C'est Vendredi!

To get us on our toes right away, our teacher began class today with another quick pantomime exercise. Impromptu is definitely not my forte, but as I said earlier, I just need to learn how to wing it. This exercise was dinstinctly different, however, in that it was able to integrate Capo's theories at the same time. If you can remember, Capo believed that prior to performing a piece, one should experiment with a range of emotions until finding the one that suits the piece best. In place of our monologues, we were advised to create a short skit in pantomime where we displayed four distinct emotions. I'm not even sure how I happened upon my plot line, but it involed a lot of yawning on my part. Anyways, my character was dreaming away happily when all of a sudden some nightmare plagued her. She awakes unwillingly to go and brush her teeth, albeit half asleep. As she begins to wake up, she realizes that there's something wrong with the toothpaste. Horrified and frustrated at the same time, she rinses and tosses the toothpaste away only to realize that she is late for some engagement. Of all the pantomimes, though, I found my classmate's, Kim, pantomime to be the most cohesive yet simple. For some reason when I heard four distinct emotions, I immediately thought intricate, complicated plot. Kim's pantomime, however, showed me that something as simple as just waiting at a table can portray all the emotions necessary. I'll definitely keep that in mind the next time we improv.

As though Everyman has never died, we continued on once again in our discussion of the piece. Today, however, was more geared towards our pitches that we had whipped up this week utilizing Everyman as our stimulus. I particularly am excited about mine's and hope to possibly put it into action, but I'll save that for Monday when we will actually introduce them. Instead, we spent the rest of the class time to look over some pitches IB had previously provided our teacher with. Focusing mainly on content, our teacher guided us in the "how to's" and "what not to do's" of the assignment. One of the pitches was actually quite innovative in concept. It was based off of some play whose name I can't rember...something Andorra. Even without the name, though, I remember the student conveying that the play was all about people closing themselves in. To portray this almost hermetic seal, the student proposed pieces of glass set up to represent the imaginary 4th wall of the theater between the actors and the audience. Unbeknownst to the audience, the glass would be clear at the beginning only to be whitewashed through the development of the plot. Eventually the actors and audience members would be completely unable to see each other by the end. How interesting would that be?