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!