Week Twelve

Posted on May 20th, 2007 by tilly26.
Categories: Theatre Journals for 100.

Mood: Isaac from Heros

So Tash told me a pretty lame joke earlier on this week that I thought worthy of being my weekly lame joke:
A man and his wife had six children. The man was very proud of his wife’s achievement so he always referred to her as “Mother of Six”. She really didn’t appreciate this pet name but he continued to use it. One eventful night at a party the wife felt uncomfortable and wished to leave. The man was enjoying himself and wanted to stay, so he begged her: “Come on, please! We’ll just stay for a few more hours, Mother of Six!” To which the now very pised off wife replied: “No, we’ll leave now, Father of Four!”

Thank you for the contribution Tash =]

After Dinner
Omg they read our blogs. When they said they had done so and it was obvious they thought we had too we all just looked at each other and went, well shit, aren’t we unprepared. Haha so I came home and read their blogs and what not. It was really interesting to read the blogs of people who have done the same stage crafts, I came away thinking how much work I have to do in the next 3 or 4 days or whatever it is. It was great to talk to them and realise that they fight all the time like us. Don’t get me wrong, I love our whole theatre class, everyone in it is freaky deaky weird but really awesome at the same time. We’re like a very dysfuntional family, lots of love but lots of fighting and clashing and what not. After Dinner is just so different to 100 that it’s really hard to compare them. On one hand you have masturbation jokes, and on the other you have people hanging themselves. But I really enjoyed it, it was a bit slow starting (though that’s due to the script, not the actors) but by about 20 inutes into it, I was infrequently wetting myself. After the show Scotty gave the people who hadn’t left yet (as they were waiting on my mother) a tour around the joint. To say the least, Mt Scopus is a trifle more … “up market” than our humble little farm school =p Looking at their program too, Erika and Burak really should’ve been there cos I don’t think they’ve even started on our program yet. Haha and I love that they know who Burak is, with his “dramatic” blog. But yeah, a bunch of really nice kids and it was heaps helpful to watch theirs and have the Q&A with them afterwards.

Acting
Omg we had this one rehearsal this week when we all did so shit (excuse the language but its really necessary). All the actors were working way bellow standard. I was talking to Gems about it and she felt the same and it’s just so frustrating. I can’t describe how pissed I was at myself during that rehearsal. I just couldn’t get it together and everything was comming out so robotic and sounding like I was reading lines someone else had written. I did all this work to internalise everything and then I was just so bellow standard it was ridic. I came out hating myself and hating eveyone else cos we were all crap and I was terrified that we would be like that on the night and hating the Guide for being such a had stupid character and hating myself for not being consistant and hating theatre studies for making me do this stupid play and hating 100 for being so stupid and hating myself cos I just couldn’t do it and I felt like the crappest actor in the world…. did I mention that I was hating myself? Awesome, just checking. But then we had a really good one after school … or maybe it was on Saturday … I have no concept of time. My life seems to run 20 mins behind everyone else’s so I don’t bother taking in time settings as they are irrelavent to me. But yeah that rehearsal was really good, we ran it through for the 1st time ever, leaving it a bit late, I know. But it came out pretty good, I really ant to make the Guide bigger but I’m not sure how appropriate that would be, I’ve decided to drop the accent cos it’s just so inconsistant. Coops made a comment during notes that the Guide is alway switching between angry and happy, seeminly randomly. That was all part of my thing as she has no clue who she is, how she behaves etc so she is like all different people she has met int he Void at different times. Plus she’s been doing this for a very very long time so she’s a bit over the nice-eties and easily irritable. But the thing is I don’t know if Coops meant it as a good thing or a bad thing or just an observation of what. And when I was doing my big “BECAUSE IT ALL DECAYS! … everything you are, everything you think you are… it fades until there’s nothing left, just a vague smudge of what you were” speel, Tash and Josh we whispering and laughing, which has made me paraniod. Now i’m stressing that I’m doing a crappy job at the Guide and I don’t know how to make it better and I don’t have long to fix it. Coops, I desperately need to work one on one with you at some point to go trough each of my long bits and work on how they should be delieverd and characterisation and what not. I’m now paraniod that I’ve taken the Guide completely off track of who she was supposed to be. Yep, so parandoid that I’m scrwing up such a good (but very complicated) role, cos it’s so open to interpretation…. and my interpretations are never right.
*Note to self: buy white undies*

Direction
ATTENTION ALL ACTORS!

Ok this week each of you actors need to do the folloing:

–> Come and see me at some point during our time at the theatre (during lunch breaks, or tech stuff etc, whenever your not needed) or at school to have a one on one chat about your acting and characterisaton, and that means EVERYONE.

–> Make a back stroy for your characters if you haven’t done one yet and publish it on vineblogs so me and Coops can read it. (Erika you’ll need to do one for every character, for the minor characters you play like the Elder, just write a few lines, but for the Wife and the Mother make it more detailed). Some of you may have to talk to ech other about these for them to work (eg Sophie and her mother, Nia and Alex, Ketud and his wife etc).

–> Learn all your lines! This may be a bigger job for some than others.

–> Read over the script and remind yourself of all of your entrances and exits, what you’re doing in each part of each memory, what order the scenes go in, when you need to move boxes etc. On monday Jordy and I will go through with everyone and say which boxes need to be moved when and by whom, so you all need to have your scripts to note that stuff down and remember it.

–> Take some time out each day from now until opening night to run over your lines and get into character, so you’re all good for geting into (and staying in!!!) character for opening night.

Please do these things, they are of the utmost importance.

So until I see you all at bump in tomorrow at whatever un-godly hour we have to be there, stay classy Santiago!

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Week Eleven

Posted on May 4th, 2007 by tilly26.
Categories: Theatre Journals for 100.

What do you call a fly with no wings? A walk!

Anyhoo…

Acting
I’m still stuffing up lines which is so fristrating, especailly going into that bit with Gemma and myself arguing, I forgot my very first yelled line and screwed up the flow of it completely. I don’t know if I’ll be able to put all the emotion needed for those little look inside the Guide’s mind bits when she does her little sililoquy parts off to the side until we get a full run through done, which I’m quite eager to do. Maybe next Tuesday during our double we can try for a full run through, no stops , that way e can go into lunch then use period five for lunch and a chat abou things that need to be fixed. Just a thought, I’ll ask Coops tomorrow. That way all of us actors can get the flow of things and see the parts that need the most attention.

Directing
So I had a talk to Jarrod today about audio and boxes. I like getting things done, ticking them off the ol’ list. Good fun. So that stuff is getting sorted out now. One less thing to stress over. Our rehearsal on (Monday? or it might have been Tuesday) when Coops was away was very sucessful. I think everyone walked out feeling very confident about it all. I think having just the actors there helped us focus as there was nobody else to provide distractions, and I know it gets boring for all the people who aren’t acting sitting there watching all the time, so with them gone we were more on track. Plus we had Mr Aiapan (sp?) there, and I think we all wanted to give our best and impress him. We ran from Sophie’s last memory through to the end. Now I don’t mean to get all negative, but from that run it’s clear that there is a lot more work to be done on many of the scenes and we still aren’t working to our full potential. This play is kick arse, and our actors and production team are kick arse, but thus far we haven’t had a single rehearsal that has been kick arse (do excuse all the language). The one when Coops was away was the closest we’ve been but we really have to get our arses into gear (there I go again =p). This show is on in 2 weeks, I’m not sure everyone realises the gravity of that. If people don’t know what they’re doing in each scene it’s not just going to come together on opening night. And don’t forget next week is pretty much out for rehearsals. So we need as many lunch times and after schools as possible for fixing crap. I realise how pedantic I was being about the tube today but little things like that are being done wrong every single time, even though I tell you to fix them. It’s in one ear and out the other with a lot of things. So please start putting 100% into everything that is done. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to make this show and our class live up to their potential.

 So to summarise: get your arses into gear and start taking this seriously and prioritising it.

 Peace.

(by the way thank you to the few who are giving it their best consistantly).

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