CTP #11 Journal (3/9/18):
This week in theatre, our group began to work on scripting our pieces. While we were able to give a base outline for the framework of our piece, we realized that the current version of the script had many actions and words that seemed unnatural in context with each other. We then decided to create a list of all of the scenes and then sublists of essential actions and ideas that we wanted to communicate in sequential order. We worked on this for the first two days and also discussed how we would incorporate our musical element into the piece, of which we ended up deciding to have a couple continuous tracks underlying the whole piece with a few breaks for snippets of our "character songs." On our second work day this week, we continued working a bit on the lists, but we also started to work on our revelation and self-reflection scene. However, we seemed to hit a wall towards the end of the rehearsal and were only able to figure out Jeff's story, Andrew's story, and the beginning of Liesel's story. On our last work day, we worked on revising our script so it matched the events that we listed in the list. I think that this week was very productive even though we were unable to create too much new material because we were able to solidify the scenes that we already had worked through into a more cohesive format. CTP #10 Journal (3/4/18): This week in theatre, my group began to implement one of the theatre practices of devising company Stan's Cafe. We decided that it would be a beneficial activity to try and stay in character for the entire rehearsal process, so that the actors wouldn't be switching between being in character and out of character and would be able to stick within their mindset. While a few actors had difficulty with this, I think that it was a helpful exercise to do since we were able to stay on task and work through more parts of the piece than we had been able to do in previous workdays. In the beginning of the week, we reexamined the plot points of our piece and decided that we would change our basic outline slightly. Instead of having the characters bond and learn to relate to each other in a single culminating scene, we would instead try to emulate a progression as individual relationships are elaborated on and evolve. On our last rehearsal day this week, we finished up the police officer scene and the gas station scene and were able to sucessfully transition into the motel scene. One thing that we noticed after we finished mapping out the scenes was that the energy was extremely low. One thing that we are going to do to remedy this issue is finish writing out the script so that we can identify the exact moments where we need to add more energy. CTP #9 Journal (2/18/18): Last week when we were working on our devising project we had to work through several difficulties involving members of our group being absent. On the first workday, we had everybody present and decided to add a couple different exercises to our list, like the Freeze game, as well as a few others that group members have used before. We used that class session to experiment with how the characters would react to different situations, so we created a loose interpretation of the Freeze game where I would give the actors an idea or a scenario and they would create a scene based around it until I switched the scene again. While we were working on this exercise, we were able to figure out the character relationships a bit more, as could be exemplified in the Pool Scene, where Liesel, Jeff, and Andrew leave Tab to go swimming and bond over that while not knowing that Tab is unable to swim. On the second workday of the week, there were only three of us present, so we decided to work on typing up the script for the various scenes that we had started before. This process was continued on the third workday as well since we were still missing a group member. In addition to that, on the third workday we began to look more closely at the various devising groups and made the decision to use Stan’s Cafe as our primary inspiration with their methods of staying in character as well as their inclination towards real world problems. We also decided that since music had been a reoccurring theme in our objects, that we would attempt to create a playlist that embodied the themes and ideas that we wanted to show through our piece. While doing that, we began to find songs that seemed to represent individual characters within our piece, and started to look at those as a way to further guide the general feeling of our characters. CTP #8 Journal (2/11/18): In our last work session, we were able to move a bit faster since we finally had all of our group members present. We started out our session by talking through what various people had missed in previous meetings and then worked through a couple exercises to help us get in synch with each other, like mirror and triangle. After we finished warming up, we decided to do the car ride exercise where we had five charts set up with two in front and three in back and would improv different scenes that would happen in a car, switching scenes when the driver exited the car. We wanted to do this exercise to start working on a bit of the spacial aspect that we will be working with when we have our driving part of our devised piece. While there weren’t any definitive moments that we were able to picture putting into our piece, I think that it helped us get into the right mindset to start our work on the piece. Once we finished up our exercises with all of us rotating through the seats, we began working a bit on the opening of our piece. Since we had talked a bit about potential ideas for the opening, we were able to do a very rough run-through with a bit of basic blocking. While the other group members were improvising through this part, I was standing back and gave feedback on intention, blocking, and general flow of the scene. We managed to run through the scene about three times, with various changes made throughout that we will continue to implement. While we were able to start out our scene, we are still working on character interaction and development, which will be pretty instrumental pieces of our piece as we intend for all of the characters to go through a revelation period in the middle-end part which will change their relationships. CTP #7 Journal (2/7/18): While I was absent the last class session, my group was able to fill me in on what they were able to work on. According to them, they began working on character roles and assigned me the role of director (which we had discussed together in our first meeting session). They said that they worked through several character exercises to develop basic information about their character such as name and their reason for running away. Wyatt created the role of Andrew (tentative name), who will be the person questioning his religion. Joe's character will be musically inclined and will have an instrument, so that we can incorporate the musical theme that we noticed in our initial meeting. I plan on bringing a few instruments in for the next class session, so that we can see some props for inspiration. While we had initally planned on starting the piece while they were all getting in the car/van and then ending it the next morning when they were getting in the vehicle again, my team discussed the idea of having a bit more of an interlude into the piece where they could convey their motivations for running away more clearly in the beginning. While I understand the resasoning behind that idea, I'm still a bit hesitant about using it since I feel like those motivations could come out later during the night campfire scene where they are starting to learn more about each other. However, when the team was working on their characters, they also came up with some relationships with each other, so the campfire scene wouldn't be as much of a get-to-know each other as we had originally pictured. I think that our next meeting will help us solidify some of those questions that we have about how the piece will start and progress. CTP #6 Journal (2/5/18): In our last theatre class on Friday. we split into two different groups to start creating our devising projects. My group, comprised of Wyatt, Olivia, Joe, and Trinity, started out by writing down all of the objects that we had brought in to class before, and started grouping them into different categories with common themes. A few categories that we looked at were, literature, games, and tropical. After several rounds of this process, I came up with the idea of a road trip, based off of the dashboard hula girl that I had brought in. After I brought up this idea, Wyatt and Joe (Olivia and Trinity weren’t there) agreed that several of our objects fit this theme. Thinking in retrospect about our choice, it seems like something that will fit with our group since our entire group went on what could be considered a small road trip in 9th grade when we went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, making this a shared experience that we can use to bring into our project. After we made that grouping, we made a side grouping of all of our music related objects, and decided that we would want some form of music throughout our piece. With the other objects, we noticed the common theme of stories and storytelling, so we came up with the idea to have two distinct locations in our piece, one being in the car during the daytime when everything is somewhat lighthearted, and the other being at night at a campfire where everyone reveals their deeper selves and fears. We want this piece to show an evolution of the relationships between the characters in a way that’s somewhat akin to The Breakfast Club, where a group of different individuals are all brought together though a set of circumstances that bring them closer together. When we looked at the professional devising groups that we presented on in the previous weeks, we decided that we wanted to utilize the sense of community from Double Edge and the sense of claustrophobia or awareness of space that we saw in Gecko Theatre. As for exercises that we thought would help our piece, we decided that we would try the Family Road Trip Game, the “I’m Going Somewhere, and I’m Taking a Thing” exercise, and the Swiss Cheese exercise to think of ideas. CTP#5 Journal - Inspiration Session:
Though our sharing of objects during the last class session, a few people in the group began to see a trend of correlation between monsters and childhood. Admittedly, the theme of childhood could be just a byproduct of us still being young and therefore many of our important items are from times when we were younger. I think that the idea of children and childhood could be difficult to portray especially since the actors will all be in their late teens, thus negating us from using actual children, which might leave us with using it as a theme of the past (an idea which was already referenced to in the seniors’ collaborative project from last year). In terms of themes, while many people had thought that monsters and childhood were major themes, as were exemplified through the books of Andy and Annika as well as in aspects from the objects of others, I also saw a communal experience through the utilization of music, with some people bringing in songs, pictures of instruments, and my art piece that I got at a music festival. I think that the way that music connects people and gives communal experiences could potentially be an interesting route to go down, if we decide not to engage with the monsters idea. I also think that using music as a theme in the piece (regardless of whether it’s the main theme or not) could be an interesting choice to make, especially since many of our cast and crew play musical instruments or sing to some degree. CTP#4 Agreements Discussion: Yesterday in class, we worked on our collaboration agreements together. We started out by looking at the examples that we found from other theatre companies and by using those, were to gain an understanding of what our agreements would entail. In one of the agreement examples, we were drew to an point that stated to try to not say “no” for at least five minutes after an idea has been stated, so as a collective, we decided to use that idea in our agreement. I think that this could be an interesting part of the process, which I haven't really experimented with before, as many of my previous devising pieces have involved creating a piece as fast as possible with a limited time frame that didn't allow us to consider ideas as in depth as this agreement suggests. Our fourth agreement regarding equal, balanced effort, and teamwork was set in place to ensure that we all have equal footing within to project, and to ensure that no one person can take control of the project or decide not to participate. According to the seniors involved in our project, this had been a problem in previous years, so by instating this agreement we hope to encourage a group mentality where we must all participate equally in order to be successful. The agreement that stood out to me the most out of all of the ones that we decided on was the agreement to advocate both for ourselves and others whenever possible. I think that this agreement will encourage awareness of our surroundings, as in order to advocate for others we will need to focus on our teammates and their ideas as well as ourselves and our personal ideas. CTP#3 Journal Reflection: When I am in the process of creating an original creative piece I find that I work best when the process involves collaborative teamwork with input from everyone, based in enjoyment and combined passion rather than stress and need for completion. In previous projects that I’ve worked on, I’ve been able to draw inspiration from objects from home, which I then brought in to incorporate with the piece. After creating a basic outline of the piece, I tend to start looking towards how the audience will perceive the piece, and I make edits based off of that. CPT#2 HowlRound Article on the Devising Process: The article that I examined for the HowlRound Article on the devising process assignment was one that followed the trials and tribulations of a young group of theatre students attempting to create a devised piece. One part of this article that made me reflect on how we would go about working through this process was their difficulty with merging humor and scientific issues together. They mentioned how they found it difficult to convey dark ideas about the world that we live in while simultaneously keeping the piece humorous, so that the audience would still feel free to laugh. I think that this aspect of their process will show through in our work as we come up with our intended audience and will have to come up with ways to keep the audience interested in our production. One way that this process will differ from ours is in that we will have a much shorter amount of time to create our topic, in addition to the fact that we will not be provided with an overarching theme as they were with “environmental sciences.” http://howlround.com/devising-the-environment-finding-a-narrative-in-the-noise CPT#1: In order to understand one's personal context, it is important to examine their personal interests and values along with the environment that they were raised in. For me, I find that my family’s views and perspectives of the world has contributed greatly to how I perceive many aspects of the world. One example that immediately comes to mind is my family’s view on what constitutes family has shaped how I view relationships, as in my family as my grandma says, “there are three ways that you can become family: you can be born into one, you can be married into one, or you can be adopted, formally or informally.” Due to this philosophy, my family has expanded and resulted in an extremely diverse group, racially and nationality-wise. I would say that I am privileged as I come from a middle-class family and have dual citizenship with Canada and the US, along with the fact that I appear to be white despite the fact that I am biracial. In terms of interests, I find myself drawn to the humanities with theatre as one of my main hobbies along with self-language studying. The types of theatre that I find myself drawn towards tend to be those that require more than one viewing or read in order to understand the complexities and underlying meanings hidden within, and in my experience, those plays usually tend to be darker dramas or comedies. |