Genius

Kim and I thought we would go out on a wing and see a performance at the University of La Verne. Students currently working towards a theatre major there had came to our class a while back to do exercises with us. It was a play we had never heard of before: Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You In the Closet And I'm Feelin' So Sad. It is sure a mouthful, but the performance was pure genius. From the time we entered the theatre, we could tell it was an absurdist performance. Windows, doors, everything was just askew and unproportional. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I realized that there was a person onstage dressed in all black laying on the ground facing upstage. It was completely bizarre. It all made sense though once the performance began and the actress turned around to be plants. If plants have an active role in the performance, you know you're in for absurdist.

It started out a bit slow. I know that Kim fell asleep for probably the first portion. What I was really intrigued by was the set. Everything worked so perfectly and completely complemented the actors onstage. The actor that played Edward was absolutely fantastic. His character was so believeable and showed such a great contrast from the beginning to the end. The climax of his performance of course comes when he suffocates Melody. The ending, I might say, was a bit provocative but it contributed to the mounting emotions.

I am just at a loss for words. My favorite characters in the performance by far were Albert and Melody. The chemistry and the way they just played off each other was amazing. The performance, I think, was only able to make the impact that it did with the amount of technical effects that were added on. There was this one point in the performance where Albert becomes upset and throws his books and coins all over the set. In order to augment the feeling, the directors often played music simultaneously that matched the feeling very well. They also had crew on the catwalk that would often drop items to magnify the effect. All I can say is wow. This is by far the best unprofessional performance I have ever seen. I only say unprofessional in the sense that there wasn't a lot of money put into the production.

Writer's Block

What to do? The deadline for a preliminary IPP script is fast approaching and I have yet to draw anything up. I am still stuck in that same place where I don't know how to transform the idea into something for the stage. I have begun to write the script. It incorporates the movie-like feel I had always envisioned the story for while keeping it with a performance. At this point I am not sure if the movie effect will keep in line with the performance, but I will see. I think the only way to truly test out everything I have done is just to see it on stage, spoken aloud by other actors. From my experience with The House of the Spirits, I know that I tend to write drama in the same way that I write my essays in English class. I am quite verbose as you can probably already see, so it tends to show up in awkward wording and formatting in my scripts. It sounds perfectly correct in my head but it simply just doesn't translate on stage. It becomes wordy and pretty boring. I feel that my scripts always come out this way because I am trying to convey abstract and emtional concepts that can't just be spoken with an everyday vernacular. At the same time, I am trying to satisfy a teenage audience that I know will probably not even relate to half of what I am saying. It has been a tough writer's block trying to please everyone.

No One Does It Like Walnut

I saw Diamond Bar High School's production of Noises Off a while back. It was, to say the least, a mediocre production. I understand that it was a high school level performance, but still, there's got to be a basis. I may be a bit biased because my own school put on this play last year. Considering that the set is the main character of the show, I would have thought that Diamond Bar's set may have rivaled our own. Their set was much smaller as a result of their smaller stage. At times I felt as though the audience may have been too close to the stage, as if the set could fall on us. What's more is that when the stage was to be turned intermission, the crew did not seem to have any sense of professionalism. Girls were running across the stage in street clothes and barefoot while the set turned. At one point, the set even knocked into the proscenium causing the audience to gasp in horror. I felt as though Diamond Bar was just resting on the fact that they were a high school cast and so be it. Not the kind of attitude that people pay money for to see.

My only other objection was the initial blocking for the Lloyd character. Instead of planting him in the audience as our production did, he was kept in some technical booth in the back of the theatre. For his first few lines, he spoke them over a microphone completely hidden in the booth. It wasn't until a few minutes later that he emerged, only to approach the stage with his back faced to the audience for about 15 minutes. It was completely ineffective in my opinion.

The humor was lacking and missing in between. There were moments of intense laughter that would quickly die out just as they came. This left for an unsatisfying performance. The diction also contributed to this as it was difficult to understand anything that was ever spoken in the British accent. The pace was so out of hand that at one point, the friend that attended the performance with me, leaned over and asked what was going on. This was probably halfway through the second act.

This came together for, as I said, a mediocre performance.

Inspiration

It comes from a lot of places--inspiration. For the PPP, it specifically has to come from the stimuli that IB provides. For the practice PPP that we will be completing before Winter Break, our teacher has come up with her own stimuli. Today was our opportunity to preview all of them. For some reason, I am oddly drawn to music. Something in the dynamics of the music always helps me to come up with a plot line. I wonder if this would be considered too simple in the sense that my performance would just reflect the plot line of the music.

The music stimulus for this practice was Yo-Yo Ma's "IV. Allegro molto from Sonata for Cello and Piano in F Major." The music was interesting in that there were two voices--the cello and the piano--that really dominated the entire piece. I played off this idea of duality in my proposal and turned it into an entire performance. It was quite interesting to get inspired by one detail that then lead to another and another. Pretty soon it's just a number of ideas snowballing down a hill. In developing my proposal, I found it difficult to know how far to take it. I know we are not suppose to develop any sort of script, but how do you propose an entire performance without a script. It's tricky.

Oh the Planning!

It has been a while since we have visited the IB assessments. Today was spent doing just that as we began setting tentative dates for deadlines and such. Going over all the assessments has got me thinking about what I have planned for the IPP. Much earlier in my blogs I spoke about a performance based on my parents' oral histories, specifically my mother's. As you may or may not know, my parents fled from Vietnam during the Vietnam War. I have been raised on my mother's stories of the escape, the experiences, the lessons. They are as much a part of me as they are of my parents. I find such inspiration in my mother's bravery at her young age and I want to be able to share her stories with others in a much more accessible way. Though I have the idea I find myself at a loss as to how to transform into something for the stage. I have always imagined it coming out as a public service announcement or even a movie/documentary, but never something for the stage. What I am more fearful of is not finding the right actors that can grasp how much this topic means to me and many who have made that journey to America. What's more is that I am afraid that I will not be able to give the story the meaning and power it has given me. I just don't know if it will come across correctly.

What's So Romantic About It?

Reports are back! This time it is on the various styles of theatre. Kim and I chose "Romantic Drama" which when you really think about it isn't that romantic at all. It was simply named so because it followed the Romantic period. Movement during this time was exaggerated and over-emphasized for the large audiences. Apparently interest in theatre was revived just prior to the introduction of romantic drama. In researching the style, I was often reminded of melodrama and even Commedia dell'Arte where the basis is founded on the physicality of the performance. The theatre at this time still seemed undeveloped in the sense that audiences mostly attended for the thrills and frills. There was a definite emphasis on optical illusions and the kinds of stunts that a company could perform. These tricks were the focus of all advertising--the gimmick to get audiences in the theatre. The style of romantic drama really hit home for me because it followed so closely after Scapin. For a while now I have been in the mindset of over the top and exaggerated emotions and actions. As I have said before, romantic drama is not appropriate for everything. I think if any type of theatre were to adopt romantic drama, it would have to be very stylized and unique--completely set apart from all other types of drama just as Commedia and melodrama are.