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.