OMGOODNESS ANOREXIA

We are casting.... or trying to... I am really struggling with deciding to do offstage for three reasons:
1. We don't have enough big roles and I think if I got nine little roles I would seriously be dissapointed and bereft ( selfish thought i know)
2. If I tell Miss Mace i want to do offstage she might have been considering me for a main part and I never would have known (more selfish thoughts... but that's the truth)
3. I have some really GREAT ideas about publicity and FOH and know i would love it if i did it... but I worry i would have regrets....

Yes anyway I guess I can say freely that I would really like to play the Girl because I think it is a chllange... to get into that mindset etc etc. I am not normally the type of person who likes big roles, but the Girl fascinates me. She really does. She might be boring (as some say) but i think she is soooo interesting. So yes...that is the part I would like but i trust Miss Mace that she will do her very best to give everyone a role she thinks they will excell in. I know I will love my role in the end anyway.

So yes....casting list on tuesday will be a mix of emotions.... but after speaking to Miss Mace i think even if I am shocked, I can give it a bash and end up happy in the end.

Good luck to you all!

--^ChArACtErS^--

In class we have started a moved reading (?) of Mirror Mirror. We have temporarily stopped because there were issues we needed to resolve. I feel there IS negative energy in the group even if other's can't see it. I agree with Jenna however that alot of it is to do with our tenseness because we feel like we are competing with each other. AFter our team games i think we still did feel closer, but I must admit i truly believe that the negative energy will dissipate after we have been casted.

In terms of casting, as wierd as this sounds, I am not going to put what characters i want on my blog. just in case you were wondering why they are not on here :)

However, I will give you guys a list of the roles i like, not just for myself but just in general....
- aMazing clowns
- Incredible school girls
- a Roaring funny circus troup
- a Realistic mother
- Outstanding girl
- a Radical voice

Oh wow aren't i clever he he he can't you tell im bored.... :)

~*ThE iNviSIbLe GiRL*~

I have started reading a book called The Invisible Girl. It is about a girl who had anorexia. She was from London and wrote comedy. However, she became depressed and moved out of home. She developed aborexia not that long afterwards. Her father and family wrote the book after her death. They discuss the huge wedge that the eating disorder drove into their family life. Although the book does not explore what went on through the girl's mind, it gives a true and terribly distressing account of what families go through with children who have an eating disorder. As the title suggests, the family 'disappeared' when the disorder came along. They lost contact with their daughter and soon she acted as if she couldn't even see them. The story is a sad one, and i am sure it will help me to understand what an eating disorder can not only do to yourself, but to your family as well.

More ideas on Mirror Mirror:

-Costumes: I think costumes are an importnat part of a character. However, a character is defined by those who sees them, or plays them. I personally think that even if we have a costume designer (hint hint ally) each actor should still decide what THEY think their character would wear. That way we wont end up with costumes that are interpretations of simply a costume designer, but a mix of both that and the actors.

-Staging: Although Ms Mace is in charge of this area, I personally do not think theatre in the round will work. It has been suggested to make the atmosphere more circusy, BUT it will put the pressure on us to perform to all sides of us. This could bring down some people's marks and boost other's, however it is a pretty risky option to take.

I think the stage could be set up as a thrust stage or 'circular' stage. This way there are still sides but the audience can not possible feel left out if they are behind the action. I also think in terms of props that if looking at "the circus is the life of your time", we should be looking at using props and stage setting similar to what on would find in a circus.

Here are some images of ideas....

This picture still has elemnts of circus to it but is still distinctly a theatre. The material gives a great affect and lighting plays a big part...

This picture shows a thrust stage used for a circus. The lights are effective at portraying the carnival atmosphere and the costumes add to the whole secene. The audience can see from all sides except the back but is no less effective as a circus.

:JeT of BLoOd:

I went to see Jet of Blood yesterday and it was terrifying and fascinating and grotesque. I could never try and explain the plot as there was no chronologicalality in the events that happened onstage. There was a sex scene in it yes and MS MACE DOWNPLAYED IT QUITE A BIT because the actors were a lot closer than she said they would be. Basically because it was abstract, the actors weren't having sex at all. The man, who was actually dressed as a baby, had a cheese grater on his left hand. With the grater, he 'fisted' the girl and she reacted. Quite gross actually. There were actually lots of gross sexual things in it. All well. The most important thing was the sound. The music used was crucial to how the audience reacted. At one point the music rose to a screaming climax that actually had me covering my ears in apin. At another point the music was so scary that holly and I stopped watching because we were so tense. There were so many shocks and scares too. Like this guy who plays 'death' coming right up to me and kiah and staring right at us after killing someone else. That scared the beejeebes out of us. aNd at one point, someone's phone went off (we still dont no if this was just acting) and a cats member went up to them and slapped them. That shocked everyone. There was a lot of nervous laughter he he. There is so much more that i guess that can give you sort of an idea of something....i dont no. It was really amazing though. It gave me a real appreciation for absurdist theatre...

xoxo

Anorexia

I looked up some things on anorexia..... this site is really good for finding out anything you want to know about HOW REAL girls feel about their anorexic lives. Although many of the girls on this site are probably not clinically anorexic, many are.

http://community.livejournal.com/proanorexia


Go there! You will see........

Express yourself ism

Today we started at looking at EXPRESSIONISM which is a form of theatre about funny enough...expressing yourself! Well actually there is a lot more to it, like abstract lighting and set design and the inner feelings portrayed such as vanity, paranoia and depression. After doing some theory work about it, we started on an impro piece of our own. In group of three we needed to pick an emotion or feeling that couldn't be expressed properly and use the medium of movement to express the emotion.

I was with Adele and Jenna for this part, and we started with the idea of depression. Adele was the person struggling with depression. I was 'depression' and Jenna was 'happiness'. Our piece basically shwoed the struggle between the two. ADele wakes up and at first she is happy, and then the depression sets in and begins to fight for her mind. As the piece progresses happiness gets pushed further and further away until Adele slumps on the floor, reaching out for happiness but it's too far away to reach. We worked really well i thought. We were focused when we were doing our piece and it looked really effective.

Our expressionist pieces iwll help us to understand how we are supposed to perform in the play. Our movement decides a lot on how we are casted. The play has elements of expressionism in it so this is an area we need to explore in order to have a successful performance.

Random ideas for Mirror Mirror:
(I'm just documenting them so i don't forget)
- Front of House: Red and White stripes of cardboard along the wall to give the illusion of a cirvus tent, and the ringmaster at the door ripping 'stubs' of the tickets.
- In the interval, have a real carnival atmosphere with fairy floss machines (this wasn't my idea- it was Jenna and Adele's...isn't it great!?)
- Things hanging from roof.... tightrope across the top of the audience... ( a real circus feel) with circusy music playing when people walk in...

-Publicity: Massive circus posters labelled Mirror Mirror.... set out like a circus poster etc etc.

-The Voice: A confident, 'large' (not literally) character who symbolises 'the perfect image' so dressed like a popular girl with trendy clothes etc etc, however who uses movement to overact everything and often yells in The Girl's ear even though she seems oblivious to it.

I wrote these ideas because one i wanted to get them into the open and two because i would like to see what the end result will be compared to these ideas and how we will come up with different ones. xoxo

Interpretive Dance

We have been continuing our impro to prepare for the play Mirror Mirror. Ms Mace got the rights to do it, so we should be casted soon. In class on Wednesday we started movement. We got into pairs and mirrored each other's movements. The idea was that it couldn't be determined who was leading the progression. This was hard to do and one had to move very slowly. It required a very high focus level.

I was paired with Kiah and i found that we worked really well together. We held really excellent focus and used our peripheral vision to see what we were doing. Although other people in the class were laughing and mucking around, we held focus the whole time.

After we had finished working with our hands, we moved on to working with our feet. Also in the same pairs, we moved through the space mirroring each other once again. We are exploring movement because it plays a crucial role in the play. Movement is very important because the play is set in a circus and the characters movements often portray more than their words do. To prepare ourselves to feel free and to let go of our embarrassed feelings, we started moving in pairs to music. This time there was no leader, we just needed to move in synch.

I was paired with Leonie for this part. It was really amazing how well we connected because we really both seemed to think the same things. THis required just as much focus as before, but the music was more relaxing and made it easier to move. Your body just seemed to react to teh music without as much thought as was required before.

The next activity was gettig in groups of four and repeating what we did in pairs. This was a thousand times more difficult because there were more people to watch and many conflicting ideas. However, we soon came to a compromise and it looked very effective.

Our final activity was to come up with a sort of interpretive dance. My group decided to do it about getting ready in the morning. It involved slow and overly exaggerated movements. We got out of bed, and had a shower and brushed our teeth. There was a brief fight about something and the atmosphere was pretty hectic. It was a fun activity to do and helped us to put ideas into movement.

On the subject of Mirror Mirror, I read some of the play and think it is really interesting. I think the part of the voice is the most interesting and challenging. However, all the roles look really challenging and exciting to work with. I look forward to finding out who has been cast as what.

Mirror Mirror on the wall...

Last week we started improv to help Ms Mace determine how she casts the play, but also to loosen us up a bit and have some fun! I think our class has excellent potential, however, I do think that casting in this way isn't completely fair. I think so simply because I was stage manager second semester last year, and its hard to determine how well someone can perform when they didn't perform! I think there are others who feel that they don't excel in improv and I feel that this could affect the casting process. Especially when you're a bit slow like me :) it's hard just to come up with ideas straight out. I know Ms Mace will be fair, but i thought maybe we should have had a vote about casting versus auditions just so that people felt they were included in the process.

However, on the other side i think auditions are never a good portrayal of somebody's potential. One on one is always more nerve wracking than in class activities. Plus, i also feel that the majority of the time the people who do 'hog' the improv stuff (they don't really... they're just good at it...) are the people in our class who could perform the best. I know that sounds very biased, but that is what i think. Feel free to comment and abuse me about it. :)

Jack Davis FINISHED!!!

Well we finished Jack Davis....finally! IT got more ineteresting as we went on, and looked at the symbolism of the play. There are a lot of things that i hadn't thought of in there. I found the essay excrutiatingly hard to write because the question was pretty shady about what it wanted me to say or answer. However, now that is over, we have strated on our group production of Mirror Mirror, or will be starting it soon. Miss Mace has decided not to audition us, which i think is crap for some and good for others. For myself, i know that i would probably do better in an audition because i would be worried that Ms Mace didnt really understand how weel I can do when i practice etc etc. However, casting is good because it would be pretty fair and give everyone a chance. I just feel that auditions can give the auditioner a clear picture of who would fit into what role.

In the matter of the play, I think Mirror Mirror sounds excellent. I think the class has great potential to do well, and i think the circus setting is very clever. I had a close relative of mine die of anorexia, so I think it is justified as a topic that should be brought out to the world. Not many people truly understand what they go through. and i think theatre is often the very best way to express ideas about certain issues. Similar to the play Bogus Woman, i think we could do really well. Till next time, luv *bec*

Starting Jack Davis...

We started Jack Davis this past week, looking at him as a contemporary innovator. We are studying his plays, "Dreamers", "Honey Spot" and "Stolen". In the past couple of lessons we looked at starting to act out his plays so we can understand the theatrical aspects of it. This was really frustrating because a lot of people were messing around a lot. It was difficult to stay on tast for a lot of us because the play isn't a partucularly interesting one, but it does portray the differences and issues between Aboriginals and Caucasians. I also struggled to keep focus and stay on task because the play requires a lot of concentration which was difficult for many of us. I think we probably should have done a warm up or game beforehand to get everyone in the mood or something because i think it will be really dificult to continue studying this play for long periods of time without a break in between, otherwise we will get worn out.

I played the part of an Aboriginal tribal DANCER, who has profound resonance in the play as the link to the Aboriginals' traditional culture. Even though the Aboriginals in the play now live in the city, the dancer links their lives back to their past.

We will start writing the essay this next week, which i hope means the class will be more focused. Till later.... xoxo

First week... the BUILDING...dum dum duuuuummm...

Hi I'm *bEc* and I am in Year Twelve this year. To keep a track of my progress and feelings in one of my subjects, Drama Studies, I have created this blog. I think this is a very effective way to make surethat i do my work because it is more fun than just writing it in a book. I hope you enjoy my journal.... xoxoxo


In Drama Studies we have a large class, which means that we have many differences and difficulties. This past week we have been building our relationships with the others in our class and learning to be comfortable within, and with, the group.

Our first combined activity as a class was playing Zip Zap Zop. We played relatively well, but I was diappointed to see the amount of people who either thought the game was ...stupid... amd wasn't afraid to say so, or also the people who made no effort at all to join in the game. I had hoped this would improve, or we would be in trouble!!!

We played a game where you throw insults and then give compliments to each other. I really felt this game released the tension and helped to unite the class. The next time we played Zip Zap Zop, the effort levels had risen a lot and you could see we had imrpoved as a class.

Although each person in the class is different, I hope we can work together effectively. I still think we have a long way to go, especially in terms of learning to surrender what you wnat and let someone else have a turn doing what they want. However, I think what we have done so far has really helped everyone.

Till l8r, luv *bEc* xOxO