Weeks XII-XIII — Royal Mayhem

"Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself."
—Jane Wagner

And that also applies to me; the greater I want to believe I am, the less bad I feel. Mostly because I waste time as if there was nothing to do. Anyway, there were actually some great stuff this past week—our school play was about power as an illusion, after all.

Description

This past week, as you may have guessed, a lot of things happened. Important things. And since I love making use of bullet points, here goes a list.

• Monday:
• School Play rehearsal. Act 2.
• I acted out my part on Scene 9 from scratch:
• Deciding on the use of props (which was actually simple).
• Improvising some lines.
• Improvising the character's voice and way of acting.
• Improvising the entering and leaving of the stage.
• Some costumes arrived; my Damien costume arrived that day.
• Some costumes were taken back for final tweaking.
• Tuesday:
• Production during class
• I started painting the mask for my character in scene 9 — Corrigan.
• School Play rehearsal
• The first rehearsal of the last scene of the play with all the actors.
• Parts of my monologue in this scene were changed for a better understanding of the story.
• The whole play was staged for the first time.
• The rest of costumes arrived that day; although again some were called back for tweaks, including my Santhagar costume.
• Wednesday:
• Production during class
• Finished painting Corrigan's mask.
• Fixed scenery.
• School Play rehearsal
• Every actor was taken off class the last two periods to rehearse.
• We did scene changes for the first time.
• Dress rehearsal from 7:30p.m. on.
• Two puppeteers (the ones that taught us how to make puppets near the beginning of the year) saw the play and gave us feedback.
• I had not yet memorized the whole monologue I had as a closing for the play.
• Thursday:
• Production during class
• Finished the last details on the play.
• Class talk about Paucartambo
• We learned about the second day and the third day:
• Parts of the festival and some of the meanings about them.
• The process of baptizing new troupe members.
• We learned about the festivities related to the agricultural cycle.
• The Paucartambo festival is linked to the end of the harvest and restart of the cycle.
• Shadow Queendom Premiere
• We ate pizza about two hours before the play begun.
• Just when we were about to eat, there was a tremor and almost everyone else got out in a chaotic, disorderly manner.
• I shouted "Calm down!" quite strongly.
• My scene as Lord Damien flowed rather smoothly. apart from one or two cases in which another person got very slightly stuck.
• My scene as Corrigan went smoothly, although I didn't get a reaction from the audience as big as I expected.
• The exit I was supposed to go through was blocked, so I nearly got trampled. Teacup and all.
• My scene as Santhagar was, well...
• I got nervous due to the little rehearsing that scene had, so I said parts of the monologue that had been removed.
• During the monologue, I still made long pauses.
• Friday:
• Shadow Queendom, Night 2
• My scene as Lord Damien went smooth. Except when the "prime minister" became confused... He dissimulated it by making use of his puppet.
• My scene as Corrigan went pretty much the same as the day before, except that the girls representing Deborah's conscience screamed before they should have.
• This day, the exit wasn't blocked. I was able to go out on cue.
• My scene as Santhagar went considerably smoother and less tedious; I didn't get stuck. Well, almost.
• Saturday:
• Shadow Queendom, Last Night
• My scene as Lord Damien ran with somewhat less energy than the previous two days.
• My scene as Corrigan had a couple of small variations regarding the previous days:
• I said Hakuna Matata instead of Goosfraba.
• The lights were cut right after that last line, with me saying my last line in the dark
• The Ghosts (aka Deborah's Conscience) did wait for me to go out before screaming
• The exit was yet again blocked. Again I had to dodge actors doing as stagehands.
• My scene as Santhagar had a minor change; I did said the line "Charming... charming" that time, although it didn't work as well as I intended.

Well, this was last week. This week (apart from being banned from class) the only thing we did apart from revising Paucartambo was watching some modern dance. Which I actually liked. That, and the Critique of Sources, part of the Research Project for Higher Level. Anyway, on to analysis.

Analysis

This two weeks can be resumed in a few things. The first one is that time is spare. I came to this realization actually on Wednesday, as we were one day before the premiere and there was way too much to do. Well, okay, a lot of scene changes. And smoothing out. This didn't stress me or cause hysteria; it only led me to the realization of this fact.

Another thing is improvisation. It was key to the making of Scene 9, since I had never acted it out before. I already knew what to do and the character was quite easy to figure out, so it wasn't as hard to improvise the scene. This experience, combined with some of the Commedia dell'Arte investigation I had to do, made me understand that given a sketch and some sample lines, improvising isn't difficult; and is actually a good method of setting up some scenes. In retrospective, last year's school play was directed that way —simple outlines of each scene that were developed into a praised play. The last scene, I remember, originated from a variation of a kid's song I sang the first day we rehearsed that scene; one that instead of talking of elephants balancing in a spiderweb was about ninjas, samurais, and geishas balancing on a couple of witches' web. That, and some funny (and accurate) lines that spontaneously sprouted from a former student of my school that had come to help. Other things that spring to mind are some improvisations during class time or rehearsing for the play. The one that immediately came to me was a short improvisation on Latin Comedy done by a rather big group of people. It went pretty well, but most actions were unclear and most actors were sort of lost onstage. Another of these improvisations was one we did the same year, in fact just a couple of week afterwards; one on Commedia dell'Arte. What I can tell from that experience is that a person cannot forcibly take protagonism in an improvisation; it will simply cause chaos in the performance. Especially if everyone wants the same. More improvisation exercises call to mind, but they bring no further profundity on the theme. Anyway, I can conclude that improvisation isn't the best way to perform (at least not if you're not trained in its methods) yet works quite well as a starting point.

One thing I mostly regret that week was Hakuna matata. The word Goosfraba did make a handful of people laugh, but not nearly as much as I expected. This was probably because just they understood the joke—I didn't get it myself. This was true for the first two days, but the last day I dared change the word to Hakuna matata; gaining the reaction I hoped for (this being the only part I don't regret), but overriding the director's authority. And this part I do regret; mostly because of what it showed younger actors (me supposed to be a role model, being an IBer) but also because it tramples over an authority. And what is a director for if he is not to be respected?

The dance we saw on Thursday made me rethink some old questions and give them new angles. Mainly, what are the differences between theater and dance? Or, actually, where do the similarities between theater and dance end? I'll hold this for the next section.

Connections

Okay, now back to dance versus theater. Theater is about reaching the audience. Dance? No. It is about movements, rather than actions, which is what I thought theater is about. Anyway, now to differences. I guess that dance doesn't need a story. Or, actually, it doesn't have a story most of the time. This one did have a simulacrum of a story, and though it was incredibly simple, it confounded me to no end due to its very simplicity; it left enough to make you realize why some things happened, but not enough to explain most things. Dance doesn't involve words, unlike theater (admittedly, theater doesn't sometimes). I am sure there are more differences than just those two, but it's getting late, so on to similarities. Which are simpler to see. Take reactions, for instance. Characters react to what is happening onstage, and actors rely this to the audience. In dances, dancers react to what other dances do with their movements. So, both involve some synergy amongst performers.

Some connections that I couldn't resist on putting back in the Analysis part were improvisations from past years. The experience gained by them let me reach certain conclusions, and useful ones at that.

Reflection

• How does the passing of time affect performance and performers?
• How can improvisation be used in a way that improves already fixed scenes in non-radical ways?
• What are the most important differences between theater and dance?
• What are the most important similarities between dance and theater?
• How much of puppetry and dance does theater actually include?