The Andean performance

Once every year, the 1st year IB students present a Andean theater performance using all the information and conventions studied during the course in the year. This often means the final performance in the school for all of us and we have to present in 3 days during the first break.
For this presentation we received, during the week, the visit of our own Felipe Ayulo who discussed with us the importance of that performance and how they did them in their time. The idea of this weeks classes was to get the idea of what we wanted to portray at the presentation and to discuss a possible PPP proposal.
We got into the mood of creating and started thinking in possible ways of dividing the performance, the theme, the concept, the vision and the characters we wanted to represent, all taking into account the conventions from Andean theater and the studied information that allow us to create something from that environment.

The discussion was all about first finding a suitable theme that would not only represent the studied convention but also something that students, our audience, could relate to. We discussed the current affairs and the news that were affecting the world now until we reached the idea of "the one and the other" which summed up a bunch of good ideas with connection with discrimination and social injustice.
The idea was to say that people always think in the one and the other is despised by the whole society and so we used this idea to criticize how discrimination occurs not only between races but also inside each of them and how the lack of respect to the other people might create confrontation that harms us all. Then we decided on the theme to be presented which developed from the idea that teachers, in the past, used to represent a more authoritarian power than now and so they were like the "ONE" while students represented very well the "OTHER" and so we decided to base the whole play upon the idea of the "Entrada" and to develop a plot in which the first action would be a take over of the Churchill patio in the school and then represent the changes that occurred in time to this idea of the confrontation between teachers and students that resulted in more equality and respect from each side.
We wanted to represent a evolving situation in which first:

ONE = Teacher
OTHER = Students

The after the take over....

ONE = Students
OTHER = Teachers

and finally.....

Teachers + Students = AYLLU

These all seemed like very good ideas in the paper which would give the play a lot of dynamics in terms of the space and the actions and therefore a lot of rhythm but we also needed a guideline and so the concept was decided to be: PACHAKUTI which means the world upside down. And it is really a world upside down because the take over and the fight would then be a representation of arts and as it was defined in the past week to us: A way to express our selves that can create a change in great masses.

Purposes and goals

This week we had a great discussion in terms of purposes and goals we wanted to achieve with the One Act play and all started because Roberto was upset that we all put in our blogs and reviews how great our play was without thinking on if we achieved what we wanted with it. To this was and what do you think we wanted to achieve? Its very simple, to me, everybody has a different perception of things and in this case achievements, goals and purposes. The fact is that even if you want to decide on a general achievement, still, people have different approaches to it and everybody has a different way of saying, yes i did it.
In my case for example and as i discussed in the class it was a matter of entertaining. What i like to see in a play is a fast response, stunning rhythm and a dash of dynamics and with this i think its all i need to have a great time in the theatre because with these 3 factors then the play has a faster pace and it stops being to dense even with a text based play as La falsa Criada is. Its simple when a play is fast and has a good response then you can stand any mistake, any problem with music or lighting and any problem that not working towards a character makes. In this years One Act Play that has the simple purpose of entertainement, we need then a dynamic play so that people can engage in a serious of jokes and situations that are comic to all. We had a intense argumentation in the way of explaining why is this the only way of theatre that entertains and is joyful to watch and what is more true than that. We cant take for granted that they all like theatre, im talking about the people that as me went to watch play that dont necesarilly suit their preferences but still they go because its aobligation and what a better surprise than to show a play that they  really liked.
The general comment from the play were that it was fantastic and it was a great show and everybody enjoyed the jokes, the situations but more than that they all said that we showed a lot of commitment and respnsable relation with the play and performance.
The discussion saterted because Roberto said that we didn't achieved what we wanted in the start and then the question in our mind was, and what did we wanted? Again in my opinion and i think this is what most of us thought, the idea was to let the school name high as always and reassure that the level our theater course has is better than the other schools but more than that to give the audience what the other One Act plays that my school has presented which is a great 20 minutes that i can really enjoy and then use as inspiration for a lot of reasoning and critical thinking.
What could be a goal and purpose then of a play such as La falsa Criada in which their director said that he didn't improve the stage and couldn't really care about the characterization of El Baron in the play because "it was too much work" as he said in an interview. Does he really care about theater and that people that pay 45-60 soles to watch a performance that couldn't frankly reach any of my expectations in what i look for in a professional play, I mean how can you possibly say it is too much work if for this "work" you are earning money, i mean what is the purpose of making a play in which you don't put the whole of your attention, its just a matter of passion and purpose that your play gives as much as you can give and how can someone like that be so called the "best director in Peru" come one who with that idea of achievement can possibly have such an acknowledgement.

La Falsa Criada

La Falsa Criada was presented at Theater La Plaza and had a great cast of actors that resembled what to me was an entertaining and dynamic play which  had most of what i look like in a professional play but still was lacking in much other thing this allowing me to review it better.

Acting wise the play lacked in the details that make a women be a man. As simple as that. The voice that tried to disguise the difference between the Baron and the girl behind the clothes were not more than pathetic, if you have any kind of culture you have to know how a man speaks and the only time in which she tried to use a real man voice was when she used the stereotypical posture of the handsome man that wants to conquer a broken hard. In the fast dialogue parts she was so not used to a man voice that it was hardly recognizable if the character was still being used or if she had just forgotten about the performance. The voice presented by Lelio was a repetitive sequence from the same actor which in La Cocina by Gisella Cardenas had the same voice range and then made as well as a stereotypical kind of "Don Juan" a very dense dialogue. The only character that improve the performance in terms of acting techniques and also presented a varied way to interpret and deliver the information were the Harlequin and the servant, they both had a diverse way to entertain, not only through the dialogue that was more of a colloquial with slang type but also through the characterization that was more profound and the body expressions. These helped the play to be lets say dynamic because if it was based upon only text then it would have been very dense.

The scenery which is mostly what you can see concretely was another failure, i have tried to make up in my mind reasons to think why are those walls ther and why do they use the outside of the house as their private space. It has no meaning at all to me, the panels at the sides resemble 2 walls that seem to be endless and then you see the frontis of the house that again has a very detailed design, that respects some of the architecture of the time and then you see this open window from which someone could appear and then no one does. Then the door, why to have a door if you wont use it, and when you do is to show that there is a countryside landsacpe painted and the back? It has no coherence with a normal plain play in which the scenery is turned to show the difference with the outside and the inside of the house. The play was divided in 3 settings and the first gave the impression that we were looking at the entrance of a house with a little fountain in the middle, perfect, but then suddenly in the second setting the same place is shown but no there is a chair, an oleo and a resting chair in the side, i was expecting for a little more of common sense or at least a way to understand what is is that they are trying to show with that. 

Then the Costumes and again the cliche with the kind of clothing a countess would use and the typical prince clothes but then you see a Baron that has the hips of Shakira and the boobs of Shaquille because it was obvious that she had forgotten the bra o the fitting clothes in her house. There was also something that i couldn't really get the grasp of and it was that since the moment the Baron would unbutton the first of his buttons then he became a women to the eyes of everyone

 In terms of the lighting and the sound, i was told that my performance, the one i went to watch was the worst in those aspects because first the lights never went off at the part in which the countess leaves the stage through the door and then the music was very hardly heard and of course because it was a very bad piece of recording, it cracked every 10 seconds and entered when ever it liked.

In my opinion as i have stated before i like dynamic plays that have response and have a coherent setting. As you may understand then the only reason for me to watch a play like this is for pure educational purposes, these means that yes it had certain parts such as the games with the hats and the the drunk singing that satisfied what i look for in a performance of this caliber but it had such a dense dialogue and such a confusing scenery that the play seemed just a little to strong for me. I would have like more attitude of a better body expressions in those parts in which the characters said their hyper loaded and precious lines that had made them work hard to learn and they said them with such grace and so slow that i was about to leave but then the funny characters came in, the cheese parts of the Baron and countess falling in love in the most absurd but true way possible. So in fact yes the acing was not what i expected but still it passed satisfactorily my tests.

This is not the case of the scenery which in the other hand cause my the worst headache. It was like ancient language, virtually impossible to decode. IF they were trying to make us think and imagine the boundaries of our stage they should have at least prepared some directions in some where there because it was very difficult to situate yourself in that space. At first it was to big, to broad and then it seemed so small, so over exploited that it became clumsy and almost as if they had no more money to put more scenery in the stage. They used a space in so many different ways that it lost total coherence to the audience, it just seemed never ending and then when i finally thought i had it, a landscape is painted behind the door, door that was only used once by the harlequin to interrupt the discussion and when he opens you are able if you want to already look behind his back into what seemed A never ending Narnia n closet. And i don't thinks that's what they had i mind do you?

After watching this joke of a scenery the light problems occurred, the light that was supposed to turn off didn't and the actress that seemed to have an urgent meeting with the toilet or something couldn't just have a better idea than to flick her fingers to signal the already stressed light mechanic that it was a time for a black out, finally the light went off and that was almost the end. I know that this could have not been their fault but that how theater works, you just have to do what it takes and if you are so called professional you just cant do that at all that was to me the worst mistake and the bottom of the iceberg in terms of respect to an audience, an audience that is not stupid enough to not notice that kind of signals more if the lights are all over you.

The question i developed for this review was, what makes the difference between pros and rookies and i think as you can see the only thing i can find is that they are allowed to flick fingers as if it was some kind of High School Musical. Regarding the other aspects of the performance you can clearly point out that there was some but not much work done in terms of the characters and the characterization, it focused more in the text and in the people you could see on stage. A recommendation would be that if you are trying to entertain a audience that is paying 60 soles, you at least make sure that the play can be understand by everyone and not only by those who go to watch their friends acting.