstance on stage.

Conclusion: I realize it is very important to do a lot of given circumstance exercises because that is what realistic theater is all about, pretending a given circumstance on stage. All of realistic theater is a very TOK-ish topic. Can we really, fully, pretend like if something is happening and do it the same way as if it actually happened? What if, what we are pretending to do, had life-long consequences?

Entering a classroom with a given circumstance

Aim of task: To have a first experience of what Stanislavsky thought a "given circumstance" in class and to be introduced to the topic. To observe how a given circumstance can affect realistic acting.

Description of task: Today, before entering the classroom, our teacher Steve told us to get into a group and told us to "pay attention to whatever we do in the next few minutes." We went into the classroom and Steve asked us a couple of questions and did little games like pretending to be a military general, he also gave us a handout in a few minutes. After that, he shouted "freeze" and he asked us all to leave the classroom.

He told us that now, we would have to repeat everything we did again, since we entered, but we now gave us a "given circumstance": that two of our classmates, Undine and Arshia, had an very intense argument about god yesterday, so intense that they did did not talk to each other anymore. So we had to repeat everything we did before since entering the classroom but pretending like the argument actually happened yesterday. We all came into the classroom but nothing changed really, because Undine and Arshia weren't sitting nearby anyway the first time. The given circumstance was not that relevant when repeating the actions. After a few minutes he told us to stop and go out of the classroom again.

We went out of the classroom and now our teacher gave us a different given circumstance: that our classmate Vincent had released a "silent gas from behind" at some point while we were all inside. We came into the classroom again. Coincidentally I was sitting next to Vincent. I didn't change my actions that much because I am sick and my nose is obstructed, so I cannot really perceive a lot of smell! However, I asked Vincent, "do you feel a bad smell?" after watching everybody around me cover their noses with their hands. After a few minutes our teacher stopped us and brought us out. We realized that actually, those who where farther away from Vincent started covering their nose before those of us who where near Vincent.

Our teacher gave us one last given circumstance. The given circumstance was that, today was Maddie's birthday and Jose, who had a crush on Maddie, had sent an e-mail to the whole class so that we would pretend it was not her birthday, because she was a slut. This given circumstance was the one that changed the action the most. We all came in, and sang Maddie happy birthday. There were groups around the class gossiping about the e-mail and you could clearly see Jose being rather uncomfortable (and some other people were around Jose, kind of reclaiming him why did he do that). After a while Jose passed around a paper that said "Maddie is a slut" which eventually reached Maddie who read it at loud. At this point, Jose stood up and revealed he had a crush on her. It was very funny. The way the "coming into the room" was a little bit similar to the original one only in the start, but in the end, this given circumstance really changed it a lot.

For the second activity, Steve asked for a volunteer. I raised my hand. Steve asked me to give him something valuable, so I gave him my phone and then he asked me to go outside of the classroom. When I came in, Steve told me that he had hid the phone somewhere inside the classroom and that I had to look for it. And started searching around the room and asking my classmates if I could have a clue or if there was any hint I could get to get my phone. Then they started talking about me "looking in the heights" and "projecting my imagination." The words "height" and "projecting" gave me the hint that my phone should be on top of the projector hanging to the ceiling. There it was. Now, Steve gave me the phone and told me to go outside the room for a while. After I was outside the room for a few minutes, Steve called me and told me to come in and be the actor in the play "Alan looks for his phone." When I came in, I tried my best to pretend I was looking for my phone. I could exactly remember the same locations but I tried my best to resemble the order of the locations I had looked through before. However, as I looked for my phone I noticed something.

I was not the only actor in the play "Alan looks for his phone."
This was a problem because, before, I would respond to the laughter and smiles of the audience. I would also respond to whatever comment they made to me. But now, they were all a lot more serious, it did not feel the same. It was like an actor not replying to your lines on stage, the play could not be done without all the actors participating.

Reflection:
A given circumstance on stage is supposed to change our attitude on stage. To really internalize a given circumstance you need to change your whole mental state and imaging all the possibilities that could happen if the given circumstance actually happened.

Conclusion:
When I think of this given circumstance exercise a lot of TOK-ish questions arise to my mind relating to determinism: when we act out what we just did with a different given circumstance, it's like we are creating a separate choice in life. It's something strange; but interesting, I guess.

Skin and Bones

As a part of our second year's Independent Projects, one of our second  years, Bita, wrote a play called "Skin and Bones." This play was rather abstract, with a lot of physical actions. It was about the story of her life. It relied a lot on musical features, there was no vocal dialog between the actors but there was always music in the background. There was also a projector that kind of presented the environment in which the scene was taking place.

This play made me realize how important physical actions are in theater. Just as in Commedia dell'Arte, physical actions on stage communicate a lot to the audience. This was entirely about that, the only communication that happened between the characters was physical. Here are some pictures of the performance:

Stanislavsky's presentations

Influence of Stanislavsky in the United States:

• Stanislavsky developed a method which aimed at accessing "truth and honesty."
• Actor feeling: something Stanislavsky developed to emulate a character.

Stanislavsky influence in the US:

• American theater was never very well accepted over Russian theater
• Method acting emerged in the US through Russian immigrants
• The method used "emotional memory" as the basis of technique
• In method acting, the actor would have to rely on past experiences to recall and reproduce them on stage.
• Lee Strasbourg was very important influencing the United States as he had learned from Stanislavsky.
• Even today, Stanislavsky's method is used by actors in the United States.

Realism and Naturalism, the difference:

• Naturalism is much more reasonable, naturalism will explain the objective reasons by which each of the actors do their actions while realism will try to explain the actions in the play the most literal and "plain" way. Naturalism was influenced by the ideas of darwinism and science.
  

Life of Stanislavski (for presentation)

• He was born as Constantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev, in Moscow, 1863 but later changed his stage name to Stanislavsky from an actor he met during amateur theatricals.
• He had excellent education, including singing and ballet lessons.
• He started performing at 14 at his father's theater.
• By 1888 (25 years old) he directed and acted in performances for “Society of Art and Culture” which he had founded.
• On 1897 Vladmir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavski established the Moscow Art Theater which intended to protest against artificial theatrical conventions of the time.

• Starting with Alexey Tolstoy's Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich and then with Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, his theater started becoming popular for his realism and naturalism.
• In the next two decades, the theater continued being popular with plays from different genres, including: Maxim Gorky's sociopolitical drama The Lower Depths (1902), Leonid Andreyev's symbolic The Life of Man (1907), Maurice Maeterlinck's enchanting fairy tale The Blue Bird (1908), and Hamlet with settings by Gordon Craig (1911).

• Stanislavsky believed that, through study of the play, analysis of the role, and recall of previous emotions, the actor could arrive at the "inner truth" of a part by actually experiencing the emotions he conveyed to the audience.
• The actor must be able to repeat his previously experienced emotions at every performance.
• Stanislavsky's training aimed at stimulating the artistic intelligence of the actor, developing his inner discipline and controlling external means like voice, diction and physical movement.
• All of the best Russian actors of the 20th century emerged from his training methods.

• He published a book, called “My Life in Art.”
  He conducted several dramas of revolutionary significance.
• The Moscow art Theater was venerated as the fountainhead of “social realism.”
• His last years were concentrated on giving the final touches to his writings and he died on 1938 (75 years old).
  

Attention exercises for Stanislavski - center of attention

Aim of Task:

As we have started to learn a little bit about Stanislavsky and his techniques for actors on stage; today, we did some exercises of attention focus of the actor and the audience. The objective of this exercises is to improve the attention of the actor and observe some things that the actor does while observed by an audience.

Description of Task:

First, we divided the classroom into groups of four. This exercise would be about multitasking. One person would be sitting on a chair while another person would be standing just in front of him, doing several movements, one other person besides the person in the chair, asking him random questions, and one last person on the other side asking him simple calculation questions.

The person seated on the chair had to imitate what the person in front was doing while answering the questions by the two other people. It was a difficult task because none of them took priority over the other two, you had to do your best to answer the questions and mimic the movements at the same time. It is difficult to keep the focus on all three spots at the same time. When it was my turn, I tried to be as calm as possible so that I could answer the questions. I tried to prioritize the movements and leave the answers for after I had synced the movements

After the group exercise, we did something called the "center of attention" with the whole class. Our teacher, Steve, asked one of my classmates, Dorte, to leave the room where all the class was and do not listen to anything that we were going to discuss. Dorte agreed and went away for some minutes. Steve told us that he was going to call Dorte to come in, but he wanted us to stare at Dorte with natural body position when Dorte came in, with unbreakable eye contact. As soon as she came in all of us stared at her and we saw her sit on the chair in front of all of us. We did not say anything, just stare at her the whole time. We could see little, small smiles of nervousness while she was sitting there. Her body position was also defensive, she used her hands to cover her knees and her feet were held back. She also kept on looking around on everyone, as if she was expecting somebody to stand up and attack her and she wanted to be completely aware of when that would happen!

After that, Steve asked Dorte to leave the room again. We discussed all of the things that showed her defensiveness towards the audience and her nervousness with all the group. Steve told us that it is common for the author to feel nervous in front of the audience, and that Stanislavsky thought giving the actor a task on stage would shift the attention of the actor from the audience to the task; reducing how nervous the actor was due to his unawareness of the audience.

Steve called Dorte inside again and asked her if she had any homework to do. Dorte replied negatively. So when Dorte came in, Steve asked her to untie her shoelaces. We were still staring at her, everybody. Dorte still behaved a little bit defensive, she did not want to do what Steve told her to do. It seemed as she wanted to keep some distance from her and everybody else. There were some signs of nervousness, like looking around with her eyes.

Reflection:

It is interesting to see how we handle focus in different things. The multitasking exercise shows three kinds of different mental ability, kinesthetic (copying other people), logical (performing math questions) and verbal ability (answering questions). On stage, an actor has to focus on kinesthetic and verbal abilities separately, and coordinate them together. This can be a very difficult mental task and it is something the actor has to be trained for. Moreover, appart from being aware of the kinesthetic and verbal tasks, the actor deals with the pressure of the audience which might disturb his focus. This is what the second exercise taught us. When we stared at Dorte, with her doing nothing, she had no task to do. Her only focus was the audience and this is why she started to be a little bit defensive towards everybody. However, when she had a task where she had use her kinesthetic mental ability (tying her shoelaces) she had something to focus on apart from the audience which made her reduce her signs of defensiveness towards the audience.

Conclusion:
As an actor, it's important to keep track of where your focus is on-stage. You have to be not influenced by the audience. As we saw on this exercise, as you have a your focus on something that requires a use of your verbal and/or kinesthetic abilities it is easier to shift your focus and forget about the nervousness that being in front of an audience can cause. In a realistic performance you do not have tons of people observing you and, since Stanislavski looks to achieve a realistic performance, he does this exercises so that you can ignore the audience that would not be present in reality.

Reflection after LPC performance

Aim of Task: To do a group reflection on our Commedia dell' Arte cannovacci preparation and performance.

Description of Task: After our teacher, Steve, talked to us about what he thought of our performances in general and how he could compare them to performances by previous theater groups, we decided to do an activity that would serve as a reflection of the whole process in each of our groups.

After we joined in groups, what we did is that we had to take turns for each member in our group. What we would do is that, for each member in the group, each other member would say one sentence starting with "I really liked working with you because..." and another sentence starting with "I wish you would..." Although we did not have time for everybody in the group to go, we did mention some things to some members of the group. I really wish I could have gone, it really contributes to your personal growth to be told what you did well and what you did wrong.

Reflection: This whole process of preparing a Cannovacci for an audience taught me some things about group work in general. When I chose theater, this is one of the things I expected from the course, learning how to work with people better.

Conclusion: The performance was not the most important thing we got out of all of this, the most important things we got out of all of this are the things we learned through the process of preparing the performance. What we learned was definitely related to something that is useful in several aspects of life: teamwork. Moreover, we learned about theater and had an enjoyable experience. It was really a lot of fun.

Commedia dell'Arte Presentation at Sha Tin College

Aim of Task: To have our first Commedia dell' Arte presentation and film our performance so we have a better idea of what we can improve on for Li Po Chun's performance. To share with Sha Tin college and learn about the Kabuki type of theater they presented us.

Description of Task: After several days of rehearsing our Cannovacci, finally we presented it to an audience. All the Theatre Year 1 group went to Sha Tin where we arrived with our customs and props so we could perform to the Theatre students at the School. When we arrived, they were a little bit concerned about the sexual innuendo that our Cannovacci might contain since on past years the sexual content on Canovacci was too much. Our group and I had kept the sexual innuendo and jokes as low as possible because we were aware of the concern on the topic.

The three groups performed. The audience was not very big, it was only the Year 1 theater group which was not very large. Commedia dell' Arte audience, originally, is very varied, given that it was normally performed informally in the markets of Italy. Sometimes there would be a small amount of people and some other time there would be a large group, standing, sitting, crouching... in whatever position the audience pleases. The fact that we had a small audience, therefore, was not any kind of obstacle for our performance.

After all of us performed our Cannovacci; their group performed a kind of Japannese theatre that is called Kabuki theater. Their costumes where rather simple, although they had a makeup similar to the one some of our Commedia dell' Arte characters had. They told the story about and old, homeless man. The interesting thing about this kind of theater is that there are three different kinds of characters, with different characteristics that remain constant throughout different stories; just like in Commedia where you have a few ammount of characters with specific characteristics and costumes which remain constant throughout different stories. At the end of their play they also explained to us the different sounds and gestures that each character should use in Kabuki theater that they had used.

Reflection: I had done things on stage before, but this is the very first time I did a theatrical performance in front of an audience. I really liked it, Commedia is such a fun genre, not only to perform but also it is a lot of fun to prepare the performance. In general, it seemed like our small audience liked it. I think they were really interested and paid lots of attention, as they were always leaning forward in their chairs to look at us. They also laughed, but in general they seemed very entertained, which is the main focus of this kind of theater.

I found it very curious to see that Kabuki theater has a set of characters with specific characteristics, just as Commedia dell' Arte does. They have different objectives though, in Commedia dell' Arte, characters with specific characteristics make each Cannovacci funnier, as humor arises from the reinforcement of the stereotype of each of the actions performed by the characters. However, in my opinion, Kabuki might do this to keep the story simple and make it more understandable for the audience. Each member of the audience might also be able to identify themselves with one of the kind of characters, each time this character appears on stage.

Conclusion: Theatre is extremely wide. While writing this entry I realized that, although Commedia dell' Arte's main objective is to entertain the audience, there is many other kinds of Theatre whose main objective is not to entertain, for example, Theatre of the oppressed. I had not thought about it, but it is indeed very relevant. The most popular kinds of theater are for entertainment, but there is definitely some other kinds of theater that are used for different purposes.

I really enjoyed finally performing something that we had worked for so much. I really liked being able to show it to another school too.

Final touches before presentation at Sha Tin College

Aim of Task: To prepare the cannovacci so that we can present it at Sha Tin College.

Description of Task: Before presenting to Sha Tin College, we need to do some final things to the cannovacci so that we can present it. The play is not very clear in some parts so we decided that we will cut some parts.

• When all of the characters realize that it's apocalypse Pantalone seems preocuppied because he realizes he cannot use money when he is in heaven. A slap by colombina and a heart attack follow. This is not a very funny skit and, since we need to cut down the play, is something that we could easily remove.
• Although IL Dotore and Pantalone agree on exchanging Colombina and Isabella in one scene, there is no scene where the exchange actually happens. We have addesod a scene where the exchange happens and, when IL Dotore gets Colombina and Isabella, he does a little play on words with being "productive, re-productive" before the world ends.
• All the characters die before the world ends, being poisoned by a potion Zanni put into the dinner served to all the characters. There is humor by la Ruffiana saying "Zanni, you couldn't wait until the end of the world to kill us!"
• Speed in Commedia dell' Arte, in general should be pretty fast. Therefore, we have rehearsed on making the speed faster and faster so that it matches Commedia style better. That will also save us time.
  

Reflection: I think it's good that we had to cut scenes, it means we had plenty of material and that we can get rid that the material that is not good enough to present and leave only the good parts.

Conclusion: We might have spent too much time talking about the play at the start. For Commedia dell' Arte, it is mostly about improvising, so it is best to start acting the scenes as soon as possible and keep on improving them.

Performance of the cannovacci to Steve

Aim of Task: To perform all of what we have in the cannovacci to Steve so that he can give us feedback on what we have done and make the performance better before we present it.

Description of Task: After we presented our cannovacci to Steve he told us the play still need some work before it was ready to be presented on stage; which I agree on. Steve mentioned a lot of good things we had done including the fact that Zanni's performance was very good. Then, he told some of us that we were not facing the audience enough. He thinks I need to enunciate my words more. I have a problem with my mask because it's nose covers a big part of my mouth which obstructs whatever I say. However, to make that better, I need to make low-pitched voices so the audience can hear it better and I also need to open my mouth wider whenever I speak. A low-pitch voice is characteristic of Pantalone because his animal is the chicken, a very low-pitch sound animal. Another thing that I really need to improve too, and that Steve mentioned, is that I commonly look down when I am acting; I need to put the mask a little bit more up, at the level of the audience, so the mask can face the audience when I am speaking.

My group and I will keep on meeting so that we can finalize the play and make it ready to present to Sha Tin College.

Reflection: There is still work we have to do on the play. Although we have rehearsed it, there is still some things that sometimes do not make quite much sense. We will keep working on it.

Conclusion: It is always good to have an external opinion, and opinion from somebody who is not in the actors so that these person can tell the actors what goes well and what doesn't. This is what normally a director is for, but since we are not having directors in any of our groups we are not able to do that. I do not know if directors are common in Commedia dell' Arte performances but I think they would definitely be useful for us.

Practicing what we have of the Cannovacci so far

Aim of Task: To start actually rehearsing the scenes in the cannovacci that we have been discussing. To think about the scenes that will go in between the scenes we already have and complete the cannovacci.

Description of Task: Now that we have a better idea of what our cannovacci is going to look like, we will be rehearsing the scenes that we have thought about. In the process of rehearsing, we expect to think about the scenes that will go in between the scenes we have already thought about.

Pantalone is an old man. He doesn't walk straight, he walks with his back curved and speaks with a very rough voice. He is pretty much careless too, he cares almost only about money; nothing else. His animal is a chicken, so it is very important to make small fast movements. He walks in small, fast steps. His face is also always moving, looking around.

While performing, we figured that Pantalone will hit Zanni in the first scene to establish the servant-boss relationship. We also thought that Isabella should be the kind of girl that constantly asks her father things and constantly demands attention. Therefore, in the first scene. Isabella would be trying to talk with Pantalone but Pantalone would constantly interrupt her.

We also thought that one way we can explain how the characters fall asleep is that they are at a party, and after drinking a lot they fall to the ground and fall asleep. In this party we will play with words and the meaning of "melons." Pantalone will ask his servants to "bring the melons" and while Zanni will bring actual melons, Pantalone will reject them and demand that Colombina brings the melons.

After the scene where all characters realize that it will be the end of the world, IL Dotore will perform a "FBI - full body inspection" to Colombina, Zanni and IL Capitano which will be necessary for the to go to heaven. However, IL Dotore's main purpose will be to get to "inspect" Colombina. Nevertheless, Colombina tricks IL Dotore while his eyes are bended into touching La Ruffiana instead of her; which la Ruffiana really likes but then shouts at IL Dotore when IL Dotore makes a bad commentary about her body.

Reflection: Writing and discussing the cannovacci is one thing but actually starting to perform it gives you a better idea of what the cannovacci is about and helps you think better about it. Getting into your Commedia dell' Arte character is being an specific set of movements that are characteristic of your character.

Conclusion: There is still plenty of work we have to do in our cannovacci so that we can present it on stage. This will be our first performance as a theater year 1 group and we should make good first performance to all the school. I like Commedia dell' Arte because it is about making people laugh, I find it very curious to see how each character has its own way of being funny. It's fun to put this characters in different situations and letting them be funny by their own characteristics.

I think that commedia to some extent can explain why some stories are funny. Sometimes, I hear somebody telling a story about a person "x" they know and has a very specific characteristic say, this person never thinks twice what he says. Then when this somebody tells a story which demonstrates that "x" didn't think twice what he said and it was funny; the fact that the story reinforces the characteristic of "x" makes it even funnier. This is the case with commedia, characters do the same actions over and over again and that repetition and a very interesting humor factor that the audience can identify with.

Creating a Cannovacci, continued...

Description of Task: After discussing for some days what our Cannovacci is going to be about, we decided to write everything in paper.

In the first scene we will have Zanni picking up a newspaper that says in big letters that the world was going to end. We had some difficulties deciding on whether Zanni should read the newspaper or just lift it up so the audience could read it, but we decided that he would just let the audience read it because his character is not supposed to be "smart enough" to read out loud. He would only figure out that the news paper says the world is going to end by the pictures on the newspaper.

After that, Pantalone and Isabella will come in. Pantalone will be talking about money and call Isabella his daughter, to expose Pantalone's desire for money and the relationship between Pantalone and Isabella.

After coming in, Pantalone will turn on the radio and the announcer of the radio, who is going to be interpreted by Arshia, will say that the world is ending. This will serve as an additional cue to the audience of the theme of the play, the apocalypse.

After that scene, the second exposition scene will happen, where IL Dotore is at the market. IL Capitano will come in and ask IL Dotore for an "enlargement potion." This will show IL Dotore's character as the doctor he is and IL Capitano as the amazing lover he thinks he is. After IL Dotore and IL Capitano are talking about it, Zanni will come in and tell them about the about what he saw and heard in the news about the apocalypse. This will end up the exposition of the theme. Zanni will be the one who spreads the "news about the apocalypse."

After that, we are not sure about what scene to include after but we know the characters are going to fall asleep, and after they all fall asleep each of the characters will try to make his "ideal dream" come true before the world ends. For these, we have a scene where IL Capitano and Isabella will participate. Isabella will be looking for clothes to wear to see Flavio for the last moments when IL Capitano will come in and tell her how much he likes her and wants to be with her. While this scene is going on, La Ruffiana, Colombina and Zanni will be "looking through the keyhole" trying to figure out what is going on. IL Dotore and Pantalone will come in and talk about Pantalone giving his daughter to IL Dotore in exchange of access to heaven.

While IL Capitano will try to hide from Pantalone he will pretend to be a chair. Pantalone will try to sit in the chair but will notice a small "pin." Humor will rely on Pantalone saying how small the pin is. After that IL Capitano and Pantalone will have a fight where IL Capitano tries to be very courageous but ends up acting as a coward.

There will be a scene where all the characters notice it is the end of the world and they start laughing at something. Pantalone has a heart attack because he realizes his money is useless in heaven.

Reflection: It is difficult to put a Cannovacci together. Specially when there is several people, with several ideas, trying to put everything together. Putting all of our ideas together in a single Cannovacci can be a difficult job, as we have studied in TOK. It is important to include humor constantly in Commedia because, in the end, that is the focus of this type of Theater, to make the audience laugh. Commedia dell' Arte highly relies on improvisation. However from my experience with my group, it is difficult to agree in a sound story for a cannovaci. I noticed that on the previous exercises where we had a director, conflicts between the group where less common because the director is the one who makes all of the decisions. I don't know if it is common to do Commedia dell' Arte with a director, but I think it might be a lot of help when creating cannovacci.

Conclusion: The focus of Commedia dell' Arte should be humor and it is important to include physical humor in each scene. Theatre teaches you a lot of team work, it teaches you a lot on how to share ideas with each other and reach agreements between each other. It is something very useful in various aspects of life, this is something that I really wanted from this course and I am starting to realize how much I've learned about it!

Creating a cannovacci

Aim of Task: To create our first Commedia dell' Arte Cannovacci. To know how the Cannovacci's in Commedia dell' Arte work. To start performing in our characters.

Description of Task: The whole class was divided in three groups. Each group will develop a Cannovacci that we will later present on stage, in public. Our group is conformed by Zanni, IL Dotore, IL Capitano, Isabella, Colombina and Pantalone. My character is Pantalone. As a group, we started brainstorming on what could we do as the main theme of our Cannovacci. We started brainstorming about a lot of things: dreams, parties, end of the world... We were not sure on what theme to choose but after thinking about the movie "inception" we decided that it would be a good idea to combine the idea of the apocalypse, the end of the world in 2012 according to the Mayans and the concept of dreams. We started brainstorming on how to combine these two themes in a single Cannovacci. The Apocalypse theme is rather unreal, so we decided that it would be good to include it as part of a dream. We could make the whole apocalypse and the world ending thing as part of the dreams of the characters in the Cannovacci.

After we had a theme, we started thinking about the exposition, which should be the part of the Cannovacci that goes first and is responsible of exposing the characters, it's relationships with each other and the setting. For the exposition, La Ruffiana is going to come in, giving a brief introduction of the plot, setting and characters. After, we will have Zanni in Pantalone's house. Then, Pantalone and Isabella will come in, with Pantalone referring to Isabella as his daughter and referring to Zanni as his servant. Pantalone could be talking about something like his bussinesses making money since it is a very common topic for Pantalone.

Another scene we could include is a market scene, with IL Dotore. In the market scene, IL Dotore will be selling his merchandise to Zanni or one of Pantalone's servants. That would present IL Dotore as potion-selling doctor he is in many of the Cannovacci's. IL Capitano will be included in scenes with Isabella. Since there is no Flavio in our play, IL Capitano would play as the lover of Isabella.

Most of the comedy in the play will rely on Zanni's dumbness, silliness and inability to express himself in complete words. Zanni is a dumb servant, in our Cannovacci he will not speak at all. The only thing he does is run around and make yelling sounds like if he was trying to speak. Zanni is great to make people laugh with his very uncontrolled movements. The first scene will have Zanni and Pantalone in it, and Pantalone will push him

Reflection: While we were discussing all of these things in the group, it was very difficult to agree on something. All of us had several ideas but it was difficult to choose which ones to include and which ones we shouldn't include. As a non-native English speaker, I also found it sometimes difficult to express my ideas fully to all the group. It took us a long time to discuss and actually agree on our theme, I think it may be one of the most difficult parts of creating a cannovacci. After this, we will start building upon the ideas we already have to create the specifics of the Cannovacci.

Conclusion: Now that we have the topic of our Cannovacci, we need to start talking about the specific scenes and lines. We need to think about specific things that will make up the comedy in the Cannovacci.