Midterms

I was really really happy with how the midterm turned out! I have to admit that I was pretty scared that it wouldn't go that great, we would forget our lines, blocking, something...but it turned out really well. I give a lot of credit to Brittney - instead of just running the scene over and over again and giving us different directions (which is most likely what I would have done if I was the director) we did a lot of exercises to better understand our characters and the situation of the scene. For example, we went through each of the lines and discovered a verb that captured what the line was supposed to be in the script for...an action that could describe the emotion behind the line and its purpose. At first I did not think that this was going to amount to anything or actually help us...I felt that what we needed more was going over lines and more run throughs. But in actuality this was a great exercise for us. I think that Andrew and I really discovered how to approach our characters in a new light. At first it was a little difficult, Andrew kept talking about how he had to be a large black man and talk in "ebonics" and we had to completely put ourselves in a setting we didn't know about and into a lifestyle completely foreign to our own. But what I really felt from the scene was the emotion and the tension...for me it was less about that different location and time period and more about the universality of emotions when a wife finds out that her husband is cheating on her and got another woman pregnant. This is what I sought to really get across to the audience. And I think that we were very successful in that. I really did FEEL angry, and our peers and classmates felt the tension and said they were angry and sad and upset right along with me in the scene. I was very happy with how it turned out. I feel like I am reaching a spot in my acting where I can totally imagine myself as the character and thus, not read the lines and act it out as Ellie, but become the person and feel and react in the ways that the character would.

sunday!

Sundays generally suck as a day of the week because it is the day when you have to come to terms that the weekend is over and you have all your homework left to do that you haven't started! It's the day when you wake up, roll over, groan and just want to go back to bed...but instead you chug as much coffee as you are physically capable and then get to work...right now it's 2:00 and my procrastination is coming to an END - here goes...

Imagine that a play has been written about you, and you are designing a costume for the actor playing you. What sort of outfit would this actor wear and why? What clues would the costume give about your personality? Be sure to mention the fabric, color, and length of the garments. This prompt can also relate to the monodrama you've created. If you are reenacting an event from your past, what would you have worn at that time, and why?

I really love this prompt - I find great pleasure in clothing and love dressing and clothes combinations, etc. I feel like a lot can be told and understood about a person by the way they dress. I probably spend all my money on clothes and food...that's just how it happens! I am also very into thrifting and clearance racks...anything over $20 is unreasonable and I don't give it much of a chance...because of all this, the costuming in shows is one of the things I pay most attention to and notice. The clothing coinciding with the time period...the colors...sizes...materials...everything! I love costumes and feel like they really make the play come to life by really putting the actors into the character and making them look like the character.

So anyways, if a play was written about me, the costume would need to be bright, loud, with as many colors and neons as possible. Completely mismatched, a little bit tacky, but somehow it should all pull together into an ensemble. A little bit tattered and torn and nothing looking new - all somewhat used and secondhand but still bright and loud...not dull....definitely not dull...layers layers layers are important as well. Different layers for different parts of me. Lots of patterns that don't match, but the fact that none of the patterns match makes the entirety of the outfit match. Unreasonably dramatic and clearly wanting attention...asking for people to pay attention to me and my crazy outfit, telling people that no, I don't care if you think my clothes are a little strange but also confident that I can pull off the strangeness and no one will really think that I am strange...a little bit cracked out, maybe too many drugs, a little bit sloppy - yes lets hide any intellectuality beneath the idea of shallow fun fun happy times. Ok now I should explain why it would be all these things - colors, brightness...this is first of all because I really do wear many bright colors and patterns all at once (pretty much the costume I am describing is what I wear on a regular basis...just exaggerated). So I love wearing bright, loud, obnoxious clothing because I like sticking out, I like wearing combinations of things that people would notice in a crowd because I like attention. I am inwardly and outwardly a very happy person and I like to see the colors in life, the vivacity of everything around me and find the happiness, the joy, the interesting parts of life around me rather than seeing in black and white. Okay so completely mismatched with clashing patterns to show that I have all of these contradictory ideas and desires and feelings all the time and although they may individually clash and should not be worn together or work together, overall they all fit together and ultimately are successful. They end up all working together because of the fact that they don't fit together. That's how I feel a lot of the times. Nothing new, all used or a little tattered...yea I have been through trials and tribulations and pain and hurt and I've ultimately come out on top...everything may have worn me down a little bit but at the same time I'm still wearing the colors and seeing the happiness around me, but all of those traumatic things have affected me and are something that I will always carry with me. What better way to learn than through experience? I agree.

ON TO MORE HOMEWORK!!!

october 17

"sometimes the least important measure of success is money" - so that has nothing really to do with today's blog but it is the message on my calendar today and I just thought it was a really good one and that the world should hear it...

So today in class we were able to just rehearse for our midterms which was really really great because our group definitely needs to get to work...haha...no offense guys we ALL know it. I'm having some difficulties with the scene that we are doing because it was the scene that I was in when I volunteered to do a cold reading in class. And when I did the scene then I had just come back from being home in Chicago for something really tragic and truly just traumatizing for me...Anyways so at that point I had not found any kind of outlet to let my emotions out, and I am the type of person who really internalizes problems and pain and I just try not to think about them at all and continue with life, so when I did the cold reading of this scene all of those intense emotions that I've been holding inside me were able to vent out through the scene. And I just felt great doing it! I felt impassioned, I felt alive and that I could put my anger and sadness and confusion into the life of a character and just let it all out. It felt great doing the scene and it felt great letting out everything I was feeling...I really felt for Rose and I really was Rose. Everything she said and felt, I truly felt. So anyways, now that time has passed and I have suppressed emotions and found other outlets I'm just finding it really difficult to do this scene. Because now I am acting it in the way that I normally would...now I am not truly feeling like I am the character herself but I feel like I am acting out the part of a character. So this is really frustrating at the moment...I really want to be able to get inside the character and forget that my name is Ellie and forget the life of Ellie and I want to completely feel the everything, the life, the emotions, the passion of Rose. And I had that at one time but now it is just so hard to get back...this is my dilemma at the moment...I'm just going to keep on working and see where it takes me and what happens.


PS - I will respond to the prompt in my next blog...I'm just not feeling it right now but I'll do it tomorrow or something

bloggggggg

AHHH why is it so difficult for me to stay on top of this??? I am going to get better...after I leave for fall break this weekend...ok so today in class we didn't do too too much, I feel like it would be more productive for us to be able to spend more of the class time working in our groups...but it is really nice being in a smaller class where you can interact with everyone else and the Professor. Fusi is pretty silly...my name is Tina in case you are reading this Professor Fusi!

So in our groups today we went over the section of Fences that we chose to do, and I feel like it will be pretty good. It is an intense scene and I hope we can accurately show all of the tension, anger, and sadness that are all important to the scene. Memorizing lines is going to be the challenge...On top of doing this little act I am currently doing one of the short shows with Mystic Theater called "The Corridors of the Soul" which was written during communist Russia. It is pretty sweet and I'm excited for both shows...I get to play very different characters in the two - in Fences I am playing Rose just finding out that her husband is cheating on her and got another woman pregnant (INTENSEEEE) and in Corridors I am playing Innamorata who is a pretty slutty woman trying to get a man to cheat on his wife and sleep with her. WHOA that is pretty funny how those roles connect! I get to play both sides! Anyways that is all for now I have a take-home test that I haven't started that is due tomorrow...goodnight everyone

collage blog

Using the theme you and your group chose to highlight in your collage, write a paragraph or two describing how you would transfer the images incorporated with that theme into a set design. You can describe the overall set design or focus on an important item that would be on stage. (For example, if your theme involved chaos vs. order, and you put a picture of a prison on your collage, how would you represent that prison on stage?) How do these set elements reflect your theme?

I don't really think that our group chose a single, central theme in our collage...but what we really focused on was Antigone as the center of the play and her conflicts with the other characters and her relationships with the other characters. We made Antigone the center of the collage - the first thing that someone would see when they looked at it, and then we put all the other characters in areas that would be in relation to where she was and what her relationship with them was.For example, we had Antigone standing on top of Creon to show her dominating over him and ultimately winning the power struggle (although now having reread the play I don't know how I feel about this...I believe that Antigone is childish and doesn't truly win the struggle because she does not truly understand it...she is simpleminded and sees only her side of what is going on...that Creon is truly the one that sees the greater meaning and reality of the situation...although in the end it is Antigone who gets her way over Creon despite her inability to see what the reality of the situation is, she does what she wants and I guess she thus is truly the victor in the power struggle...) Anyways, the set I would make would be pretty simple...I see the major themes in the play the conflicts between characters and the internal conflicts within characters...and thus to get these major themes across to the audience, a grandiose and extensive scenery would detract from the conflicts and they would lose their importance in the entirety of the show. I would have some sort of platform on one side of the stage which would be the place that Creon would most often be...this would be to show his power as King and his separation from the rest of his kingdom since he is forced to think about his actions as a whole and their effect on the people rather than his own personal beliefs. When he and Antigone argue he would come down off the platform to show that he gets to her level and tries to reason with her in a way that the two of them can relate...he no longer acts as a separate and distant king but acts as an uncle and a father. We put Ismene on a seesaw in our collage to show her internal struggle in deciding whether she wanted to assist with the burial of her brother and be killed or whether she did not. Maybe in the set I would have a part of the stage in a gloomier lighting, less bright, and the other part of the stage in a more cheerful and brighter lighting. Then, depending on what Ismene is thinking and feeling she could switch from side to side and weigh her decision, somewhat like the seesaw. The cave at the end of the play is a very significant part of the show, but I don't think that it needs to be literally a part of the scene...the dialogue and the sounds used can be enough to tell what happens with the cave and inside the cave...actually I change my mind. I would like in the back of the stage for there to be a very dark, ominous area. Maybe it can look like a literal cave, maybe it just looks like a black dark hole in the back...but I like the idea of this impending doom upon the story, the idea that the story is a tragedy and there is no way to escape from the darkness and the sadness that is imminently upon the characters. The darkness back there will be always present, always reminding the audience that the story is tragic and that something bad is bound to happen.