Act 1, we're just about there... kinda

This last week we continued rehearsing the first act of our school play. We finished drafting all of the four scenes, and began to retouch and improve them. During class we concentrated on working again on exploring our characters, as well as finally setting up the scenery. As for my production area, i met with Mr. Boxes, who showed me the colors and materials he bought for the costumes.

Personally, i think the rehearsals are going pretty well, i do feel that the scenes have taken shape, and they are going great, of course i don't doubt for a second that we still need to work on them. Still, im pretty confident on the work we are building, which is good. The problem is that, i feel that some actors are loosing motivation, and that's a pain in the ***(this is a school blog, sorry), because they are not making an effort, or are just being lazy about it, and that breaks the dynamic of a group creation. We've already had a couple of people with whom we had problems because they are not giving their best in the rehearsals, and so it became harder to move forward with the scenes. On the other hand, i am very happy with some people whom i see working hard every rehearsal, and i see their enthusiams, which i think is great because it provides that extra energy to create the scenes.
Im still very mad a one of the actresses, who is still stubborn about her role, she does like it, but she thinks she needs minimal effort to fullfil the part, and so she doesn't try hard enough. Personally, i think her character is one of the best, and she keeps on messing with the dynamic of this character because she is not trying hard enough! Now im not saying she is a terrible actress, but this role requires a lot of effort, and i feel like she is not putting enough.
As for my production area, i think that the costumes are coming up pretty well. We are still in very early stages of the production, but i think we are doing great. However, one thing that really bothers me is the lack of communication between Mr. Boxes and me. Not because we don't speak or anything, but because whenever he talks to me about colors and types of fabric, it sounds like rocket science to me, and i really don't understand him. I try really hard to specify what colors i want, and he does get it, but when it's the other way round, it becomes a bit hard for me. Nonetheless, i still think we are working very well together.

Last week i reflected upon the departure of a couple of our actors, and how it could affect us. Now this week, i began seeing the effect it had on our play. We had to rearrange some parts of the first scene, and unscript her character. As for the other actor, we had to recast his character, and find a new actor to give his positive energy to the group.
I've been thinking a lot about the collective creation process, and how we applied it to our school play. Sure there is an outline of the scene, and the director sets a lot of the ideas, but it mostly comes from the actors themselves and their improvisations. Scene 1 began as an impro, and then it was polished and edited. So i began to wonder about the different approaches each actor gives to their character, and how they are used to build the scene. When laying the bases of the scenes, the actors analyze how their character reacts to the actions and problems according to what they propose. So i guess that some ideas come up from the reactions, and so on and so forth. But what if an actor has a wrong approach to the character? As in, having one that does not make sense with its determined actions and role in the play itself. Or what if the actor changes his approach after creating the scene? Does he adapt his actions or do we need to re draft the scene? How could a wrong approach affect the scene, and thus the rest of the play?
Also, due to the lack of motivation and the stubborness i began to see in the scenes, i've been wondering; how does the mood of the actor affect the collective creation? I saw that there were some actors who were tired or not feeling like working, and the scene played out pretty badly. There is also the stubborn actors who are not putting enough effort. I even saw a scene which was previously improved, much worse than the first one because one actor was not feeling well. So i began to reflect, how can the actor suppress his mood to avoid affecting the scene? Is this part of the character transformation? I guess that one of the main ideals and skills for an actor, if not the most important, is to break your real self, and become the character in its entirety. Some of the actors in the play don't have that skill yet, but how is it taught? Can it be taught? Or is it a skill each actor develops on his own?

Scene 1 Take 1, Action!

During this past week, we finally began working on the first two scenes of the play, drafting and creating them. Also, during class time, we began to explore our characters and worked on characterization, as there is literally no time for us to actually work on them. By the end of the week, we managed to construct the first draft of the first two scenes, and define the characterization of each of our characters.

When researching for the workshops and demos, and teaching them, i was highly aware of how demanding kathakali was, and because i did body expressions, i had already practiced them at a basic level. Now that i explored them more in depth, i realize how hard it actually is (my legs hurt, a LOT). The low center of energy was the most difficult thing, because it required a lot of balance and strenght resistance, and i felt that it was a bit hard for most of us at the beginning, but once we got used to it, it became easier. I felt a bit useless at the beginning, because i was completly blank, and even though i had already begun to work on my character alone, i was still pretty lost when looking for different positions that my character would do. Once i began exploring more and more, and trying out new ideas, it flowed pretty well, and i think i did a great job. After two days of exploring, and presenting to the class, i got one major correction: "it looks too girly". Which made me feel completly ashamed of my work, but also motivated to try again and push myself. Once i did, i transformed the character completly trying out the same sequence, but giving it more strenght and power.
On the rehearsal on Tuesday, we got some bad news: one of the actresses, a very good and important one, was leaving the cast because of a personal decision. Not only that, but the day before, another very good actor left too. Personally, i felt a bit dissapointed, because i was expecting them to work hard and well on this play. Im obviously not mad at them, not at all, it is their personal choice, but i feel like we lost two very important pieces in our equation for the play, and it makes me sad to think that we will not be working together this year.
During the drafting of the first scene, i felt a bit dissapointed on some of the actors, who were not even trying with effort, they were talking and didn't even apply the conventions we taught them. On top of that, i am very mad at one of the actresses who is still beign stubborn about her character, feeling she is better and doesn't need practice, when she clearly does. This kind of behaviour is the one that sets things back, and delay us. Nonetheless, i'm liking how the scenes are shaping up, i do feel that they need a lot of improvement, specially in terms of energy and coordination, since it is a very crowded scene.

One of the things i have come to reflect about, is the irony of beign a master or teacher (sensei if you will), and teaching the conventions to the other actors and demanding a lot from them. Of course, i had to become an expert in the subject and know a lot about it and how it works, and i demanded a lot from the actors and their physical movements. But when it came down to me personally doing this work in depth, i realized that it was harder than it looked and made me reflect on how the actors felt when i pressured them to work harder. Still, as the IBer, i have to set the example, which obviously pushes me to work even harder. In real life, it works the same, the teacher has to be the expert and know everything from every perspective, and in theatre i guess the director has to be the same. In which case it becomes useful having the form VI directors learning in our workshops, so they know what they are doing.
Now that we lost two actors, i can see more clearly the importance of each one of them. I'm not saying that at first they weren't important, but the fact that we had to rearange everything so that thing work out well without them. I guess that because their departure was early on the process, then there was no greatly significant change or effect on the play, apart from the fact we had to cut off two characters. But i began to think about the influence a departure had on our vision of the play, and how things are laid out. In theatre in general, and even movies or television shows, some actors depart because of different reasons, and the project might be affected greatly. Of course, this is a school play, and a different situation, but the impact it may have in a larger project such as a Broadway production or else, what could happen? How do the producers work towards arranging things for the production to move on? What if the departure happened weeks before opening day? What if the impact affects the project so much it can't recover? Could this happen to us?

Workshop Masters; "I am the teacher now"

This past week, we began our kathakali workshops with the cast of the play. I did mine on my body movements and face expressions demo, concentrating on the human or natural characters. I tried to work with them on the bases of kathakali, teaching them about the bhavas and rasas, which are the driving emotions. On Thursday i worked with Mr. Cajas for the first time, showing and explaining to him my proposal for the costumes. During class time, we commented and discussed about the rehearsals, as well as planning our full schedule and casting actors into the roles.

At first i was really nervous to be the teacher to the actors, i felt like they weren't gonna take me very serious since I'm also a student like them. But it went by very smoothly, i felt like they were listening the entire time, and even though they got carried away from time to time, they were paying attention to me. I did see a lot of interest from them, which gave me a lot of confidence on our choice of tradition.
On the other hand, i saw some discontent on our casting choices, from several actors who thought they were gonna be main characters or something. In the case of one of them, i did see her point on the fact she's been here a long time, but we need her in that role. On the case of another, she was just stubborn about it, and she neglects her lack of bigger skills and acts like she deserves a lot more. I feel disappointed on some of them, specially since they are not giving their best effort regardless of their character. Nonetheless, i still see a lot of people who are very happy with their characters, and i see them working towards them. Specially goes for Hanuman, who we gave a major role, and embraced it without acting like a diva. I think this is key for the play to work, because some people become too big headed about it, and stop working as hard as they could.
I think that the most important thing is that everyone is working extremely well, which gives us producers a great amount of confidence. Truth is, kathakali is an extremely difficult tradition, but the actors are doing their best to learn about this tradition, at a great pace.

During this week i learned a lot about being a theatre master, to what leading a workshop is. For the most, i learned to devise a structure to follow and how to transform my research into a presentation in the form of a workshop, which is literally my product 1 for the IB. I did see that some of the information was a bit odd, and difficult for them to understand, specially when it came to Hindi terms, but i tried my best to teach them. I began to see the transformation from the actor to the character, using the conventions i taught them, and even though it took some time for them to get used to it, by the time i did the scene with them on Saturday i began to actually see the characters for the play. This made me reflect upon character building, and how they are created from a starting point. For this play, the characters already exist; they have a story, a personality, a destiny, that has been set for years, so where does the actor's role as an innovator come in?
One of the most interesting things i realized, is that in kathakali the bases are the emotions, the navarasas, and they are the starting point of every action and movement. I taught them about moving the body according to this emotion, and made them imagine it flowing and controlling their body. I began to reflect on the fact that in real life, emotions do control us, and they guide our responses in the world. And i think that's where the actor's innovation comes in, when they use their own experience as a person, to feel this emotion and translate it into the character. But sometimes, the characters we create have a different history, and some emotions we haven't yet experience, such as the thirst for killing (a bit dark, but ok), so how do we translate it? Do we use a simpler emotion as a starting point? I do think that that is one way to take it, for example there are only 9 emotions in kathakali, and they guide the entire story. But i myself taught the actors that this 9 emotions are only a starting point, and they could subdivide into every single existent emotion.
When i was teaching the 9 face expressions for each of the rasas, i began to notice that all of the actors were copying exactly what the picture showed, except for one of them, who had a small variation. I realized at that moment, that innovation is what makes us improve, and the personal touch of the actor is what makes us stand out. So i began telling them to use their own ideas and personal touches to the face expressions, and since then i began to see a lot of interesting and very unique proposals of each of the face expressions. Which made me wonder about all the times I've added a personal touch to the different conventions I've learned each year. But i also thought about the fact that, some people gave such big personal touches that the convention was lost completely, so whats the limit? How do you know how to balance the innovation and the set rules of the conventions?
A couple of weeks back, i wondered about the importance of the concept, but now that we are about to start building the scenes, and now that the characters are coming to life, i do see its importance. I see that it influences the artistic choices to create the characters, and the actions and the main part of the plot, which have shaped into a great ending that ties to our concept.