artistic design...

i'm not too sure what exactly to put, but our artistic design in the play was a simple gym setting...an awkward guy that is just simply trying to fit in with society. he feels as though he can never be taken in, which makes him so awkward in the first place. there is definitely a transition that you can see as the play goes on and he goes from girl to girl, trying to talk to them and then being bold enough to ask them out for a date....it's a play with humor and thought, good ingredients in a play worth doing and seeing!

the final....

my thoughts on the play i was in, is that i think we did such a wonderful job....we worked hard to learn our lines and to meet with one another. i think what i appreciated the most was the way we wanted to help each other out so much, because by making sure the other person had their stuff straight, it helped our self to be straight as well....for example, there was a certain someone in the group that we would get scared wouldn't know the lines, therefore, we all practiced over and over as much as we could...by performance night, we all knew our lines. our director and designing people did a great job as well. i remember when we were just beginning and thought it would be too much, and now its just ran past us....no matter if we were ready for it, we're at the finish line....

summary of labs...

it's funny how what seems like an extra time for more class turned out to be so much fun. 9:30 labs this semester taught us a lot and allowed us to have fun in opening up...if you allowed it to! i remember thinking to myself, wow this class is gonna be interesting because the prof. is really "out-there"....and ya know what, i was right...lol...i of course mean this in a good way, i'm not trying to suck up, because had the class and the prof. been a "hot mess" trust me, i have NO problem saying it. but seriously, i believe the "out-there" attitude mixed with the classes energy made things easier to do. the first day was too quit, because everyone was still trying to warm up to one another...as we got later into he semester, everyone was comfortable around one another. i was so nervous around mid-terms to do my performance piece, but my company i worked with helped me and we reminded ourselves of all we had been learning in labs; this made it sooo much easier when i had to perform for a grade. by me getting through this, when it got time to do my final with the play, i just kept thinking of our discussions in lab when we would ask how much of our self are we willing to give up...how much can i step outside the box...and i feel as though i did. i wasn't scared, i had fun, and got to do something i don't think i would have ever done had i not joined the class. to me this semester wasn't just a "GRE" i needed...it was a great experience that i truly enjoyed. i won't be taking part 2 for theater, however, i will be in the filmmaking class next semester, so all the techniques that i learned will still come into play...and as the assistant director there is a lot i will need to learn.....to all my class mates and prof. francis, thanks for being so great and i enjoyed myself with you all:)....

colored girls

i know its been awhile since i've seen the colored girls performance, but i can still remember it! at first, i admit i went to it so that i could get the extra credit i know i need for blogging...but as it begin i really started to enjoy it....the passion that each girl put into their own performance piece was amazing. i felt as though each girl was telling, well re-living a past moment in their life..i never once said to myself: "oh, she "acts" really good." the piece i enjoyed the most was when the girl in red was telling a story of an "abusive" man who just couldn't get right, yet he claimed to want to be with her and their two children...later into the performance we find out he is sooo crazy that he dropped the little boy out of the window. i remember the hurt i felt as i watched it. i'm a very emotional person anyway, so seeing that made me just want to give the girl in red a hug as she was telling the story. all in all, an great night of the arts!

Last Day of Design Lab....awwww:(

i don't know about anybody else, but i have really been enjoying the extra labs...and today for me, it was a nice bang to go out with....well, if you don't know by now(and my monodrama was no hint...lol...) i LOVE fashion....i love to shop....anyways, today we designed outfits for 2 different types of characters....i sooooo got right to it.....in the end i loved what i came up with and enjoyed my peers designs as well....i may not be the best actress in the world...but i could see a lil future in design for the theater:)

Playwright take 2

today's class we continued the discussion of playwrighting, and went over Monday's performances...i forgot to add to my other blog, that the other 2 groups that performed did a great job.....i admire the way they really became their characters.....now, back to the lecture of that day....to me it was a good review of what i had already read ahead of time in the text, and review of what i had learned from previous labs....and lectures....the main thing that sticks out to me is just to research and try to become that character as you are writing, so that a reader or viewer can understand fully what it is that character is about.....when we did the exercises...i was picturing Cinderella locked up in a cold,bare room....the stepmother comes up to tell her to clean....she says no, don't come in, i don't wanna clean....the stepmother has a key...opens it up....they argue....then the stepmother goes about it a sneaky way, she tells her she can go to a ball if she does the work....the arguing and struggle of what to do just kept continuing in my head...i'm not sure my self what will happen in the version of it in my head.....

Yet Another Performance!...OH NO....

so this past monday, we (meaning my company from lab) were to perform our "thought it was over and done wit, thank God we made it" monodramas....boy, were we ALL surprised that we had to do it again. we all joked about how we got nervous like it was the first time all over again, and i know i was...i soooo already question my piece i wrote that sounds different every time i do it....but at the same time i appreciate the push in doing it, even if that "push" is doing it on stage in front of my peers...i'm just happy i'm the type of person that just says hey, this is me, it is what it is, and you can take it or leave it......i'm proud of myself for attempting to do such a thing.....i've never done this kind of thing before, and everything is all new.....but that's why i'm taking the class to learn, and to be open to new things.....no matter how scary, rite?!

Lighting with Prof. Holiday...

Focus, define the setting, set the Atmosphere, manipulation on the audience, mood....words that to me just looking at them seem random, but when put together for performance and light....make soooo much sense! Prof. Holiday, graced us with his presence this morning, explaining all the reasons why you want to properly use the lights...a topic that i actually was aware of already from reading, labs, and from seeing performances myself...we discussed how light can be one of the most powerful things involved to get the audience's attention...and then once you have that, you can't stop there...you gotta make sure you have the right color as well.....i will say i learned something new in a small example that the prof. did...he asked the class, if there are 2 groups on stage, one in blue light and one in pink....who are you more likely to look at first...i said pink for the simple reason that i luv pink...and it ended up being the correct answer because that's a color that attracts the senses, your eyes are drawn to it first before the blue....who would have known, lights are more than lights, and color is more than color in the theater....funny, once you become apart of the theater, nothing is never really as it seems.....

the audience

as an actor...director....playwright...whoever, when you make the choice to do a performance, it is up to you to give the audience most of their feelings they should have as they are experiencing what is being performed. the hard part is, you have to rely on the fact that you are dealing with a diverse crowd that may or may not be familiar with your presentation....you are also dealing with the difficulty of a small to gigantic stage area....of you can't handle it, the audience won't either....
i think a huge plus is that although in the past, theater was mainly for the upper class of society...now, we have any and everyone attending the arts to see and learn and grow and possibly just take something from what they see...or just what they hear. to me, it's more powerful to see an audience that continues to think and ask about a performance, rather than one who just talks about it....you can talk about anything, and people can decide all the time if they wanna hear you our not...but you, thinking to yourself, you are in control of that and you can't escape that....the presentation has done its job...it has become apart of you, and you have become apart of it!

Mid~Terms...

my company:.....hmm, we have no name, lol...oh well, i believe we will do so well that it's okay we are the "no-names" ....we have been doing well meeting together to practice and we even know what we are wearing already to blend as a group(i so was part of that idea)....i think we shall do well for a final grade....can't wait to see!

Fall Break!!!!!

Fall Break......can't wait to get back...lol....

The OTHER labs.....

meeting on Thurs. to me has been a lot of fun while learning....how is that different from our other labs???? its not...i always have fun while i am learning in lab....in my regular Friday labs, i learn to step out the box, and end up having fun...well, in the new Thurs. lab i attended for the 3 weeks or so i have learned some creative things...like the first day when we listened to music, and began to draw how we saw the music in our head....i thought mine looked crazy, but hey that's what i saw...and it ended up being one that was chosen in an activity done the following Mon. in class......i also enjoyed finding our own pics and then making collages of them from different plays.....i think these activities were so much fun, because they were simple things that i really hadn't done since i was little......i wasn't too sure originally about the new lab switch, but i am glade that we did it for a little while to step out the box even more!

directing workshop....

first thing first.....find out what type of script are ya going for in a performance....this is what i wrote down first among the other many things i learned in this lesson. i use to confuse the writers work and the performance of what really goes on...meaning, i use to think that whatever the director was handed to do, he read it and basically did it...i had no clue that they could change it according to maybe how they think the viewers should look at it or how much interaction should really take place to deliver the message......it's the director's job to give the viewers the feeling they should have....so, the work of a director mixed with the characters having their lines together as they enter a stage makes for a good production!

Tragedy and Comedy...

as i looked at what today's lesson would be, i just couldn't figure out why we were going to be discussing tragedy and comedy....and then i thought some more, which can hurt at times when you have soooo much on your mind...anyways, i realized that these two types can give an audience strong emotions regardless of them being more positive vs. more negative....in ch.7, they explain how for the genre tragedy, you usually have a hero(heroine) or like a situation where there is just no way to go back....while in comedy you are mainly focused on the more humerus aspects of what is going on....to me, when i see what is suppose to be a comedy, i set myself up to laugh....when i see what should be a tragedy, i tend to look at what the characters could have done instead and always question why they took the road they did to get there.....i think because i love to laugh more than cry, which i'm sure is the case for just about anyone, i enjoy more comedies...i love seeing different satire that get used....i like seeing new ideas and not the same ol' same ol', because its then no longer funny to me......

Dat Supaman....lol...

CH.12 was very informative as are all the chapters that we read, however, imma keep it real and say this blog i just wanna talk about the Superman Presentation that was given in class.....by the end of class, i was sold on how exciting a play can be...to me it no longer seemed like a little boy's fantasy...superman coming to life and on stage...but it seemed like, like...hmmm, like an experience that you just had to take part of.....i think the thing that interests me the most was the fact that we are just a college, not a professional Broadway company and we still attempted, while succeeding in making superman fly....that was just really cool to me!!! and to find out once again all the things that go on behind the scenes......who, it's some job to be in charge of all that chaos that could happen at any moment with as many people that were included.....great class, and great teaching of teamwork...i know that wasn't the objective of the lesson in this class, but it stood out to me, especially since i take a outdoor adventure leadership class...oh, and i wanna give a shout out to out Fri. 9:30's fav. TA for doing such a great job in Superman.....

Costumes:)

i sooooo luv clothes, so finding out that today's class was on costuming and scenery was a lil treat for me....the thing is, i was thinking lets just put the character into something that is appealing to the scene that they are in, and for heaven's sake it better be cute, type of thing...clearly i couldn't have been so off(well, not too much)....through this lesson and reading, i found out that when you get this part of a performance together you don't even get to just focus on what type of clothes to get, you need to make sure that they are "easy" to get on and off...you need to have special helpers in order to make that quick change backstage, i found that interesting because i starting thinking of how they do the same thing in fashion shows....but i'm getting off the topic, so anyways, another thing that goes into this whole clothing and scene decision is how well will it reflect with the lights....will we understand the mood and what that character is trying to portray.......and then there is how well does the image of the character fit in with everyone else(and thing) on stage in their clothing and does the scene fit too......good lesson and fun topic, i give it 5 stars...lol:)

Directing....Ch.8

behind again....i apologize to the readers of my blog that i have not been blogging lately....
let's see....hmmm, where did i leave off......
***the following class i believe we discussed Ch.8 on the director and producer involvement....being someone not too familiar with this theater thing, i never knew all the technical definitioning of the producer and the director....i just always saw them as the people who get paid to come up with ideas, and then they are to find people who "look" good doing the roles. through my reading i saw that the term director didn't even come into play until the 19th century, and way to somewhat keep the plays organized...or enhance them. i also learned a new term, "auteur director"....i've taken french before and knew what it meant, but never knew it was a theater term used when the the director was the auther of the film....i enjoyed the rest of the reading, especially when i saw the visual aides that were used...like the theater director chart. i'm such a visual person, and when i saw that i saw how much can really go into a performance***

Being A Playwright....

i would type about the lecture on what we learned...about how informative the 6 elements: character, thought, plot....etc....was to learn and about how i learned the type of researching playwrights do in order to do a successful drama......but instead i want to reflect on the exercise Prof. had us do at the end of class.....
we were told to close our eyes and picture basically our "self" being kinda bad and good i guess....we know our self the best and we are scared of our self at times as well.....as i pictured my self telling me to come in, and i repeated no, over and over until i asked myself "why?"....and i kept hearing "just do it!"...then i said "no, i'm scared".....and the response i heard was "it's so much easier to come in"....well, i won't put out all my business(lol)...but basically i had a huge tug-of-war going on and i never moved....i stayed in the same place....oh well, this may not be the most exciting blog, but i sure got something out of it....i hope to do more exercises about this...learning more about my self, doing the little activities helps me to express myself a little more.....and expressing yourself...giving more, opening up, not have that fear is what this seems to be all about!

Prof. Wade's fun time....

this class was made for us to be knowledgeable about the use of our main tool in a play....."our self, or our body".....i think if i didn't already have her as a dance teacher, i would have felt a little weird on stage doing the activities she requested....but hey that goes along with the whole concept of outside the box...and just releasing the whole thought of "i wonder what the viewers watching me are thinking?".....
i found this class different, yet informative....bring on more of it!

Can You Find Me?

i believe the lab we had the week of the 10th was a big step outside the box for a lot of people....we were told to close our eyes, therefore, pressuring us to open up and "trust" what would be taking place....so, we closed our eyes and tried to find a partner....this was some funny stuff, and then we were made to do activities...i still don't wanna think about how crazy i must have looked:).....well, we were to release our fears, and let go and give more of our "self" the main thing that has been discussed ever since we began our labs....
theater is a release to me in many ways, i may not be majoring in it, but i've learned a lot already....there are other things i know i must face in life when i will have to give more of myself than i may want...so, why not start now?!

Purple reading/Lecture the following class(2 blogs in one)

WOW......its been a good lil min since i've blogged.....i would love to thank W&M for providing the wonderful work that they do, to make my peers and i so BUSY:).....well, the following few blogs will be to catch me up to date.......
Back on Sept. 10th, we were to have read:"When the Purple Settles".....hmmmm, or shall i say, we were to attempt to read when the purple settles.....i think i enjoyed the straight CONFUSION of it all...i couldn't put it down because i was willing to see how much more crazy it could get! I think Prof. Tanglao-Aguas has an extremely "different" imagination, which i find entertaining. i couldn't follow it for nothing....i'm not familiar with a lot of the theater....this is my first time taking a class like this, and i honestly thought it was something wrong with me as i was reading it.....i wondered if i would be the only "blank" face in class that Monday......well, little did i know i was NOT alone.....
i remember asking my classmates from lab if they understood anything, and we all pretty much felt the same way....i couldn't wait for class to start, just so i could understand why such a thing was written. the Prof. surprised me by first making a comment letting us know that we aren't weird for not understanding...he later let us know where it came from and the meaning of this purple...and how theater has the type of plays that are about you too....class was interesting for me that day......

1st Monodrama...

I'm so excited about the monodramas we will be doing this semester. This will be something totally new for me but I'm so up for the challenge. My monodrama that I will be doing is based on my memories I had with the objects we had in class, rather than just my thoughts...I will be going through each item explaining why it has a certain significance and special memory to me. I hope that my peers will enjoy, but most of all I hope I enjoy performing it as well. Can't wait until next Friday to perform. To the people that performed this past Friday, I truly enjoyed your performances...keep up the great work:)

Theater and Society Lecture

Understanding society through THEATER.....or THEATRE
I so feel like an open book when it comes to this whole theater thing.....I normally think or use to think of the theater as oh, that nice thing that I like to go to and see The Nutcracker Christmas time, or how funny the characters are in Tyler Perry's theatrical performances....but the lecture today along with the reading in the first 2 chapters opened up a different view to this theater thing.
My thoughts of theater and the thoughts of it being an "embodiment of peoples history, culture, and just their way of behaving, are totally different. Who would have know that the theater is not only entertainment, but "replay" of society(kinda)? I never would imagine that it's one of the first things that were hit in battles...seems like you would leave it alone.
Okay, question is Augusto Boal one of, if not the "Father of Theater"? A man that created so much has got to be pretty high up there on the list of top folks...I love movies and I like to see a good play every now and then, but I have a new respect in the performance arts field....I like when things make you think, and when you see a movie you are just focused on the images....in a live performance piece, you need to follow to understand that person's presentation.

Today's Lecture

Normally, lectures are seen to be a bit boring, but today kept my attention up. Why? because anything that can get my interest and then in turn teach me something new....I'm all for it! The play was pretty good and not the most exciting one ever written, but definitely full of useful meanings. Prof. Fusi, broke down the play in a way that to me almost seemed as though it was something totally different that I had read myself. Yet at the same time seeming the same, I know that sounds hmmmm, weird. Well, I mean , the way he broke it down was different from the way I read it, and it tied together what I read and thought all at the same time. Anyway, I think the most simple thing he mentioned in the lecture this morning but impacted me the most was how the "fences" that were being made were the ones Troy was making with others. I heard that and said a huge "Duh!" to myself because I hadn't thought of it like that. I just thought of the actual fence. Well, just a little thing mentioned this morning like that made the play seem so much more understandable and enjoyable.
Troy in our society today wouldn't work to his benefit. We today have a society of always wanting to be the best, get to the top position, making the highest goals possible . Troy wouldn't really go for the "top" goals in our time, he would in a settle for what he saw as better. That mixed with the belief of things not being equal can keep any person down and not at the top where they may want to or need to be. Again, this was not a play that I would have chosen on my own, but as for the lecture I wouldn't mind sitting through again to get a deeper understanding of the Humanness and Symbols in the play...

Fences

I thought the play was okay when I began the first few pages or so, but as I continued reading I started seeing what the character Troy was feeling. I found myself understanding why he acted and spoke the way he did. It wasn't just Troy is a mean old man, he just saw things in a different way...moreso, he understood things in his own way. Well, just when I arrived to class today I believed to understand the play pretty well. That was until I begin to listen to what Prof. Fusi was explaing about the play. I had no idea that there were so many of what I took to be as "hidden" meanings in the play. I guess my main thing is I need to learn how to open my eyes as I read alittle bit more...not to just look at the words and take it in, but to almost put myself into the story. My favorite character I think would be Rose, not just because she is a woman, but because I thought her character was good. She seemed like a "real" woman and responded to the things Troy did even if they were foolish acts. I don't see myself relating to her a whole lot(which is funny since I just said she acted like a real woman), but I guess I moreso mean I can "get-with" the way she was made up to be. Her shock she had as she found out a marriage of 18 years wasn't the way she alweays thought it was...I felt that silent rage as she heard her husband tell her he cheated for the first time . She was mad, but not psycho mad, just truly hurt and I can see that and feel for that a whole lot more than if her character JUST left the room, or JUST threw something. Fences, a play I may not have picked on my own, but in the end happy to have been told to read:)

How Can Simple Items Be So Unique?

In lab the other day was fun but I didn't know I would be able to do a cute activity before it was over. A simple task that required you to have almost your own rules(except for the can't open your eyes thing). I was amazed at the fact that the items I was holding were everyday things, and not well, shall I say "only can be seen in a museum" type of things...You know, the type of things that are thought to be unique. Yet as I was holding the items I realized that things are unique only if you make them unique to yourself. I had so many thoughts go through my head with each item. One item reminded me of my mother sending me mail my freshman year of college, another reminded me of all the dolls I had when I was little, and I recalled all the fun family functions my family has with another item. The list just continued to go on and on in my mind. So, my question of how can simple items be so unique I guess isn't so hard to answer at all...It just really depends on what certain things mean to you!