Stress and evolving situations

We had a great time doing this year’s play, not just because of the hard work we put on the creation but also because it represented a challenge that for my point of view the team had never faced. This year the making become harder as it went. We had to face the workshop of Martin and Maria Laura who helped us not only to build the confidence we needed in ourselves but also the actual skill to make the puppets and more importantly to animate them. We had to overcome the lack of commitment and the faulty time schedules which couldn’t help at all, but after all, we finished fairly well with good ideas being portrayed.

After a big discussion with the people who came to watch the play, i ended up thinking that not only we know about what we are doing but also some other people. This is the most impacting comments I’ve heard from the people who spoke to me and gave me some feedback.

·         Vocalise because it was difficult to understand

·         I could see that the idea of magic was major but it came out of nowhere, suddenly a magician appears.

·         The dynamic was impressive, the stilts and the shadow puppets had a lot of potential and you developed them well.

In some way i thought that these ideas were all very clearly thought and in some parts they were actually developing some more than basic understanding, which makes me think that it was clear and concise, apart from the part of magic. Still I think we could have managed to make it lighter for the audience to actually have some empathy with the theme, because some people did told me it was very poor and they thought it was boring.

Now why my tittle? Well it come back to the last performance, no, it actually comes before of that. I am not someone who feels something before the play, i normally are very calm and never nervous about what could happen..... BUT this last presentation the nerves attacked me when i was told to redo the last battle in scene 10 and above all Nicole was given the responsibility to direct and so in a Nicole way of doing thing i almost died with stress and finally I couldn’t manage to do all the proposed scene during the play. It was not only my fault because the fact is that all of us were in the same situation and both I and Katy weren’t able to succeed over the expectations Roberto had.

The other major fault that I had was that the evolving situations were not portrayed as i wanted them to be. We couldn’t relate to each other in terms that the audience wasn’t there feeling what we felt of thinking as we did but only listening because it seemed there was no real fast response and the linking in between the scenes was agonising.

People say that if theatre has no clear connection as if it was a true conversation then there is nothing to watch and basically believing that some words and phrases i say had no meaning at all doesn’t help me in the immersion in my character.

How can you create something new in the last second?

Well i think it needs lots of concentration and a lot of willingness to be able to actually conserve calm and remember the learned part. It was very difficult for me to concentrate with that much people running around while was trying the new bit and also the use of 3 directors was stupid because it only created confusion and misunderstanding in between the actors.

Did some ideas appear from nowhere?

Well it is true that some ideas did came of nowhere but in some way there was the intended trial to portray a magical world just from having a giant queen which i thought was enough to introduce magic and in such a way i thought it was something people were able to expect but in terms of actually were it came from well it was no clearly presented and Santhagar did appear from nowhere.


"Stress is not what happens to us. It's our response TO what happens. And RESPONSE is something we can choose"


A little quote to make you think about stress!
have a great weekend LONG LIVE QUEEN MATHILDA!

3 days to play

We are 3 days away from this years play which i think is the most challenging and hard in the production of them all. This 2 months have been very difficult from time schedules to actual work and even though im not from the ones who worked the most i can say that it has even for me been a very difficult 2 months. But i would like to focus on the actual organization, 1 week ago one teachear who's name i wont mention (Katty) told me that if she was in charge of the play it would be only matter of 3 days to get it done. 3 days!!!!!!!!!!!
What???? are you kidding me do you really think that. That was my reaction and when i got back to my rehearsal, after telling Roberto what miss Katty said, i was thinking that was completely impossible, i mean it is impossible to work like that with children and me(im worst than children), there is no way to get Mathias botteri to shut up of do what you say or get all the water faries to do as you say and act with pasion and enthusiasm. Then i realised the cruel truth..... Miss Katty is feared by all the children in the school.

Im guesing if roberto was too maybe he would be able to do it also in 3 days..... no what im thinking about it is impossible to do this play in such a short time, the play has a lot of working to be done, we first do some games to get the people in the mood and let the people to show their ability in certain activities, then we get them all together to see what each of them should get as a role in the play, and finally we start acting. BUT asthe play is created by the students we always let the people to sort of invent their own script in order to get the best from them all in terms of participation and imagination which always leads to more enthusiasm in the play. It is a very difficult schedule that we make them do and with 80 people following it it is very difficult to have order and have people doing as you want, this means always working and willing to work and of course always attending to the rehearsals to which we always have the problems of people who travel or whao have detentions and other excuses to skip them and so we CANT work like that.

It is a almost impossible siyuation to have the attention that you want and because of that it is not possible to have a play done in 3 days.

Returning to our last weeks the suits were already for us and we had a great time working with them, i have almos dominated my characters of the first act and im ready to work double hard on those of the second act and finally i am waiting for all faborable response to what is going to be expected from us.

Should we give detentions to people during the rehearsals?
how can we get every one's attention?
How can we do a play in a shorter time?

This are the questions i do myself from my discussion and i will answer them in a futher Blog. or at least after i have presented the play and seen if the people there are capable to cope with the expectancy.

Hard work and dedication, 2 of the thing you need for the IB and the play, this is the biggest and strongest connection i can find. It is not only working hard and putting your all into every days work, it is also not wasting your time and never stop producing.
It is just giving your total focus to what you want to achieve and also changing the way you see the world.

This is my goal for trimester 2, changing my attitude towards my teachers and the courses im taking it is just taking it easy with them and putting my all just as im doing in my performance times in the Play.
Even though it is always possible to give more.

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do".
Leonardo da vinci

Tribe life nothing else than what you need

What came first the need or the material things?
Are needs wishes or wants for more?
what is the actual essential for our life?
Can we live with just the essential?

Classes have relaxed a bit with the play almost on our inmediate future because we have been focusing more in the paucartambo trip and talking about that the only idea i can think of is in the discussion with Nicole. We came tothink about the idea of the author being recognised by his work and ended up on a preety important discussion.
Did computer came because of a need or a want. I personally think computers are needs from were you see them, it is imposible to life without one in this times, it is just the idea of living without them what makes me think of complete chaos. People need them to actually organize, i wouldnt be able to write this if i had no computers in my house and many of the gratest stuff in the world are computer generated.
Still people before used other entertainments before such as theatre which makes me think
What are the importances of Theatre now i mean in different places it has different importances. In Peru to give an example it is purely distraction and entertainement for the people who can afford it while in Japan the kabuki theatre is traditional and is a important part of their culture so the importance for them is enourmous, just as the importance for the andian people for the representations and parades of the ancient inka history.
It is very different in other places always depending on their history.
We also talked about culture and how it affects the way you think, I mean if i come from a middle east culture my thoughts towards certain ideas are different to those in the western world.

Connections:

1. the first connection i can do is the relationship between the culture we have and the type of plays we present. we always have a battle, some dancing and it is for all the family to watch.
2. We have always the importance and relation to our world, we would never do it for the sake of presenting a political or religious view we just give some entertainement to the people who watch the performance.
3. Actually needs come before anything because we have this idea of going forward making things simpler and they might not be something completely necessary but still it is needed to then have the actual relevance for its creation.

Shadow Queendom

This week we did a great advance at the play matters and we were able to finish some scenes that we were working on.

I felt for the first time what it was to actually see people concerned because the play was delayed and how acting was improving significantly during the time performed, the focus and the skills such as pronunciation and intonation was also getting better.

In class we worked on 2 things at the same time, we first rested a bit on the PPP but instead we focused on the play work such as in the final touches to the double pirates and some presentation for the promotion of the play in the Assembly.

We presented a original piece of scene that we created specifically for the promotion and we worked on the skills of enouncing and puppets (Saba, Mateo, Me). We discussed how we were going to organize the tasks but finally Mateo and I ended up controlling the big puppet and Saba the hand ones who at the end were the most difficult to use due to their “smallness”.

Continuing with the task given we worked on the PPP as in the Concept and the Vision in how to describe the play and how we saw the actions working.

I was able to see thet without a good movement of the puppet it doesn’t work at all. It is completely necessary to focus directly in the movements and the expression but not only when you talk but also when we are offstage or even walking, which really is the most challenging part of the whole acting.

My question for this Blog is:

How to connect with the other person to be able to work in perfect harmony?

The only answer i can think of is working hard but there is also some knowledge in between and also getting to know the person a little better so that you are completely able to predict his reaction.