tppp tips

transitional words, get that flow, don't transition with and and and so but give however and therefore.
intro outro, i have a symbol at the beginning and end
reference pics and transition of pictures- talk about the picture itself
analysis not facts- dont get stuck telling what you learned or experienced but rather what you developed
because of it
citation is pretty important
2 world theatres- korea, japan so far off the top of my head

the film list (2013) dir. david park

the list is interesting.
mostly since i have only seen two of the films, i do not have that much of an opinion on the list. the two that i have seen are in fact the top two, vertigo and district 9. the one i saw many years ago and am not sure i remember the cinematography of it and district 9 i have certain qualms about since of the true life event that it is based off. in terms of the ones i have not seen, movies like the mirror and a man escapes sound interesting enough for me to try and follow up to them

why Voice Acting

Some people may think that it is weird for me to do voice acting, some may think I have no experience with my voice and understanding vocal experimentation, or most commonly people say “yes your voice in naturally calm and soothing” but that not just all of what I can achieve. I really enjoy making weird noises with my voice, as well as deconstructing accents and understanding how they tick, but I don't express the noises and voices I can make out in public very often, I'm very shy. But I want to change this; I want to start to show that I actually have a great voice in singing and have many different characters with all my other voices. This is just very clearly and plainly, the why. I also have a deeper level of why in that this kind of acting is the kind I want to pursue later in life and want to increase and grow my repertoire and characters, so I may need to start taking notes and learning from other voice actors. This leads into why do this for the ippp, for me it is a case of this is how I’m going to improve my voice acting, and once I have made myself better I can help others to become better as well. So it is a matter of I’m going to help myself to help others, which for an IPP is actually a good thing, gives more incentive to record the process leading up to the workshop or performance. Which actually makes me wonder, workshop or performance, I want to share my knowledge and help, but I think I may want to create a performance or vocal snippet in addition to the workshop, not for IB but for myself.

acting workshops

Daniel Foley: our artist in residence this year was a Shakespearian actor by the name of Daneil Foley. our time with Daniel was actually quite short and I would have liked to have spent more time since i quite liked the vocal focus he had, at least in the second workshop we had. The first workshop was mixed with a freshman class and was lacking in information and interactive. The second session was focused on the voice and how to speak and to interpret Shakespearian text. The exercised were a great way to wake up the face for projection and for singing, because they were what they were, exercises. I now still do some of them to kind of wake up my face in order to get ready for the day. the last session was more physical and tied more closely to the play we are doing right now, Romeo and Juliet. we were having trouble with stage fighting so Daniel Foley helped out by showing our class how to do simple sword fighting techniques that look good are easy to remember which we in turn taught to the cast. one thing that was not so great was that there was no specific topic it was more opportunistic than structured.
chad Austin:
a surprise workshop was had after Daniel Foley left and he next class period there was another actor from New York who did some activities with us to find ways to stretch our acting techniques and how to be more aware of our body and even mentioned Australian actor F.M. Alexander and his technique for good posture, even though he said he did not agree with it. most important out of all was the final excerisize when he told us how to properly present ourselves to prospective directors;

• don't fidget, hand to side 
• stand tall-don't slouch
• smile- look happy and make the "judges" feel good
• don't look down- confidence will then proceed to exude from your presence
• answer with confidence=don't second guess yourself
• when you recite a piece just recite it, don't take pause to change into character,just say it

Tempest, Lear two Shakespeare plays with different interpretations

the whole idea of minimalism is personally appealing to me most of the ideas that i have had when it comes to plays have all been minimalistic, not because of lack of potential resources, but because minimalism really accentuates the themes and the symbols of a play and two plays that seem to fit that idea of minimalism is the Tempest by donellan and King Lear by Tadashi Suzuki
Tempest is the one shakespeare play that, when i  hear the name i have beautiful images of the sea and ocean, beautiful islands mostly because of what i had seen from the video that was shown to me about how the royal Shakespeare company once interpreted it.
The interpretation that the Russians had in this rendition of the Tempest was absolutely superb and very different to the one i saw in the video and the difference in of itself is a great inspiration. the Russian theatre company went for a minimalist stage with only a white wall and three doors, with sand placed in locations by the wall with little bits in the sand. the design t use the whiteness of the wall to display the scenes' backgrounds and the use of the sand and the items in them. it kind of made me think, why have the props backstage when you can have them on stage instead, not that all the props were on stage in tempest. The direction of the play was excellent and the choreography was very good not as much as Lear but i will get there later) the body floating in water, the characters physicality- the daughter , the air spirit and the one flimsy guy that was with caliban (trinculo?) all really accentuated their characters brilliantly. when it comes to scorched moments, it was not one area that i focused on, it was the usage of water as a running theme on the island, even if it only went so far, but using water on stage gave the play a feel of realism in amongst the minimalism. another memory that will stay is the onstage music played that to me represented the wind of the play and gave the play motion in sound.
on the other hand there is King lear as directed by Tadashi Suzuki, another play with a simple stage set up that worked to really accentuate the picture of the stage, the frozen scenes. a slight difference between these two shakespeare interpretations was in costumes, Tadashi seemed to put more effort into stylistic clothing whereas tthe tempest was very symbolic, and in movement. the was more action and motion in the Tempest, but the amount of physical control in King Lear astounded me. one point when the one evil daughter, the one with the memorable laugh, was giving a monologue i noticed that she was doing something with her eybrows, which led me to notice that she wasn't blinking. i had forgotten the importance of the eyes in Japanese theatre, and noticing the unblinking stare and actually experiencing that sort of physical control will make sure i never forget it again, i even spent a goo while of the play having staring contests with the actors, which led to some interesting revelations. one such one was that, because i was staring at a frozen picture it burned the images in my retina, so when there was any movement i could notice it because a sort of sillouhette was left behind. one such ncident i was staring and then mrs. Moon moved her head, then i had a mrs. Moon shaped image floating in mid air. not sure if such a finding is helpful in designing any of my own creations but it is certainly an interesting way of looking at the world. but one thing in King Lear i would like to use is some of the ligting techniques included in the play, most notably having thing hang from the ceiling and using their shadows to add texture to an otherwise plain stage, like gobos that the audience can see. another lighting technique i noticed was one we used in Good Soul of Schezwan (still cant spell it) and that was making a line of light that makes  stark separation between downstage and upstage with use of barn doors, but theirs was more professional. one complaint about this play that i heard is the reason i like it, the fact that the stage and the movement was less expressive and minimal allowed for there to be more emphasis on the words and meaning, and when they do move it is important and purposeful, but because of language barriers this made non japanese/koreans had trouble understanding what was going on at that particular time.

tppp list and paragraph

list of what to include into tppp:
symbols;
picture of the internet-driving force


influences;
dervishes- got-cultural
sienaar in die suburbs?
pina baush- dance

studied;
lighting- got good soul-
bertolt brecht good soul of setchuan
andong- actually doing mask dance
mark hill - tadashi suzuki
maybe get one with daniel foley- shakespeare

symbol paragraph:
My symbol is a picture representing all the connections of the internet, this on it's own is a good theme to have in terms of connecting ideas because it is a symbol of connection. however it is more profound than that because of what connections and the internet represents. the connections are the synthesis that we make and the connections we make in our classes, when we create theatre we are making connections to the world, between ideas, to the audience. the internet on the other hand is a tool for knowledge and for sharing knowledge and this is a theme that i believe all theatre should be about, sharing knowledge with the audience and with each other. how i can use it specifically to string the pictures together however is different. by using this symbol that is specifically about sharing knowledge is kind of the area i can use to express the symbol. the class and my whole theatre experience has been me collecting knowledge about what i can and then sharing it, notably with my family, and two of whom already know what i'm talking about so we discuss instead.

Fab Five, the tempest

company: Moscows international theatre company
director: Dunclan Donellan
form of theatre: minimalist
the play itself: Shakespearian play

tppp

internet- connections

dervishes- dance and rythmn/ scorched moment

lighting

andong

Pina Baush

tadashi suzuki- mark hill

Romeo and Juliet shakespeare

bertolt brecht

"The spectator was no longer in any way allowed to submit to an experience uncritically (and without practical consequences) by means of simple empathy with the characters in a play.  The production took the subject matter and the incidents shown and put them through a process of alienation: the alienation that is necessary to all understanding.  When something seems 'the most obvious thing in the world' it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up."- bertolt brecht

Theo Jansen- Strandbeest

as i start to think through my tppp a bit more i realised some things about my designing focuses and the values i have in relation to design, and i am very scientific. the things i enjoy are methodical and have rules tied to them, if they don't have rules i create them, i saw this in my fascination with lighting and the artwork of theo jansen who is less theatre and more art but it is more of a secondary symbol for me as it is my way of thinking expressed directly as i see some art, as something beautiful created for the purpose of motion, which is another part of theatre i enjoy. dance has a system of rules put in place which each individual responds to and knows what to do with each other to create one beast that is the ensemble- just like each individual part of theo jansen's creations come together to make a moving preformance. basically i think i am not a very good creative designer, but i am a designer with his own merits and style that requires a certain degree of extra thought in order for other creative elements to burst out. it's not i'm a bad designer but that i constrict myself with rules of the world of the play. this is something i want to put forward along with my belief in how everything is connected.

Gary Card

I think it’s about communication ― what are we trying to say, what are we trying to get people to feel? It is about considering every element of the design and making sure you are staying true to that message you hope your viewer will take away with them. 

i feel that this is the backbone of art as a whole and is what all artists need to strive for, communication. if art does not communicate or has no message then it is good art irrespective of the quality of the art itself. 

pilobolus

here is a picture of pilobolus

now here is a picture of the theatre group of the same name

and what interests me right now about this group is how they arrived at the name they did and why. When i was back in South africa there were several advertisments who used pilobolus to sell their product or service i have pretty much forgotten the company but i never forgot the shadow making group. as such, a local news group interviewed the team while they were in SA and i remember that they mentioned why they chose to name themselves after a fungus. it seems the dance company named themselves this back in 1971and drew inspiration for their dance from biology and natural movement and that the name pilobolus was a catchy name.but in recent times they are not the only inspired thearical dance troupe. not so long ago, this year in fact another hungarian shadow group called attraction won the britains got talent competition. in the US in the american version of the show there was a group called tell-a-vision who used lcd screens for their preformance but got booted off early for being too artsy.

as ine final thing, back in south africa there was another advertisement for Volkswagen or bmw and featured not a preformance but something more sciency but looks just as amazing, but is more a feat of engineering and art than dance and art

these are considered a type of wind chime as they are kinetic sculptures

 oh it was bmw

updated tppp

plays acted in

o    last days of judas

o    pajama games

o    good soul of schezwan

plays watched

o    the odyssey

o    gullivers travel

o    black watch

o    apac

o    artefact

o    pina baush

plays read

o    antigone,

o    Eurydice,

o    mother courage

o    love of three oranges

set elements helped in

o    Artifacts- helped build set and paint props

o    lighting for ib play

festival-

o    apac

o    seoul performance festival

workshop-

o    apac

o    mark hill

o    andong

studied

·         JAPANESE

o    butoh

o    kabuki

o    kyogan

o    bunraku

o    underground

o    tadashi Suzuki

·         greek

·         MASK

o    comedia

o    talchum

o    neutral mask

o    found mask

·         physical theatre

·         realism

·         brechtian

·         minimalism

·         modernism

·         post modernism

·         verbadum

·         viewpoints

·         devising

·         directing

·         technical theatre

PAJAMAS!!!

the pajama game was a very interesting story with a fun beat to it. It was not as symbolic or deeply thought out as judas or a few other musicals people want the school to do, but it was a love story written about 50 years ago with entertainment in mind. the play focused around the cold war era in the 1950's and it did have undercurrents of the problems of gender inequality and the cold war itself, yet that is not the focus of the story. the real idea of the story had more focus on love and the idea that in a relationship, just like salary negotiations, need compromise to work, as well as understanding. at least that is how i interpreted it. the stage design was very well done, capturing the colours and the vibrant feel of the time and transposing it into a factory setting . things like the office and bed room looked , for me, like they were actually in the 1950's with the themes and colours used, and the addition of plants gave it a real feel to it.the physical design of the stage and scene set up was very good, they looked organised and set in place stylistically, however as an actor on stage pushing a rather large basket around, it was annoying when the set up was so crowded i could not get my basket through behind the first row of girls.

i cant really comment on the acting since i was not in the audience but backstage, but from what i saw in group scene while on stage was that people really reacted off of each other and gave it plenty of gusto in keeping the energy of the play up. from what could tell was that the mic and and sound of the play went well overall with few glitches, and i trust that what ever mic glitches did happen, the actors used their projection to compensate, i hope. the musical went very well, it was highly successful with good songs. 

love of three oranges

Just to get this anecdote out the way, while reading the play I was thinking that this would have been a very fun ib play but then I read the beginning and saw the legal terms and royalty rules and was sad.

This play was very fun to read and unlike other play I usually read, I chuckled a bit. While reading the play I was trying to think of the whole thing with the masks in mind and found it a little hard, because I did not recognise the names of some characters and so was put off guard by that, so instead i imagined it without masks, which seems how it was written. an interesting thing I liked were the physical descriptions or rather the descriptions on how the people must act physically in certain scenarios, it when imagining the scene happening on stage it was very expressive and full of motion, which helped me chuckle as I read the play. the whole comedy and sort of nonsensical nature of the scenes in the play was very symbolic of the plays commedia heritage, but a little more so. the play lacked, for me at least, a sense of tragedy that I expected, it was incredibly comedic and although I know it is not a Shakespearian tragedy, but it din't have a tragic element to me.

notes

Talchum- almost lost, fought to be preserved- recently people have been trying to revive the mask dances in many different regions of Korea.

Respect of nature and freedom of expression

Embodiment of feelings, han-profound grief and sadness, and sinmyeong-joy of art dark to light.

Self expression

Strongly improvisational

Freedom of time and conflict

Madang stage-garden.

Audience participation- panto

                Communial- break barriers between people and characters

Different regions have different styles and colour

Fur shows animal traits

Gourd lovable trickster

Commedia masks

16 century

1:1 on actor to character

Lazzi- physical routine convo, foolish or meatphorical

Verbal riffs- comedy style     grammalot-gibberish

Actor centered theatre- physical, silent films

Tragedy in comedy

Not what but how

Stillness awareness pantomime expression

Teamwork, opportunistic, act with truth

Pantalone-chicken scroogy old manmoney liking

Dottore- pig friend and rival of pantalone- doctor stuttering pedantic doesntknowwaht he talking about\

Harlequin arlecchino-zane-monkey and cat foil, hungery and curious  antithesis of pantalone manipulative

Zane- basal comedy- food drink sex and protest- fish, birds

Innamoratae/ti- human and maskless chest walking ballet fun of drama queen

Capitano –peacock not smart boastful and flamboyant loner

Pulcinella- zane- dorky and humpbacked violent clever pretends stupid or vice versa misshapen

Pedrolino-zane- effemionate male character ocd excitable feelingless loner and depressed

Scaramuccia- zane servants-

Senora- maskless woman prostitute –cougar

Clarice Columbia fontesca-fox- flirty maide  ballet

Scapino-zane-mouse never deeply involved schemer forgetful

Brigiella- zane- corrupt and evil manipulative

   

Cheat up- look up

Awareness of traits of mask not subtle mask

Never touch the mask nose is eyes

my mask

the mask i want to create is a kind of almost surreal version of the neutral mask. a plain white very plastic looking mast with a neutral expression on the face with far more texture on the face like it is an actual face that had all of its colour taken off. the surreal part is that at seven areas of the side of the mask would be pulled out from the centre distorting the face and expressions of the person and coming out like tendrils and interacting with each other. the mask is based off the seven different sins and each tendril acts differently the first is sloth which is the smallest of the tedrils and surrounding it is greed which comes out from two sides of sloth and encompass it like a rainbow then it is lust then envy and these two cross over each other with lust hugging envy and envy pulling towards greed pride is next to these two and stands straight and tall and on its own and next to it is wrath which curves to puncture itself to show its self destructiveness. and is the last and thickest of the tendrils.

creativity is an underestimated commodity

creativity is something people always say we need in our lives but people rarely take the time to stretch their creativity. why, because they do not value it as highly as other aspects and therefore allow themselves little time to be creative. i believe this relates to the article since it is a underestimation of the arts that causes the decline in the availability, a regarding of art as the inferior of the subjects. I personally found the article to be saddening in that respect, that art is seen like this and that it has to have help in the first place is sombre message to me. i have always heard back in south africa how important it was to be creative and to have an inquisitive mind, and it was annoying to have many people shrug off the information that the teachers and spokespeople were giving to us.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-whitacre/theater-education_b_2529735.html

response to article

i feel that colour should never be a basis for what a person should or should not do. a person must not be chosen to preform if they are not good enough, ethnic history should not be a basis for decision. likewise i do not think that is is good to have a character preform an ethnicity that is different from themselves as it can be seen as disrespectful. this is a problem i do realise since this causes the dilemma of do i keep true to the story or do i keep true to the skill of the actor in some respect. it is just i personally as an actor would feel sick to have been chosen because of past event rather than the skill of my preformance

quotes

Suppleness, flexibility, and sensitivity are the key aims for actors. Peter Brooks points out that it is easy to be sensitive in the fingers and the face, but the actor needs to be sensitive throughout the body, constantly in contact with every inch of it. Sensitivity begets precision. And stage movement requires definition and clarity

Masks

APAC

one thing I experienced that few other people in our class is a level of butoh that really showed me the complexity of the control needed in that form of performance. since i was assistant for mark hill i got to SEE instead of DO the activities. in particular the final performance when all the people on stage came together to show their imagination and personality in their movements. with mark hills ensemble and taster workshops he did the performance for all people and each and every time the group as a whole made this beautiful dance that all people were different yet the shadows that were expressed on the wall and everyone moved with each other even if they all had their eyes closed and could not see each other. the thing i like the most about butoh is how much the performance does not require words, the body is the only language needed to display the message. the katakali performance wa very intricate with its makeup, hand geasture and facial expressions and very controlled and precise. that kind of performance is not open to interpretation and has to be done precisely as it was always performed, it seems. the talchum on the other hand was more fun and playful, not saying that katakali wasn't only that there seems to be more of a religious performance rather than a fun cultural one.

response to mr. black

In consideration to what Mr Black said, i found it very comforting and kind and a little different to what i expected. i believed that our performance was actually not as good as some other IB threatre classes but then again I was never backstage when it came to creating and designing the performance and mr. Black has that privledge to know the difference in fluidity and composition of classes, much like mrs. moon, but with a very hardlined technical design aspect of it, and is another perception on how preformance went. In regard to our production elements I read through the lighting design critique more in depth than in the other elements, and was overall proud in every aspect in accordance to what Mr. Black said. I was particularly proud of lighting given what he said and just in general agreed with what was said, although my agreeing is more in hindsight than it is if i was told durng production (i',m thinking in particular to the bamboo gobos, which probably should have been taken down when we got rid of the tv screen idea, but time was short then). i am also relieved that our blue lighting during the yang sun scene was good in his eyes, because i noticed a lot of problems in regards to visibility of how dark it was and that the scaf emma had turned red when it was meant to be blue (or was it red?).

review responses

In consideration to the responses that i managed to read and see I noticed that of all things we left an impression on the audience. For the most part, people got that we intended to get a theme across to them and that we managed to make them think about the problems that are proposed in the script. further more the design elements that we were in control of all seem to have positive reviews, however the style of Brecht may have been lost on some of the people. I personally am not sure about the reviews that we got on paper, as most of them were lax to none in regards to constructive criticism or of what we did well. not to say we got none, but that there could have been more. The responses to lighting were quite positive with the most memorable criticism was that the lighting was not fully brecht, but they did not know that, that was intentional.

nancy kim

                Theatre is not just acting it is everything if acting doesn’t work out backstage can. There are many faucets of theatre and many aspect people can focus on. One way to learn the play and create the play is to go scene by scene and perfect a scene before moving on to the next. Takes a long time and regardless if in the scene one must still be present. It is good know all aspects of theatre regardless of your profession in theatre.  Brechtian theatre cannot be done anymore we can only take in elements of brechtian theatre.

Our production had less cohesion in the elements. We need to exceed what we consider high school and aim for professional. Reca out of smoke, fly us out? Reason for everything, try not hide as much.

Robereo  La pashe- big cheese in theatre, take a lot of different media aspects and extend the possibilities of the performance

Robert Wilson-abstract weirdness , stillness and focusing on moments suspended in time that can be observed. He saw a difference between useless hands as I call them to standing with a purposeful stance.

Second god

Second god is a very bitter god in a way, he is one of the gods who still believe that if they look they can find goodness but is more easily down-heartened and plays devils advocate, he will always doubt and look for cause for doubt as seen when he noticed wang's false bottom, but this works with the group in contrast with meek third and optimist first. a way to look at him is like a grandfather who is tough but fair, he loves you but wants you to grow strong and as such he is tough on everyone in a strict way. he himself is tough as seen with the whole more spiders fewer flies, he doesn't like excuses either made by him or others, and he expects the best from a good soul and will not tolerate lax on shen te's part, as he was very upset with shen te's lack  of paying the carpenter and how the cousin is causing her to stray away from her goodness. he is also very practical as seen when he talked about the floods and how it was the humans lack of action rather than their lack of faith in the gods.

The second gods relationship with the first god is that the first god is wiser and the leader and the second god knows this and accepts/ respects this but when something he feels must be done he will voice his opinion and swing the conversation to his way of thinking, and keep the group on track on to the rules of godliness. he honors rules a lot but the fact that he is willing to forsake the rules in favor for the decision of giving money shows how much he respects the first god.

the second gods relationship with the third is a bit more abraisive, for the third is much more milder and timid and is more open to breaking the rules set forth  by the divines. this would put these two gods at ends and be more like two vastly contrasting ideals of the strong orderly second and more fun more chaotic third with neutral first.

his relationship with wang is one of a more non existant one he actively chooses to ignore him but that is not to say he is not listening and watching wang, for the 2nd god does not trust wang. he pities wang and his attempts to persuade the gods in that there is a good person in sechzuan.

plays acted in
last days of judas iscariot

plays watched
the odyssey
gullivers travels
black watch

set elements helped in
Artifacts- helped build set and paint props

IB Y2 play arty facts artifacts

I was very interested in this particular ib, play due to the fact it was written by the students, how they did with their small amount of people who were actually taking the class. I enjoyed and admired their use of colourful lights and hiding some elements of the stage before revealing the art underneath. the play also did a good job in transitioning into the dream and dystopian elements. the use of children was a brave and worthwhile as it supplemented the play and yet did not take away from it. the story was  very cleverly thought out and had a clear message they included to convey their opinions about art and our own individuality. I think that they did a terrific job and managed to successfully create a play from scratch that deserves more recognition around this school.

btb

ground plan- visual representation of what will be done
concept statement- the vision of the designer in a sentence to a page- what do you want to convey what feeling do you want the audience to enjoy

pitch plan

for lighting we plan tohave the people do the following as our focus:
Sabrina - 
1.Research of the time period or concept:
- magazine clippings 
- pictures from books
- written description

Kevin -
2.List of all changes of day and other signified lighting changes within the script
6.Description of the mood and tone of the play as a whole and in each scene or section that will be used to create the lighting scape

Peter -
3.Simple plan of where lights will go, lighting areas and what type will be used ( use the scenery designers ground plan for reference)
5.At least 5 special light areas besides those needed for general wash and front

Justin -
7.Description of why all decisions were made/ Explain vision

Gel and gobos will be covered by everyone here and there.
(taken from facebook)

also what we aim is to supplement our powerpoint presentation with maybe an idea collage and any other physical and visual representation of our vision and any solutions to problems we may face in the placements of light