post number 6

so, we had a showcase on thursday, for the seniors.

here was some of the responses:

1) metaphors, for the house scene, the remote can be used as a power status/control between the couple, to make the DV more defined.

2) more dramatic and varied actions.

3) work on dramatic pauses.

4) keep up the energy of the pieces.

and so, after hearing all this comments, we headed out to better the house scene, which had a lot of problems.

so, mark and i wanted to use the  remote as the power status and it was a great idea, since we had a focus for the piece and also, another idea for the sound was built. basically, the "husband" which is actually the woman will have the football/soccer channel as a mark of his turf and reign. also, we decided to make the masculinity more obvious for the female. also, there were problems with the length and placing of the table and i guess we need more practice and markings might be place-small- so that we don't go so very off.

as for the wife, the man, will have oprah winfrey as his channel and we have made him more sensitive and emotional, much like the typical stereotype of a woman. anyways, i think that with this as the focus, the scene is much more coherent and sucinct and i feel more comfortable.

the only thing is that i don't know if i want to make the husband and wife to be loving, or outrightly enemies from the start. i have to make the decision soon.

i am also worried for the rope scene, as we don't have feedback for it yet and i'm not sure if our DV can be clearly seen in that scene, and we still need to refine it, but it is hard since mel is sick and i don't want her to come for rehearsals in case she spread the sickness to the rest, which would be worse. so, i think once she is back, we will show the rope scene to TGO and get feedback.

the sound for the house, proposal and box scene is set,  just the rope scene to comfirm.

suryadi and i have already bought the face paint today and we will have a full run on tuesday, complete with face paint, costume, set, lights, sound. and we need to train our tech crew and be trained too.

the group is still working and communicating well together.

god save us.

post number 5

ohayo!

so, the showcase has already passed and i feel great because the M&Ms had got good and constructive feedback from the audience- so yes! i feel motivated to continue doing well!

some of the comments were(even though i was not there)

1) improvements to be made to the facial expressions.

yes. that is true. thus, this goes back to the mime exercises that we have to practice more- given the limited time. so, i will have to set aside more time to practice this.

2) the movements must be more presice and succinct.

i think that this flaw is inevitable because firstly, we are not trained professionaly in mime but other than that, i think with more practice, we can improve our mime ability.

3) stock type characters? to make the characters more identifyable

this is yet to be decided, but roughly, most of the group members are aggreable that their own character has certain traits identifyable to them so that it makes the movements easier to choreograph.

4) buy long sleeved t-shirt

on the way. and thank god we have funds. yeah beby, $100!~

5) must have equal distribution of the roles

this has been my ultimate worry because, the fact that our DV is about gender subversion and reversal, most of the scenes tend to have more guy parts and the girls are left without much to do. TGO also mentioned that each person should be "in charge" of one scene to ensure the equal distribution, which we have allocated already. so, to solve this problem, we have a 4th scene, this one with the focus on girls. i know we are pushing the time limit so now we have to be more accurate in our movements so it all goes back to the mime(actors) and how well we can accomplish our scenes. Gambatte!

more about the 4th scene: Rope scene

the fourth scene is basically how 2 macho girls wants to court to boy that they see and they do it ruthlessly, much like how boys woo girls. this idea makes use of the rope aspect of mime, because we all liked the "rope" exercise and we decided to integrate this into our piece. furthermore, our DV is seen when the girls are the ones going after the boys, destroying the age old notion that guys have to be the one courting the women. also, the ways in which the women are presented are more macho and will be comical to watch.

the set is simple, in a park, with a bench. we'll see what we can do with the bench. lots of ideas.

as the director: i was pleased that our piece got the thumbs up and i feel that a huge load is lifted off my back, that we were on the right track. also, i could continue doing my job and i like it.

so, i have decided with the groups to lower the timings for the scenes so that we can add in the 4th scene. i think that i have a lot of ideasa as to how to improve the 4th scene and how the actors should move and how to make this scene more comical.

i will continue trying my best. =)

as for the lights, i think that the lights that i have set were not a problem during the showcase and i feel that we need to try the facepaint with the lights, so that will come when we actually buy the face paint.

again, i would want the set to be lighted just enough for the actions and expressions to be seen and also, to get the feel of the area, be it a park or dining room.

group: as for the group, i think that in my absence, the members are stepping up more and i feel that our group has not much conflicts and are mostly professional. i look forward to working with them.

good job and keep striving!

post number 4

Hola!

since the last post, there has been several changes:

the possible removal of the hiking and shopping scene- reason: there is lack of energy and also i am unsure that the audience can grasp our message in this scenes. also, these scenes were particularly demanding in the physical context and i felt that we were not able to fully meet the criteria that the scene needs. the obvious answer would be to train harder but there is that limit, i felt. however, we will see if we can still place the scenes into the piece if we manage to improve our physicality and our control of muscles(yes, none of us are flexible). so, it might be scraped off!

however, there is a bright side when we have a newer scene:

box scene- to show that girls are stronger physically than guys, contrary to popular believe. so, the scene goes like this, guy finds box on floor, tries to move it aside, another guy comes along to help him. both are unable to push it aside. at the last part, two girl comes along and carries the box away effortlessly.

this scene, i believe, has a lot of potential to be comedic as well as train our movement. also, the story is simple and easily understandable to the audience.

so, with the DV in mind, i set out to see this scene unfold. we had the basics settled, but, the elements and more subtle actions in the scene needs to be choreographed. i had some problems, because, i left the actors move by themselves, i told them the situation and then i let them decide what they wanted to do and with their actions, i would comment or tell them the mistakes and better the movements. however, i realise, that at times, some of them just stood where they were, without initiative, waiting for me to tell them what to do. this gets a bit frustrating as i cannot concentrate on individual actors but rather, i prefer to look at the scene as a whole and from there, change the little details. 

another problem was the lack of energy from some of the actors, as though they cannot wait for rehearsal to end. but in the end, i think that we manage to cross the hurdle and bring our concentration level back up. 

i feel that i am sometimes focusing my directions to the scene to make it more funny than conveying the DV, so i need to take note of that little fact. 

most of the time, i find that the actors are on their feet and they are not lazy and can find actions to do on stage, just that i need to make sure that the energy in the sketches are not dispersed and that there actors who are in the scene are not just acting as props.

for the restaurant scene, i think that there needs to be better timing for the actors and that they need to take their moment to show the audience their intentions and their facial and body expression, this way, it would be more effective in placing the DV across.

i have the same comments for the house and box scenes, however, i think that physicality needs to be noted by the actors(especially me!) and cannot break out of character. i realise this. however, i think to perfect the timings, the most important thing to note is that the sound is not in yet and the real timing can only come in when the sound is finalised. this will be done next week.

as the set designer, i have had to make choices, especially in the case of props, and having made the decision to stay true to the minimalist and also pantomime aspect, i have taken away tables(restaurant and house scenes) and also, i do not recommend to have a real box on stage. i might be wrong, but i am hoping for feedback during the showcase and we will consider the comments given then.

as the lighting designer also, i have lit up the set to be bright enough for the acting space to be seen yet not too bright, accordingly to the needs of the different scenes. since the focus is not lights, i don't think this would be a problem, however, if there are comments to have more lighting effects, i will change and consider as need be.

i think that the group is doing okay in terms of chemistry but i feel that more commitment and energy is needed during rehearsals. we need to step up our game as we have not been meeting deadlines because of the many changes to the script but i want to be more efficient.

i am looking forward for the day when we can perform a really good piece of total theatre and mime.

GAMBATTE!

third post

okay. this is the last change for the DV and story. we have gotten the approval of the great one and i don't think i can stand any more changes.

to sum it all,

1) we did not focus on the theme: Politics of identity.

thus, we have incoporated the idea of gender roles. the traditional gender roles of men and women, in the modern society, does it still stand, how is it different. the subversion of the roles, women can be stronger than men, or men might not be the one who can propose.

2) we now have 4 scenes, to show the subversion of roles.

• camping scene
• restaurant scene
• living room scene
• shopping scene

obviously, our objective is to make the scenes as funny as possible and also to put across our DV as succintly as possible, while being true to mime.

3) there was trouble with the costume but we have decided to use marcel marceau's traditional mime with the black and white and also face paint.

4) another trouble with the set, do we do it with as little props as possible? yes, i think but progressing on to rehearsals, we still have time to see how it goes.

Director role:

we had a rehearsal where we choreographed the first scene, the living room one.

i think that it went relatively well, but i don't know if it is funny enough.

so, i started of with warm ups. then, i asked the actors, myself included to start the scene however we want, as the character. this is to make the process more comfortable for the actors. from there- we changed our actions to be more dramatic.

i realised that mime is very difficult, so, since we were still amateurs, i had restricted the space for the actors so that the focus of the audience is clear and also, i made sure that all the actors know the space that we were using, where the table, chair, mop was. it was hilarious to be pretneding ecause somethines, we forget that there is a table there and we don' realise it.

to solve that problem, i thought of using the real props to practice on, for the actors to get use to, then, once we are used to the space and the actions, we can take away the props and then we can rehearse.

another problem was our lack of power, so, advice: train all of our core - sit ups and crunches on on time- and practice more.

the problem was that we did not hava an audience to tell us if something was working or not. and also, sometimes the actions are not that funny and we are stumped with what to do next. so, we had to capture the moment and make sure that we were on the right timing.

also, all of our movements needs to be precise, right to the number of times we mop the floor or play tug of war. so, i will have to take down copious notes next rehearsal and make sure that we are on the right track.

so, we have the first 5 mins and first scene down and i think that it is still rough and we need more practice, although i am not sure it the DV is brought out effectively in this scene. so i will have to think about ways to make it better. the sound will be done this sunday and i think that a good sound for this piece would be one that starts of homey and also alive when husbamd and wife are arguing. the wife, i think needs to show that she is career minded and she is not a typical wife, so that will have to be shown more.

i have researhed more about pantomime and corporeal mime, and i think our piece veers more towards the pantomime where we use conventional gestures and expression to convey our story, by marcel marceau.

we only have 3 weeks left and i think we need to be faster and more efficient by our group chemistry is fine.

i am to have the next 2 scene choreographed by next week, along with the sounds and i need to badger mark for the script. it takes quite a while to choreograph 5 mins worth of mime and it is quite tiring, you have to bend your body and control your muscles and it is not the most comfortable thing to do. but, i will keep trying hard.

will watch more mime vidoes and read more! *sighs*

more soon!

post number two

there has been a lot of changes to our group piece.

the most major of which is the change of our directorial vision and also the storyline. also, there was a change of skills from multi-media to sound.

let's start from the end of last post.

so, we had rehearsals with mime for the first time. before anything, we did exercises following a mime book, it was tough and interesting at the same time, we had to distort our bodies and also control them at the same time. isolation was key to mime and the actor needs to crucially control all of his muscles. so, we had the doing things in slow motion and also, freezing. another element to mime is in having imagination and thus, we each gave out scenarios and mimes them out differently, for example, imagine you were walking your dog in the park, he pooped and while you are cleaning up after him, he runs away, you chase him and at last you carry him back home.

i felt that this tested our ability to see the objects and feel it, even when it is not there and consequently, we practised with the wall. yes. the infamous wall. i think that these mime exercises were important however, as the director, i felt that our skills were sorely lacking and futhermore, we had not a teacher to tell us if were we right or wrong.

with this in mind, we started the first scene.

originally, i left the actors to do what they felt was the best for their characters and the scene. however, i felt that the scene lacked energy and thus, i had to stop the scene and added in my inputs, to tell them things that might get more energy and to tell them when they did not fulfill the emotions and feelings of the character. the only trouble was that no one did this for me, mostly, i told them what was wrong and gave my advise, but since i can't watch myself act,, i had no idea how to help myself. so i had to ask them to tell me what was erong with my performance and from there, i practiced.

another element that i had read about and introduced to the group was the use of the neutral mask. since we cannot make one or buy one, we made use of the white masks we found in the dressing room. i told the actors to act with the mask on to make them less dependent on their facial expression since mime essentially used the whole body. this reaped success as i could see that with the mask on, our movements were more concise and the meaning is conveyed even without the facial expression being seen.

the other part of our skill was not really focused on. i had given suggestions that for each part of the scene, we would flash a picture that would give another way of seeing the whole situation, however, it did not work that well. we could not find the right pictures and i think that the multi media is overshadowed by the mime. so , this is one of the main reasons that we changed the skills to sound, having 2 piano players on our group and also, the sound would be a better medium to enhance the atmosphere and mood of the mime play.

we showcased our ideas and the first scene to the class and we had the raised eyebrow from TGO. i felt a bit diasppointed because i had spend so much time and effort on this and the results left some thing to be desired. one of the major problems that i can tell is:

1) we are following to strictly a storyline that does not cater to mime.
2) an advice was that we could just use situations as the tradition of mime is mostly situational comedy, where we laught seeing the mime try to get his way out of a tricky-not necessarily out of this world-situation.
3) we were not adapt at the techniques of mime- need to practice more. advice= watch videos and practice from there. reading is not enough.
4) not funny enough and we should not try to mime out every sentence.
5) melvyn told me that some of us were not really miming, rather acting without words and in my scene with suryadi, i was overshadowed by him.

i guess i need to practice just a little more so as to not be overshadowed by the other mimes.

initially, we had a few changes to the storyline where gabriel the angel was changed to mimi, lucifer's minion because we thought that gabriel's role was too minor and susu's talents cannot be showcased fully.

before the showcase, i took up the job of the lights since mark was busy with the multimedia aspect, thus, i found myself with another job, lighting manager! i must really btush up my skills so that i can give the group fantastic lightings and score fabulously!

thus, with the advise:
1) be specific, what type of mime tradition are you using?
2) do you really know enough about mime?
3) the multimedia did not work, try sound.
4) use the situation to make things funny
5) watch mime vidoes.

we set out to create a better piece of work.

the next meeting.

i proposed for a change in the DV because our old one is not really suitable for a piece to be situational, so following some elements of our old DV, the new one is:

materialism in society today and how it is inherent in all social classes.

this i felt was something i could relate to, because in thins world, only money talks. and i felt that it would be easier to make out scenarios based on humans' desire to get richer.

after much deliberation, our new story is basically 4 characters, from different social classes and their goal is to get more money by any means possible. even though it is a story, i feel that each scene is a situation, all happens in a park and each scene, the characters play out their individual wants to get their goal:$$$!

as a director, after watching a lot of videos of mime on youtube, i think that i had the wrong impression of mime. i though it was all about being exaggerated, but i realised that it is not all about that. mostly, it is finding the comedy in the situation and playing it out for the audience.

i think that there is a mime company in singapore and i will try to ask them if they have the courses on mime for us.

in the meantime, i think that my group still largely functions well and we are cooperative with each other. only sometimes, susu and melissa needs a bit of encouragement to talk and voice out their ideas. other than that, we work well together.

more updates soon!

post number one

We have named our group the M&Ms.

At first, did not know what to do. None of us had done any DS skills because we had always been acting. So, this was our first taste at total theatre and i was looking forward to learning and experiencing new forms of theatre, even though i was wary that it was going to take a lot of hard work.

For our first meeting, we had thrown out ideas for a story first. the theme was "politics of identity" and the group had many things that they wanted to show. there was an idea about homosexuality and many more but in the end, we all agreed on Mark's initial idea of souls in heaven.

We began to expand on the idea to turn it into angels and how the protagonist, Heath, is a normal angel but he longs to be of a higher rank, to shine brighter than he already is. he is not happy with himself just being an ordinary angel. his soulmate, Livvy notices this and she helps him attain his goal to make him happy, but she sacrificed herself. she makes a deal with Lucifer, the devil but Lucifer(being the evil one) sabotages Livvy and Heath and gets them into trouble with the archangel, Gabriel. Livvy takes the blame for it and Heath does not tell the truth, in the end, he attains his goal by saving the day, but he forgets about Livvy and he compromised what he believed in.

this storyline appealed to me because of the fact that it was not about humans, rather, it was about angels, the beings that is supposed to be the ultimate good, but they also have their vices and they are fallible. this is a good lesson to humans, to show that when you actually want something so bad, you might think that you are doing the right thing, but you are actually hurting others as well as yourself. i thought that this was a lesson that most people can learn and carry on.

Thus, following this incredible storyline, the directorial vision or concept is: when one is not happy with what they have and want to attain success and greater status, they will eventually lose themselves and in the process, hurting those they care about and this happens even to the best of people.

the next problem that we encountered was the choosing of the skills, all of us we leaning towards acting, because it was in our comfort zone and we thought that a movement skill would really suit the angel story. so, we had acing and movement, but what movement. in the end, we decided on dance because both melissa and suryadi have dance background, albeit not modern dance one and it could be to our advantage. also, the dance would also suit the story because the feelings and emotions of the characters can be expressed more clearly than when just acting.

we decided on contemporary dance because it was the genre that we thought suited best with the story, then, we checked out books about ballet and dance exercises to read. we though that a mixure of acting and dance would be interesting and fairly do-able.

the roles of the group was also decided(see group blog) and i was the director and set designer. i am looking forward to directing the piece but i am not so sure about my set skills but that will be a challenge for me to take up.

so far, i think the group is quite efficient. we like to get things done fast and on time and we do not waste that much time with unnecessary things. i felt that the rules that we gave out before the group began really helped put our priorities in order. we get along good and i hope to continur this way.

the trouble came when the first scene of the play was scripted, we met up and started to choreograph the dance to the first scene together since the choreographers did not kow exactly what to do. as the director, i firstly asked my cast to do a character analysis- following Stanislavski's method- so that they understand their motivations. once that is done, we watched youtube vidoes on dance movements and we decided which of the movements looked the easiest and the most accurate to the mood of the scene. however, we did not set a music first and we did not have our own moves, most of it was copied by the vidoes.

we taped it(see group blog) and when we watched it, we though that it was painful to watch and furthermore, we did not know how to continue choreographing the rest of the scenes and i realise that we needed to change the skills to better suit our talents and storyline. thus, we went to get advice from the great one.

in the meantime, i was reading a book called theatre of movement and gestures by jacques lecoq and i had the idea of using mime for the story. i thought that it would be fun to learn how to mime and it would be easier than dancing. i pitched the idea and the group considered it. as a director, i think that our piece had a lot of potential and i felt that choosing a movement skill would better enhance our directorial vision. mime would be perfect also as a new skills to learn. i still don't know what type of mime we are going to use, pantomime or mime so i guess a lot of research must still be done. one of the inspiration included the play that we watched, which was samuel beckett's acting without words as i felt that the meaning of the characters can be seen clearly even when they don't talk. also, i am worried abput own lack of skills for mime, but we have borrowed books on them and are going to start practising them soon.

we also changed acting to multi-media as we though it better suited the cncept of mime, without the words, we can use the multi-media for our "voices" to be heard. i feel that this idea is very good and i also have several ideas of my own. for example, i was thinkng we could have "GOD" speaking and the smaller version of the angels' conscience and this can be projected on a screen, in this was, we can hear the character's thoughts at the same time make the piece more interesting. also, miss norzian had given advice, for example, to do more than project pictures and videos, like the chess game. we are definitely considering this idea and i think if we do this, it will add a lot of depth to the story.

also, when we were meeting at mark's, we realise that we can make our own sound effects on his keyboard, so that is also another element of our story.

however, i think that Lucifer(my character) can still use the dance move that we found so as to make her more interesting. this is my character analysis!

location: hell

nickname: the devil

wants: to destroy the good name of heaven and the angels in them and to create havoc and chaos wherever i go.

personality: i am a complete and utter narcissist. evil, sinister and damn proud of it. i am the epitome of the seven deadly sins and moer. i revel when humans -and angels- fall prey to doing bad things and that is where i get my power, as long as there is hatred, jealousy, chaos, war in the world, i will always be there, the one to cause or worsen it. i hate angels, those goody two shoes and good for nothing idiots and one they they will all bow down to me. i love to have fun, and since i have nothing else to do right now, i might as well wreck havoc with little Heath, i have sensed that he is weak and vulnerable and i have just the thing for him. i am meticulous in whatever i do and selfish. i will destroy anyone who gets in my way-anyone and i work alone. i am the best and you better believe it.

powers: i can control humans' mind. i am the most powerful in Hell and everyone there listens to me. i have fire powers and i can shoot bolts of lightning from my fingertips. it gives me great pleasure to intimidate people with my powers. i can change my appearence at will and i generally like to take on the shape of a human woman as i find it more comfortable and sexy. not to mention, i can wear awesome shoes- the only things that humans invent worth mentioning, darling give me jimmy choos and you'll be my sidekick in hell. oh yeah, i can teleport at will too.

relationship with Livvy: ah, sweet and innocent Livvy, who is so desperately in love with the weak willed Heath. she is pretty eough, i suppose but the sight of the pink and shiny wings turning black will be very enjoyable for me. her love for heath will be her downfall and i will make sure that she will be a creature of hate by the time i'm through. she will be mice.

relationship with Heath: he wants to be at the top, and i'm just the person to help him do this. this is the perfect opportuniy for me to let his wants and greed consume him so that he lose himself and he will not know what hit him. i will have among the angels, a selfihs and greedy soul and not too lang, everyone will be the same way. i love my plan.

relationship with gabriel: he is a SOB. i cannot stand the sight of him and his presumptuous self. i will get my revenge to him for all the time he bested me and you better watch out darling, Lucifer will kick your butt.How: my elaborate plan involves tricking livvy into make heath embrace his inner selfishness and desire to get to the top so that he stop doing good deeds and things for the greater good-bah! i will sabotage the souls and intercept them so that they go to hell instead of heaven. i will have more minions to order around and i like it. muahahaha(insert evil laughter)

more updates soon!

rules for posts

Every member should keep a weblog detailing the process of carrying out his or her individual 

primary and secondary duties. The following must be considered:  

 

 Inspirations and influences for the storyline and skill(s) chosen 

 Performance traditions / theories related to acting and skill(s) chosen 

 Explanation of creative choices made 

 Significant moments or turning points that contributed to the final product