Last week of classes!!!

How exciting is it to be in the last week of classes?? EEK! Well, our group is doing well working on our scene for the final. It is a little intimidating because at this point no one in our group really has their lines memorized at all...but we have had some good rehearsals during class as well as having met outside of class to rehearse. So I think we will be in good shape. We decided to do the same scene from our midterm and just add onto it and include our entire group in the acting. This time around we are all more comfortable with each other and I think we are all contributing more to the group. When one person isn't currently in the scene, they are sitting and watching and giving comments. Pretty much we are all stepping up into the role of the director (although Brittney is still technically our director and calls all the final shots). I am really enjoying working with the people in my group and hope that the show will really come together. Our biggest challenge right now is maintaining focus with the threat of finals looming ahead and all the assignments we have in our other classes. I still think we will pull it together though.

End of Theater Labs

Although I really enjoyed the labs and thought they were fun and let us get in touch with another part of our creative sides, I don't think I really benefitted from them. I didn't ultimately learn anything new or anything that I used in my midterm production. I don't know if this is maybe because I have taken previous art classes ?? (the classes really weren't Bad, I just didn't really learn anything...). But overall I enjoyed the classes and think that they touched on the basic skills that are necessary for the artistic design behind theater productions, but I knew most everything without the labs...they were kind of a waste...but a great idea - I think it is hard to create a design lab for the most basic level there is, and in this sense the labs were great.

On another note, I saw the school's production of "Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love" and thought it was amazing. I don't know if it's the first Brechtian play I've seen performed, I don't really think it was, but it is the first time that I have been able to identify what type of play it is because we are reading Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" in my American Lit class and talking about Brechtian theater. The play simply blew me away. The actors were all extremely passionate about their roles and their characters (despite it being an over half-empty theater in the middle of the day with a second performance later in the evening...). They had to keep up intense energy and remain always completely in character because there was no backstage. The theater in the round set up forced them to be always onstage, even for costume changes, and the director had to use a lot of staging and lighting techniques to make sure that the audience's attention was always directed at the area of important action. I think that this worked successfully - I always found myself watching the show and then suddenly another side would be illuminated and the set or costumes of a character would have changed without my noticing. With such a simple set and a few props, the story was still truly brought to life by the intensity of the actors and the small blackbox theater really drew the audience in. We were close to the actors not only literally, but close to the action of the play as well.

Play...

Writing a play is a lot more difficult than I expected...developing a character through simply writing a quick description and then completely through dialogue is quite a challenge. Actually one of the hardest things for me is making each character's dialogue distinct from the others. Since I am the person writing for all of these people they all tend to start talking the way that I talk. So I keep going back through my play and just reading a single character's lines all the way through to script to make sure that their speech patterns are consistent. I've decided that I'm not going to do my initial plan, because it just turned out too difficult. So I have all of these hilarious and awesome quotes from people that I've overheard/talked to on campus now and not really anything to do with them. I think maybe some day I will try to put them together and see what I can create with them.

PLAY

Ok I need need to post these quotes as well. I overheard them at lunch. WOW.

o “I just…feel like you are one of the only guys I’ve ever felt this way about”
“I know baby”
“And you just hurt me so bad”
“Well I didn’t…”
“I mean you tell me you like me more than those other girls, WHY are you still hooking up with them??”
“With who?”
“With those two other girls!!”
“Oh…I mean…they’re nothing. I mean…”
“Then why are you with them? You really hurt me and I feel like you are a nice guy, one of the nicest guys I’ve met…”
“I just don’t know”
“Don’t know what??”
“I just don’t know how I feel about you…I mean, I don’t feel that way about you”
“So does that mean you are gonna keep hooking up with them??”
“Well…yea…”
“So we aren’t going to be together??”
“Baby, it’s just…”

o “They don’t believe what we believe, so they’ve gotta die.”

o “Buck up cheetoh”


I'm thinking maybe I will have that first conversation opening up the play, and then just develop the characters from there. Because, wow, what a conversation to hear. It is a little unbelievable...anyways, I am definitely having problems trying to figure out this whole play thing...the quotes are cool but they really limit me in so many ways.

PLAY QUOTES

Thought I'd post some of the play quotes that I collected because they are pretty amusing and I just don't quite know what to do with them yet...

· That’s like Cinderella wanting to be a lawyer after she got raped
· Be proud that your hand was shaking because it means that it is important to you.
· She killed herself to show she really had control of her life
· “he wore those flowered pants like a straight man”
· “Stalin was no kitten”
· “dude fuck that shit I just underline random words that are prevalent”
[long pause]
“wait…don’t you mean relevant…?”
Etc.
· [girls guessing if guys are wearing boxers or boxer-briefs]
· Balkanize yo ass
· Art is excited by pain and longing and anguish
· Do you dream in color?
· “How are you doing?”
“I’m breathing. In and out.”
· “ You’ve just got to say….Look here is my life. My life is from now until noon tomorrow. I die at noon tomorrow. Therefore let’s not sleep. Lets study art history. Bc learning about human civilization is the greatest gift one can be given in ones short life.”
· “ And I talked to my sister…and it’s just the same old. She was crying. I mean, yesterday she was good, and today she was just so bad.”
· “I want to be unique but not so unique as to be alone…so I also want to be a part of a group”
· That’s because sunchips are the Best chips.
· Your thermostat is fucked up. You can’t just go from balls to balls.
· “what are those tallies on your arm?”
“I’m trying to drink a whole case so I’m keeping track”
“Damn! How you feeling?”
“I’ll feel good once I finish this case. 3 more!”
· “I haven’t felt this way since ____. Just sitting doing nothing then all of a sudden a lurch from the lower stomach down into the groin and my whole body shivers and I’m thinking of him. He’s all I think about.”
· “But now it’s true, right, we all like to see each other’s underwear, right?”
· “The thing is, you want someone that you want…that’s always the problem in life”
· We want pain. We desire trauma. It renews life within us.
· “It’s like the difference between a saltine and a wheat thin”
· “His parents are great…he’s kind of an ass”
· “I’m tired of being an exile. I’m ready to live where I can leave a mark.”
· “Whatchu eatin big guy?”
“Breakfast”
“Grow it out…just let it grow”
“I know, I know…gettin a fro. I mean, I’ve had long hair before.”
“That shit grows slow as hell. You need to put some shape to that”
· “I’ve been yearning for the class”
“Did she say she’s been urinating??”
· “Dude I had a dream about this class”
“You had a dream about this?? Come on Keith, you couldn’t dream about something good?”
“I don’t dream”
· “Let’s get drunk!”
“And fuck bitches!”
· “People are really wonderful, and the best part is there are 6 billion of them, so that means someone will love you and it will be the right time”
· “I won’t have money for college; I’ll spend it all on alcohol and cowgirls”
· “Didn’t really like her – she was a feminist and stuff. Had a nice butt though.”
· “I think some people just have a hard time saying ‘I love you’.”
· “Conflicting ideas make me happy.”
· “There’s a time to be a righteous bitch, and there’s a time not to be.”
· “My mouth still tastes like sleep.”
· 7 year old girl: “When I look into your eyes, I see something I didn’t see before. Something I only see in very few people’s eyes.”
· “I didn’t say you are a hippo, I said you look like a picture of a hippo. There’s a difference.”
· “He was the gayest man I’ve ever known. He literally shat glitter.”
· “A shiver that starts in your neck and then shoots right down your spine and into your arms and legs making all your hair stick up”

ok there are tons tons tons more but I'm not going to put more on here right now...

SUPERMAN!!!!!!

Going to see Superman was quite an experience; my first show that I saw on the main stage here at William and Mary after having seen/been in several small, student-run shows. The extravagance of the show was thus even grander after the small or zero budget shows I saw earlier in the year. It was a lot of fun getting to see some of the different things that our theater department is capable of doing.
My initial reaction to the show was similar to most of the other people that I talked to about the show. (I really only talked to other students about it because I kind of forgot that I was supposed to talk to other people in the audience, but I did get a range of all different WM students for different opinions) Most people that I talked to about the show said something to the extent of “Well the play they chose totally sucked”, and I definitely agree. The fact that the play is known for being a 1970’s Broadway flop raises question to why the school would have thought that it would turn out to be a good show. The plot, dialogue, and music were all pretty boring, predictable, and unsuccessfully written. All of the people that I talked to about the show except for one thought that the play itself was no good, thus making it harder to make judgments about the quality of acting, singing, etc.
But enough of my little venting about the play…there were many aspects of the show that I also enjoyed and found engaging (as did all of the people that I talked to). After the lectures from the different directors in class, there were things that I was definitely looking for in the show. I was looking at the colors in the costumes, the lighting techniques, and the choreography. When I talked to other students about the play, they commented a lot on the music. They noticed the character’s voices and the songs in the show. They noted that most of the songs ended in the same fashion, with a large booming ending, a ritard at the end for emphasis and a very MGM-feel-good feeling. This was not something I really noticed, but I understand this opinion. I looked a lot at the choreography during the songs. Many of the songs were solos without any other characters on stage. The actor really had to take control of the stage and use the space so that he/she would not be swallowed up being alone onstage. Thus, the choreography for these songs was very sweeping, less small gestures in a certain spot of the stage, and more movement across the stage back and forth, moving around to take up space. For the songs where the whole cast was onstage I noted that the choreographer tried to take up all the space, including the areas that had been additionally built for the show. The cast spread out across the stage and made good use of the space, using their formation with ‘windows’ so that everyone was seen and groupings to distinguish Superman vs. the townspeople vs. the school kids, etc.
Other people I talked to commented on the costumes and how much fun they were fitting the time period. The female business suits with matching hats and the male suits with plaid patterns and loud designs were great for the comic book look. While the people in the audience saw the costumes as “loud” and “fun” to match this cartoony feel of the original Superman, I was able to better understand the costume choices with regard to color after hearing the costume lecture. I was able to see how the cast was not usually dressed in bright blue or red because these were Superman’s colors and by having his character be the only one wearing these colors, he stuck out a lot more in the crowd. I also noted how the cast was often dressed in shades of the same color depending on the scene. I thought this was great, and gave the cast a sort of unity and made them all blend together into a mass of people, in the same way that the crowds of people in the comic strip would have looked.
Finally, people I talked to commented a lot on the set of the show, on how it was also very successful in being comic-booky with animated images and loud colors. Everyone liked the set and said that it added a lot to the show, making it really a comic book that came alive. Especially having the in-between scenes/set changes with the screen painted like a comic book page and the light focusing on a single square. This was a significant technical choice that I thought was very successful. The correspondence of the highlighted comic square with the story going on stage was a constant reminder that the play is an adaption from a popular comic book and that a purpose of the play was to keep it looking as much as a comic book as it could. The light really focused the audience’s eyes onto the square of choice, which made sure we were following the plot of the story.
One interesting thing I found out about this part of the set from one of the theater majors who had helped work on the show was that there was some miscommunication between the different designers which is why there was a tie painted on the set in the pictures of the evil doctor, and yet onstage he wore a bowtie. It is small things like this that even I did not notice after having been through lectures about the show, but that the people working on the show noticed. Ultimately the designers decided that it was a small enough difference between costume and set that it could be overlooked.
Overall, I feel that after having heard the different designers in the show speak that I was definitely able to more deeply understand some of the artistic choices made in the show. While many parts I saw on the same surface level as the rest of the audience (although, who knows, many of the audience may have understood parts of the show better than I did, but I may not have talked to them), I feel that having heard the designers speak gave me a better understanding of intentions and choices made with the show.

Sunday Nov 4

Thursday lab we worked on costumes and representing a character through their costume. I really like doing art so these labs are really interesting for me. But, I am not very good at doing realistic art or portraying people, so it was really good that we had the croquises to trace. The word "croquis" was new for me, this was a good thing to learn. A "croquis" is a "rough sketch or draft of something". In this case, the croquises were of human figures that we could use to serve as a basis to create our costume sketches with.

Something that I hadn't really thought about before this lab was how much the type of material affects the costume. I had always known how colors and styles were used to create different costumes and characters, but I had never really thought that the type of material also makes a huge difference. For example, heavy or stiff material would create a much different costume and character than flowy chiffon. Every aspect of the costume helps create the end result of the character. The costume must not only fit in with the time period, the location of the setting, and the gender of the character...but every color, material, button placement, length, etc etc are all combined to create the end result and give the actor the looks that complete their transformation into the character.

I believe that a really great actor doesn't need any type of costume to protray their character to the audience and that it is the acting that creates the person that the actor is trying to be. But, the costume really adds to this. With a costume, the second an actor walks on stage the audience has an impression of what kind of character the person is. Costume tells about time period, social class, personality, weather, season, general location, and much more. All of these things are apparent to the audience before the actor even starts to talk. A costume also helps the character him/herself get into character. I know that personally, when I put on a costume, I feel like I become that character and it is much easier for me to forget my own life and become the character and think like that character would. It is a step towards becoming the character. Once you look the part, it is easier to act the part as well. (But this does not mean that looking the part is everything...I don't know how many people I've met who can look the part very well and not act it at all)

Ultimately, I really liked these labs a lot. I had never put much thought into costumes before...but from now on I will pay closer attention to costumes and their affect on the show.