Jerzy Grotowski

Jerzy Grotowski's had works on 'Poor Theatre', his movement started in 1968-1980, he wrote a book called 'Towards a Poor Theatre' and this showed the theory of his work. It was that theater should compete with television film, and that it should be brought back to it's original routes where actors would act live in front of a spectator on stage. He saw this as an important factor, this was demonstrated through Grotowski's rehearsals as a black set was used and also black clothing, during this time he made it evident that actors needed to have control over their bodies and also their breathing and voice, strenuous and vigorous exercises were done to achieve this. His demand for the actor's was to have them engage in both themselves and also the audience to find something deep within them. Grotowski aims to train his actors to be 'holy' in the way that they had to leave their egos behind and their personalities in order to become the character that they are designed to be, also through extreme mental and physical training the actors helps to expose their innermost being. In class we did exercises involving physical training with our bodies then there are vocal training too. We did an exercise based off the harlem shake where we had to use every part of our body from our toes to our head and so Nour started the Harlem shake and everyone first started doing their own movement then to allow us to alter our body movement Mrs. Morris would shout at now you are walking on glass, hot coals, you are excited, you are sad and with each mood/feeling we were capable of changing our bodies. What I realized was everyone had quite the same mind set whenever we had to change our emotions, for example when it was time to get excited everyone was waving their hands high up in the hair and shouting and screaming, and jumping, using their whole body, actors had to do this for rehearsals for 5 minutes straight and I could not even do it for 3 minutes it was so exhausting afterwards, and if we had to act tired all our bodies would just slouch and down to our feet we would be wobbly, then we did some vocal exercises where we had to go from a low tone to a high tone, saying a specific word, it was quite peculiar to see how low we can start then go very high, and I found it fascinating how Grotowski's actors had to do this for 3 minutes and we only lasted 30 seconds, it had a long of constraint on our voice box because we weren't used to it. In class we also watched a scene from Woza Albert, where they used minimal props to depict certain things, such as the white boss by wearing a ping pong ball, and on set they would just have a box to represent different things, a car or a train, when we watched it they moved around a lot and so the actors have to be fit to be able to use their voice and body movements to the best of their potential, and also once they start sweating, you know they are doing their job well. By the end of all the exercises I was mentally and physically drained.

Peter Pan

After seeing the Peter Pan teaser for 45 minutes there were a few aspects that I thought were well presented and thought through whereas others were quite confusing. Firstly to comment on the set what I noticed straight away was the the zip line coming from the back of where the audience are sitting to the front of the stage, also on stage there was a huge brown/orange looking rock, however for me it was too shiny but maybe this was done intentionally for the kids to grab their attention, I noticed there was a black structure with stairs, it looked like a mini stage and under it there was empty space, so at first I thought it might be a boat, but then when I saw the mushroom on top with the humidifier I got confused as to what it actually was. With the characters I noticed that the Pirates were all singing and projecting their voices which was great and also their clothing suited their characters they wore reds, whites and blacks and also had swords with them. Peter Pan was handsome looking, he wore quite a lot of greens to blend in with nature, I loved the idea of having tinker bell not talk and every time she said something there would be a jingling noise, however I noticed as she was running or doing any kind of action her wings would go skew, but I don't think she could of done anything about it, but just something I noticed, also with tinker bell,  I noticed she had point ears on which made it look more realistic.The kids who lived with peter pan were very cute, they played their parts great and were very childish, also they had shredded clothing of browns and dark greens which helped them also blend into their surroundings. Wendy's brothers had on pajamas and both their characters were well played, Wendy wore a pink dress, and I thought her role was great, her projection was clear however sometimes she was mumbling as she was speaking too fast. As the play progressed the structure I thought was a boat became a hiding spot for the children when the pirates arrived, it was covered in leaves and was great for hiding. What caught me by surprise was when peter pan flew in, I thought it would be dangerous but he made it happen and he did so very well, he played he's character with passion. Also another thing that was quite humorous was when I saw the crocodile, moving on stage but with a skateboard I thought this was clever idea since crocodiles move very swiftly. 

Classical Monologue

For this unit, we had to choose a classical monologue to memorize and perform, meaning we had to research a classical monologue that referred to either Greeks or Shakespeare. Since I was not familiar with any classical monologues I had to do some research and came across a woman's monologue in one of Shakespeare's plays Alls Well Ends Well for a woman named Helena. As I read through the monologue I realized that she is deeply in love with a man and I also recognized her physical movements as she says I kneel before you. Before I could proceed to perform it, I first needed to research as to whom she was talking to and also her setting as this determines her actions as well. I found out that Helena, the orphan daughter of a famous physician, is the ward of the Countess of Rousillon, and hopelessly in love with her son, Count Bertram, who has been sent to the court of the King of France. Despite her beauty and worth, Helena has no hope of attracting Bertram, since she is of low birth and he is a nobleman. So, in this scene she is in the Countess's Palace, asking the Countess for her blessing to marry her son. I went through the monologue and wrote down stanza by stanza what type of tone I would use, and also what would I be doing physically. For the formative performance, I started off kneeling down to her, and afterwards got up and started pacing around as I was talking to her, then towards the end I came back to my knees and tried to look even more scrawny, since I wanted to depict that if she does not marry him she would die, because she even mentions that towards the end of her monologue and so I thought it felt appropriate to look like that. My feedback and what I also realized afterwards was that I was too much in a state of begging to her rather than in this genuine state telling her I love her son and that I want to marry him and even Mrs. Morris agreed, she said whenever I talk about him I should be serious, and at the same time be passionate yet delicate towards her, since Helena knows that this man is out of her league and so she has to be respectful. Also what was a challenge for me was memorizing the Shakespearean language which of course we are all not used to since we don't talk like that, however I think with studying Shakespeare in English it gave me an advantage and was quite comfortable and familiar with the language, the language is quite poetic and has that feeling of intense love, I feel when a person expresses themselves through Shakespearean language it sounds more pure and honest and so I adjusted my tone of voice and articulation to suit the character. By overcoming these obstacles I first practiced quite a bit to set the tone and mood of the setting, instead of pacing around I fixated my eye at one point and made that point The Countess and as if I was talking to her so I stood still when I got back, to emphasize my love for her son rather than starting on my knees I fell to my knees as I thought this would be more effective and would see her reaction as being surprised and also that Helena has the courage to tell her this. The class also told me that my facial expressions were very good when I didn't even realize I was exaggerating them that much, but I think it's because I was so endured into my character.

Whose afraid of Virginia Woolf

For Whose afraid of Virginia Woolf written by Edward Albee which is a drama, a black comedy, my partner Suyin and I were assigned to choose a scene from the play and perform it, we chose a part where Martha was talking to her guests Honey and Nick about George, however she was criticizing George on his career and also insulting him. We chose this particular scene since it portrayed their personalities quite well at the beginning of the play where Martha was empowering over George and the audience could tell that the two people were very distinct from each other, we wanted to make this evident by our performances. Also present in this scene emerges some of the themes throughout the play such as alcohol, mental abuse and fantasy. Suyin played George and I played Martha, I thought that performing this scene would be quite easy since I already knew the characters and their personalities, and how they act. When we presented the formative in front of the class, we had to think about blocking and so what we decided was that I being Martha would be sitting down while I talk to the guests and George would just arrive and also he stands up to pour himself a drink, which adds different levels to the scene, also another aspect I liked about this scene is that it adds suspense and tension towards the end where there's a climax. I thought for the first time we did the blocking great and in my mind I thought I depicted Martha's character well, however the feedback we got was that I was not 'mean' enough or not treating Suyin (George) more as if he were nothing, it was a challenge for me to play this type of 'meaty' character, since I'm not generally an aggressive person and also another struggle I found was that every time I have to play a person who is older than me, I can't seem to get the tone correct to make it sound more of the age I'm playing. For Suyin I noticed that for the first performance she was somewhat holding back her character, George is vulnerable however he should be reacting to everything I am saying since I am insulting him. To overcome these obstacles I just had to allow my myself to be more endured into the character and have that thought of talking to someone who is useless and has no purpose in life, someone who is lazy and slacking around, that's the image I had in my mind, and for the tone I just had to pace myself and had to lower and make my voice higher at times, also I changed my gestures and always faced Suyin when I was talking to her so she can know I am always focused on her and belittling him in front of people and even at times pointing at him, and making facial expressions which looked disgusted. Also I saw Suyins character come out more, because at one time he drops his drink in a glass on the floor, and so there she lashed out really well to build the suspense in the end where we end up screaming on top of one another, so at the beginning we were quite mellow however building up the tension.