This past week, we worked on building the last scene of the play, which presents the coronation of Rama and the plot twist of our open ending. Even though we are still missing the Final battle scene, we have succesfully built the entire play.
Working with almost the entire cast in one scene is very very hard. The final scene has four main moments, the narration, the king's entrance, the toast, and the open ending. Therefore, not all of the actors were present in one of the parts we were working on, having to do nothing until we begin setting up their part. I felt a bit useless the first time we were rehearsing, as we were building the narration, which was the longest and hardest part, because it involved a dance. So i really didn't have anything to do, because even if i was directing, there were already other 4 people doing that job. So i figured, maybe we should practice stage combant and Purulia Cchau with the monkeys.
The group of the monkeys dissapointed me a lot, supposedly they had already worked these animal positions with Giselle, but none of them truly knew them correctly, which is their fault for not revising what we taught. On top of that, they couldn't hold the positions for the time we wanted them to. I understand that they are not professionals and don't have super built bodies and Hulk strenght, but we've been working for two months now on balance, holdign legs-based positions, and so on and so forth, and they still can't hold them! I'm not mad, but either they are not trying hard enough, or we are terrible teachers (NO.).
One of the key aspects we taught the monkeys about stage combat, is the idea that confidence and trust is key for it to work. Some of the kids were more excited about doing a kick and a punch, that they were probably just end up hurting others and themselves. I felt that the monkeys understood what it meant, specially as we tried a couple of slaps, and they trusted each other into what the movement meant and what was going to happen. Still, some of them kept being childish and kept on and on about them wanting to punch "awesomely".
Personally i think that the scene was built pretty quickly, and that everything went very smoothly. Now that i think about it, the entire play was built relatively smoothly, the real thing came when we corrected and improved scene by scene. I thought that the most diffult thing was to impose the disipline the actors needed, and to bring everything together.
I think that, doing this scene, the most difficult thing for me was the love dovey part, because i really don't have a heart whatsoever and my soul is as dark as the night, so i guess it was a real challenge. And because Sita, which is supposed to be my wife, is my friend, it becomes a little ackward, but i guess we've come to terms with it.
Being a director is a lot of work, specially when trying to built uo a scene with a lot of actors. It is key for each scene to know the main actions, the structure and the characters to be able to produce it correctly. In this case, we had to concentrate on each of the four moments separately, as they involved the same characters, and build up bit by bit. I discovered that when directing, and specially sketching, a scene it is important to divide it in parts and work on them one by one until they are of a good standard, before moving on into the next one, so that it becomes easier to correct later. Likewise, a director must know to balance his time to sketch all of the scenes.
Given our problem of the excess in actors, who were basically sitting down doing nothing, and us trying to teach them the bases of stage combat, i learned that sometimes it is best if they just sit and watch. This is because, some of the actors caused noise and interfered with the scene, because they were screaming during the training. I also realized that, because they were watching, they were learning and getting to know the play and the scene better, for them to analyze and work upon what they saw. Moreover, if they know how the first part plays out, it becomes easier to get the mood and tone of the scene, and to be aware of the cue to enter.
I've been wondering a lot about how to convey feelings, specially those which we don't know. Personally, i've never been in love like Rama was with Sita (i don't even have a heart so...), which makes it difficult to me to relate it with a past experience, as there is none! I can have a certain approach, but i think is up to the actor to explore in different ways to make it more convinving, given that there is no past experience to relate and use as reference. So i wonder, how does the actor look for stimulus, if there is no personal reference? Will an external reference be enough? Or will the actor lack that special something that makes it more believable?
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