Clan Wolf Striker Outpost

The Neutral masks presentation was an interesting one. Neutral masks are used by actors to practice using a full range of motions to represent emotion other than facial expressions. The masks strip away any facial emotion forcing you to use your whole body to represent the emotion. To practice the group had us represent different colors with our bodies. How does the color move? How does it interact with its environment? During the exercise I imagined each color as pertaining to a particular elemental force. Blue maybe was water for some, but to me it was lightning. Red was fire, brown earth, yellow radiance, etc. Funny how afterwards we did elements, so for those I repeated what I had chosen for the colors. After the practice we were put in pairs and told to interact with and object and another person. We were both given an element and a color that we had to represent with the object. I had Air and Red. After each pair went the audience had to guess what element and color we were. The audience guessed every element except air, porbably because I had given red the attitude of fire. I tried to represent Air as light and non commital, going towards the object and flitting away. The other explanation the group gave was that when you apply the neutral mask to an actor you see there personality come out. Since the group guessed earth and fire first that makes sense because I am a fire sign and earth rising. Astrology is fun.

Our group was plagued with problems all throughout this project. First day of the project and one of our group members was not in class. Luckily we had a group of three so Anu and I started the research on the internet. I also got a book from the library so as to expand our sources beyond the Internet. Other than the initial problem the paper went smoothly apart from the fact that we wrote too much and that i forgot the Bibliography on the school computer. But we fixed it in the second draft. However, when it came to making the masks, thats when it started to fall apart. I was sick on the thursday when we started mask making. On friday, i learned to make the mask but after helping Mira make hers i ran out of time to make my own mask. On tuesday we worked on the masks while i wondered what i was going to do for my mask. Then i got sick again and was out on both thursday and friday. At this point our group is struggling to get it together. On monday Zach and I are stressing about what to do, Anu is gone all week until friday and we have to get our presentation ready. Finally, i suggest that we do Greek Jeorpody. at first Zach is reluctant thinking it is too corny, until Ms. Wargo came over and liked the idea. On tuesday we got it all planned out and divided up the work, i would write the questions for Jeorpody and he would come up with final jeorpody and some scenes for the audience to perform. Thursday was the neutral mask presentation, more on that later. When friday came up we figures one of the other groups would go but it turned out that both of the other groups were missing group members so we had to hastily put together our presentation. Luckily i had the questions on me, so we did the best we could with the situation fulfilling the shirt, “IB therefore I BS”. The presentation went better than i could have hoped. everyone seemed to like the set up and the masks. All in all it was a very fun if stressful project. Next post, The making of my mask.

We finished performing mologues last Tuesday but i performed on Monday. Now it is time for the reflecting! As i described in my previous post my monologue was an interpretation of a D&D adventure that i took my character on. The first thing i can note is that i had a little trouble before i even performed. i had written the script, then re-wrote it and so i had just barely finished it before we were to perform. I had a little time to memorize my lines so i utilized my memory for part of the monologue. However, i have a problem that when i have several things floating in my head and i get caught off guard i tend to freeze up, i need time to reorganize my thoughts, as proven during the game story story die. So right at the begging i forget to say the last words of the very first lines of my script!!! That threw me off and I got all mixed up causing my performance to become more scattered and less fluid. I had some really great lines that i missed and that makes me disappointed. I also did not have time to create proper blocking so i was making it up on the fly. I can think quickly when I am making things up as I go, but i get scatter-brained when I am trying to remember something on the fly. My favorite comment I recieved was, “I really liked the story it seemed well thought out and was very interesting.” All in all i liked the monologues despite being nervous to perform.

This week we performed the monologues that we have been writing and practicing since last week. I drew a short straw and performed 4th or last on monday. I wrote a monolgue from the perspective of my first Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition character. The story was of the last mission that he went on. I decided on this path because it was easier to take an idea or story that was already in place and tell it from the perspective of my character and embelishing upon it. I also decided to do the Monologue from a perspective that was both me and yet not me at the same time. I am a terrible presentation/public speaker, I get irrational fear of what other people think, or at least I overthink to much and it clutters my mind. To combat nervousness i chose to have the speaker not be myself personally so that it would be easier to speak without feelings of embarassment. At the same time I chose a speaker that was me, it drew from my experiences making both performing the monologue and writing it easier. On another note this monolgue also helped me develop my roleplaying skills that make playing D&D more fun.

Next post: Critiques and reflections.

In theater we finally performed the scenes that we had been working on for the past week, my group went first. We had to come up with our set pretty quickly and I screwed up the placement of the set so I ended up talking to a wall for most of the performance. I had not placed the counter for the Dead Parrot sketch the same way as when we were rehearsing because of an added back drop. I also placed the scene to far stage right so that when it was angled instead of speaking to the audience I was talking to the wall to the left of the audience. However, we still did other things well. The feedback we received was that we remained in character, even when I missed a line. They also said that we had great energy and made good use of emotions. Some of my favorite comments were that we moved with, “reason, intent, and energy.” We also incorporated different emotions that also clearly defined our characters, through both emotions and physicality. All in all we did pretty well with some more practice and planning being needed for next time.

We have been given different scenes to perform for our class. I know that one group is doing a scene from The Importance of Being Earnest. I am working with tony and we are doing the scene Dead Parrot. Dead Parrot is a sketch from the popular British television show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. For this project we have scripts that we must annotate for various things, character motivation, character objective, blocking, and an analysis of the character. Yesterday, Tony and I just finished memorizing our lines and annotating so we are working on blocking. Because we have a third character in our scene we are working on drafting another member for our scene’s bit part. I almost have my British accent down but I will need to practice more to get it just right. IPSWICH!

Today in theater class we did some breathing exercises that taught us to enunciate better and project more. When the air is not restricted then your voice can carry. We also practiced on stage communication such as listening to what the other character is saying and responding to their emotions with your own characters emotions. You can’t go on by yourself; the scene needs synergy in order to be effective. The final topic we covered was critiquing others performances. Critiquing is different from criticism; criticism is openly saying what is wrong while critiquing is making suggestions to improve upon the performance. Before suggesting how a scene can be improved you should always start with what went right, I personally learned that today. That about covers what we learned 9/17/09.