Roxanne!

As our teacher has been out sick for the past couple days, we were left to watch none other than Roxanne. The name may sound familiar to those who have read Cyrano as Roxanne was his love interest throughout the play. This movie version showcases Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah, two relatively well-known actors of today. The story line, though somewhat altered from that of Cyrano, still draws a close connection to the play as Martin sports that oh-so-famous nose of Cyrano. In reading the play, I never really imagined a Cyrano-esque character in the form of Martin, he seems a bit too old for the Cyrano I had pictured. Nevertheless, I felt Martin was able to capture his wit and compassion. Personally, I found the movie to be quite interesting as I was able to compare and contrast between the play and the movie version. For the crowds of today, I'm not really sure the movie would fly as it was rampant with awkward and sappy moments. I'm glad that the script was altered so that the Cyrano (or Charlie) and Roxanne characters were able to end up together, and not in death. What I didn't like about the movie version was that Christian's character was so incredibly dumb. Even though Christian does not possess the sagacity of Cyrano, he still is able to pull his own weight. In the movie, though, Christian is portrayed almost like a womanizer as he even leaves Roxanne for another women. I believed Christian to be more noble than that.

Fancy Shmancy

Now that we have worked with devising a couple of times, our class was not faced with the task off costuming Cyrano in addition to researching hairstyles. And so, we spent a good portion of the class poring over tomes of fashion and hairstyles of all time. The men often wore britches with knee-high socks and high-heeled shoes. Lapels were especially pronounced with these protective cuffs at the collar and around the wrists. Apparently the purpose of these cuffs were to prevent food or dirt from staining the greater portion of their ensemble. Considering that they did not wash clothes or themselves as often we do, these easily removed cuffs could be quickly washed and replaced instead of washing the entire outfit. Women wore long dresses with high collars and a larger cuff somewhere between a shawl and a little cap that was tied around their neck. Hairstyles consisted of mainly curls for both men and women. Men tended to style their beards into these long and straight sheets while females wore multiple buns leaving some hair unwound and simply curled. After devising these costumes, we each were given a 200 or so paged book from authors like Stanislavsky all the way to Harold Clurman, which I chose because I'm particularly interested in the directing aspect of theater. In about 3 weeks we will be making length presentations to the class while including three exercises that we have either devised or been provided by the author. Till then...

Amnesia

As the rough drafts for our extended essays were scheduled to be due today, I completely forgot about my other classes. As I already informed you about the Cyrano de Bergerac reading that I had completed last week, the entire Lysistrata assignment sort of just fell out of my head. Two posts ago, I had discussed our factory motif for the Greek play with jumpsuits and everything. Taking after the Rosie the Riveter image, we devised a stage plan as well. Today, we were suppose to share with the other students three or so images for what we had specifically planned for our previously chosen character. I was sort of left with Myrrhine, a character that I knew absolutely nothing about. From my classmates' descriptions, I grasped that she was somewhat of a temptress as she held the notion of sex above her husband's head. For that reason, I planned for her to be in the same jumpsuit outfit, only that hers would be more provocative with obviously visible undergarments that could be quickly exposed when the time came. After we had finished discussing our ideas, we then moved on to discussing what we had read so far from Cyrano.

Cyrano de Bergerac

Today we received our very own copies of Edmund Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. My initial reaction was one of perplexity as the play didn't even seem remotely familiar. When I first began to read through the stage directions of Act I, I just felt bombarded by all these different details that couldn't possibly fit into my typical idea of a theater. Once I began to get into the meat of the play, though, I was completely interested and absorbed with the relatability of the plot line. I ended up reading through the entire play even though we really only needed to finish Act III by Monday. From the cover of the play, it is ostensible that the play is set in England in "the olden days", but more specifically the 1640s. I should have also realized that Cyrano was the character in the center with the abnormally large appendage. The language of the play was also surprisingly not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. Of the entire play, my favorite would definitely lie somewhere in between Act III with the archetypical balcony scene and Act V when Cyrano is finally able to reveal that it has been him all along. It was also from Cyrano that the "nose monologue" originated when Cyrano went into this great harangue when Valvert weakly criticized his nose. The symbolism within this play is amazingly great as well as you usually aren't able to analyze plays in the same way as we would in our literature classes. The white plume was the most memorable image in my mind upon finishing the play. 

Out Cold

Despite my attempts to recall what has become lost to me, I realized that I've been unable to write about anything because I've been out cold at home. Resulting from the close quarters and widespread flu at my school, I too have caught the cold and cough. When I was finally able to return to school today, it seemed as if I had been gone forever, even though I had technically only missed one day of theater. Apparently, my fellow classmates had read Lysistrata while I was absent. I believe my teacher probably gave quite an introduction and background to the piece. In investigating other aspects of theater, I believe set and costumes were essentially the focus for this particular piece we were studying. When I arrived back in the classroom today, I was pretty much lost as I had no idea of what the occurred during the plot nor who the characters even were. From the general comments of the other students, I was able to get the gist of the play which allowed us as a group to come up with a set design for Lysistrata. Considering that the show is usually adapted for different wars, we chose to utilize World War II. With that, we set the play in a munitions factory where the female costumes were inspired by the jumpsuits and bandanas we had seen with Rosie the Riveter. A conveyer belt can be seen in the background as individual work stations set up an arch facing a podium where the Commissioner supposedly speaks. In discussing our set design with our teacher, she brought up the interesting idea of having the podium rise up out of the ground on an elevator whenever needed. I think the greatest problem we struggled with was moving beyond the stage we have been so comfortable with at our school. Considering that we haven't been out and about seeing a myriad of professional productions, our idea of theatre is essentially limited. It's a work in progress, what can I say. 

Make Up Your Mind

After all the introducing to make-up, today we finally had the opportunity to attempt what we had only been learning about from how-to books and instructive videos. We had access to shadow wheels, vibrant color wheels, stipple sponges, magic blood power, and a number of other creative make-up supplies. The majority of the make-up we were provided with is typically utilized for "fantasy" make-up you might say. The color wheels were more tailored for the clown appearance while most of the creme foundations were "bruise" colors. I ended up practicing how to create a bruise on myself three times. The biggest flaw in the bruises I created was that they were too perfect and circular in shape, which I personally thought was no big deal. The color of the bruises also played a big role in their level of believability. I learned that it was better to stay away from the red tones as they tended to make any bruising look especially false. After finishing my own bruise, I helped a classmate in creating some sort of scar. First I applied some dark base colors to an area on her arm to first create the effect of the bruise. On top of that I stippled the fake blood, which dried to look amazing life like. Go me! Perhaps there is a future for me as a make-up artist.

DIY

In our make-up phase, we began a video today that looked as if it apparently came with some make-up purchase. Despite the amateur quality of the video, it was quite instructive for someone who has absolutely no experience with make-up, much less stage make-up. The informative how-to video went over corrective make-up, age lines, shadowing, and highlighting in today's portion. I believe we will be fininshing the rest of it on another day when our teacher is scheduled to be absent. With this little tid bit of knowledge, we will have the opportunity to apply some of these techniques on Monday when we have a free for all with the make-up

Later that night, I returned to school to catch the 3rd performance of Fiddler on the Roof. Considering that we had been discussing Fiddler for such a long period prior to the play's actual resurrection, it felt oddly comforting and yet novel to watch the show. Vocals were definitely something of great amazement as I considered this show to have the best vocals by far in the history of Walnut High. I thought everything about the show was wonderful and on point, but what really struck me was the honest emotion behind all the action. The battle between Tevye and the changing traditions around him was so effectively portrayed by Zach Braver. If there could be any criticism said for the performance, I felt that pacing might have been a bit slow. The show lasted for a good three hours, but at times I felt that much of it was filled with nothing but blocking, actions that the actors were required to do. With the show already built so much around Tevye, I felt that some of the portions of the play superfluous at times. With that said, I believe this play communicated to our audiences of all ages a certain profoundness that cannot be lightly taken.

Big Empty

With a class consisting of just another student and me today, things were quite relaxing? I believe it was a block period, meaning that we had even more time to ourselves than normal. The day's regimen was pretty much up to my classmate and I. The only instruction we were given was to look through the two tomes on make-up left out by our teacher. Finishing our technical unit, I guess we've began the make-up aspect of performance. These books provided just about everything possible about make-up from how to recreate aged hands to false eyes. Even though a majority of the pictures provided were in black-and-white, the entire process of applying make-up wasn't particularly comforting to look at all. Actually, when they demonstrated how to practice a majority of the techniques, I found myself cringing at just how real make-up was able to make the actors appear. After poring over the make-up books, we worked on finding our Shakespeare monologue for next Tuesday. The only restriction we had for our piece was that it be from a lesser known Shakespearean play. I ended up choosing a monologue by Rosalind in As You Like It. I have been able to decipher the true meaning of the monologue, but only when I read the preface to the monologue did I realize that Rosalind was currently pretending to be a man in the scene. So that should be interesting...

Who Done It?

Continuing with the entire pitch assignment. Lost one of our team members as one of the other students was absent today. With Kim, our pitch continued to develop and possibly move into a completely different direction from what we had discussed yesterday. Based on the song, we knew that we wanted to tell some murder story where this flapper-esque female character was the object of two mens' affection. One of these men was a detective, the main character of the story. He would be the one to bring our performance full circle as the entire story would come from his thinking out loud. Voice-overs would give voice to the detective's thoughts while the entire story would be communicated to the audience by dance. We envisioned this film noir, 1920's era style to the performance with the female character dressed in red while the men were costumed in black suits. The set would simply consist of a black back drop with footlights and narrow spotlights to keep the focus on the main characters while lending to the film noir effect. Fog, we thought would have helped communicate the film noir and mystery to the audience. For just two days worth of thinking, I quite like this idea.

Disaster

Performed the pantomime piece today that I mentioned in the last blog. Well let me just say, it definitely did not play out like I expected. It's really my fault in that I didn't put as much practice into the assignment that it deserved. I was just so relieved to find good music that I just though the pantomime would fall into place. In the end, I didn't practice as much as I should have and consequently my pantomime wasn't completely uncoordinated with the music. I even had to start over twice! It was quite embarrassing, especially because I knew I could have done a lot better. But I guess that's what these kinds of experiences are for, to learn. Never will I underestimate an assignment like this again.

Afterwards, we began to look back at the different assignments that IB entails for our "tests". Focused mainly on the Practice Performance Proposal, mainly the pitch again. Our teacher decided to provide us with her own stimulus, a tango by Yo Yo Ma. The class then broke off into two groups to being working on the 250 word pitch. Will continue tomorrow.

Loose Ends

Finished up The Rhinoceros today, finally. If I can remember correctly, we started the Theatre of the Absurd movie before we left on winter break. After having the opportunity to research the subject matter of the movie, the ending made so much more sense as the protagonist vowed that he would never give in. In declaring this, the protagonist is ultimately saying that he will never give into the rhinos, a symbolism of Communism. Without the research, I would have never realized this allusion/

After we finished the movie, we got to go on stage and help with some last-minute touch ups for the show. Mainly it was just repainting chairs and tables so that the audience wouldn't see the wood underneath.

Our pantomime to music is now postponed to Thursday. It was quite a challenge for me to decide on anything today. For the longest time I felt as though I was tied to a certain song, trying to think up the most ridiculous pantomime to fit the song. Considering that it came from a movie soundtrack, I just kept playing the scene over and over again in my head. I couldn't think of doing anything else besides what was in the movie. Definitely feel more comfortable with the new song. I was actually able to create an interesting pantomime. We'll see how it goes on Thursday.

Previews

Attended the preview for the spring musical, The Fiddler on the Roof, today instead of the usual class. Showed "Tradition" and "Matchmaker, Matchmaker", I believe those are the titles. It was quite interesting to see the sets in their finished states as I remembered working on them just a month ago as nothing more than just slats of wood. If I go back to the first time we were asked to bring into class Fiddler research regarding sets and the entire staging of the show, the houses looked just like the ones our theater department has created. I felt that the costumes and the set added to the authenticity of the entire show. Compared to past shows that we have done at our high school though, I found that the time period of this piece may have restricted how creative one could be in costuming and otherwise as they were trying to recreate a period in time. I found most of the costumes to have this drab, lackluster effect, which may have taken away from the value of each person's performance.