Over the past few months I've been studying Brecht independently and now we are studying him in IB Theatre. The more I read his theories the more I disagree with them. He completely ignores the fact that people come to the theatre to be entertained. Considering the social ails of the time, it is highly doubtful that they wanted to be constantly reminded of the fact that they were in a theatre and do a social critique of themselves while watching The Caucasian Chalk Circle. What Brecht was doing was not theatre, it was merely an attempt- heavily influenced by Marxism- to get the elite to be more critical of themselves and consider the social chains they were casting on the rest of society. That is not theory.

While the arts have always been a platform to discuss social and political injustice, they are also a place for passion and expression designed to make people feel.

I was just at the famous celebrity blog website and i looked at Will Wheatons blog and Bruce willis blog. Will wheaton is the guy who was in star trek. The blogs have stuff about their personal lives and some information about their movies and what movie they are currently working on. Bruce willis has a link on his website where you can go to see all the films he has acted in and you can buy them on DVD from there. He also has information about his own life and has a link where you can help children with aids and victims of hurricanes. Will wheaton has a regular blog site an audio blog and a photo blog.He also has a link of where he will be appearing in the future. Some of the celebrity blog sites i saw also have secrets for which you need special username and passwords given to you by the celebrities. These websites are useful if you want to get to know the celebrity really well.

Well... the summer is finally over and that means it's time to focus on IB theater. Over the summer I did not get as much work done on my research commission as I would have liked, but I did find some more secondary sources. I am having an extremely difficult time finding primary sources, probably because Kenyan theater isn't exactly a field of study many people choose. However, I'm planning a trip to the GMU library where I hope to find more information on my topic. I am also in the process of ordering several books that I have found online.
Unfortunately, I also did not have the privilege of seeing many theater productions during the break. Oddly enough, I was a counselor at a summer day camp where I chaperoned a young group of girls in kindergarten and first grade. Every day they visited the theater station at the camp. Watching them learn and then perform at the end of the week helped remind me of how important basic and fundamental acting skills are. No matter how hard you work on learning your part and figuring out the subtext of your lines, it doesn't matter if no one can hear you because you're not projecting. I guess it's always important to remember the basics of theater.
I'll post more later about the progress of my research commission!

My classmate Lauren and I just returned from searching for information at George Mason University Library for our research commissions. I found a plethora of information in this library, whereas in local public library I found little to no information on Tadashi Suzuki.

At this library, I found and read much of Suzuki's own book, The Ways of Acting. This book is comprised of many of his essays on the Suzuki method of acting, and how they compare to Stanislavsky's method of acting. I learned much about his personal beliefs and methods of teaching actors his method. For example, he includes many exercises and practices to condition actors to his original fusion of modern and traditional (No and Kabuki) Japanese theater.

Another book that was extremely helpful was called The Theater of Tadashi Suzuki, by Ian Carruthers. Carruthers, an American, researched and had first-hand observations of Suzuki and his practices. Carruthers puts these seemingly foreign practices into an American perspective. Because of this, I more easily understood the method behind Suzuki's madness.

I am still on the lookout for primary sources, such as experts on the Suzuki method or videotapes or academic speeches. Perhaps I will check more university websites and find more contacts or ask my teacher. I know that this research will enhance my commission, and my experience in theater.

From learning about Suzuki, I know that I will enhance my theater performance and open up my persepectives on how to play or direct a role. Expanding my theatrical horizons and learning about new cultures, it will allow me to become a better actor through morphing into different characters. --MCL

This summer I was fortunate enough to go to England. There I saw a play at the Globe Theater in London. The play that I saw was "A Winter's Tale" The actors were dressed in full costume of that time period and also for the play's time period. I thought that it was very interesting to see. I was a groundlings. I stood right next to the stage. I came up to right underneath my chin. It was cool to see the play from that perspective. I also felt like I was one of those people from the olden days. The crowd got into the play towards the middle and it was funny to see people reacting to the actors of the stage, like it was real life. People booed and others laughed. It really made the whole play watching experience even more eventful. It also makes you appreciate the actors on stage. To be able to engage an audience to the extent that they believe what is going on-stage is true, is the best compliment an actor can get. Also, you can see that the actors feed off the audience. If no one participates, its harder to make the play it's fullest. with the Globe theater, the set up is such that the audience is sort of forced to participate, but that's not necessarily bad. Overall the experience was a good one.

This summer, I attended the Shakespeare Advanced Camp. I found out about an indian acting method called rasa. This method involves informing your acting choices through your breath. There are nine basic emotions in this method:

sringara (desire, love)
hasya (humor, laughter)
karuna (pity, grief)
raudra (anger)
vira (energy, vigor, courage)
bhayanaka (fear, shame)
bibhasta (disgust)
abdhuta (surprise, wonder)
santa (bliss, peace)

Combinations of these basic feelings provide the whole range of human emotion. The way this was taught to us was the teacher taped out the nine different emotions in a grid on the floor. we were then required to go into each box, breathe the emotion, and then draw or write the first thing that came into our heads. after we were done in one box, we would rotate to the next, till we were all done. The experience reminded me a little of the Stanislavski method, because what we put down in the box would inform how we experienced the different emotions. We then went into the boxes again, and were told to stand in actor's neutral, with our eyes closed, breathing deeply. after a few moments, we were told to start breathing our emotion. gradually our breath changed, and some people began to softly vocalize their emotions, without having been told to. After a while, the way you breathed affected the way you felt, and you began to connect with that emotion. as we were all breathing our rasa, the instructor yelled 'take!' and we formed a statue of our emotion. it was such a connection to the emotion that it was hard to move into the next class.
the next day, we were told that we were going to send our rasas into another person. we stood in a circle, and i had to send the laughter rasa around the circle. i had to spontaneously start laughing, and it couldnt be faked. i could start out with fake laughter, but when i passed it, it had to be real. by breathing in the rasa laughter, after a few moments i was able to start laughing. the situation quickly became incredibly funny, even though nothing had happened that was funny. without even trying, i passed it on to the next person by looking at them and simply laughing. the laughter progressed quickly around the circle, and after a while no one could stop laughing.
the following day, we again were inside our rasa boxes. this time, we did the exercise from the first day, but we were instructed to take a line from our text and say it in each rasa box. the effect was interesting, because some of the boxes were harder than others since the line clearly didnt fit in with the mood. however, occaisionally you would reach a box where your line 'clicked' when it hadnt before. this happened to me in the 'suprise' box. I had been playing my line as something between courage and disgust, but the line really only made sense to me in that box, and not in the courage or disgust boxes.
I really connected to this exercise however, when we did a run through of the show. breathing in the emotion was incredibly helpful prior to going onstage, and it insured that there was incredible energy in the scene from start to finish. it helped inform me as to what my character was feeling on the most complex of lines, what movements and facial expressions he did throughout the course of the scene, and how he reacted to what was going on.

This summer I was fortunate enough to participate in the Governor's School program at the University of Virgina. I had the pleasure of being in a rotation group that dealt with modern theorists and classical theorists. The focus on the class was on realism in acting.

The older playwright's were not as interesting so, I don't feel like talking about them. However, we did talk a lot about Stanislavski, Uta Hagen and Stella Adler, all of which were very exciting. A main focus of the class was to get away from "indicating," that is, doing what you think you do when you're scared, cold, angry or tired. This type of acting barrs an individual from experiencing a particular emotion because they are too focused on the motions. Adrienne, the instructor, encouraged us to go back and vividly relive a memory in which we felt an emotion that is necessary in a particular scene and try to connect those memories to the text. By getting inside of these emotions, you are no longer indicating, you're doing what you would do under those circumstances.

When using scenes from Proof, we worked in pairs and used the above method as well as several other method's that we used inside of the class. My scene was working with my sister, Catherine, after our father's funeral. Instead of indicating thing's that I did while I was frustrated with an individual, I went back and relived a fight with my mother which brought with it a lot of different emotions. I connected these memories to the text and when we actually did the scene I was so frustrated that I could feel the tension in my shoulders and neck.

THE END

This summer, I worked on my research commission, and on finding a play for my one-act. I spent a lot of time at the library, which was surprisingly not as successful as I had wished. There aren't a lot of books on Sanskirt theatre in the library (or any libraries in Fairfax County, for that matter.) I looked online; I have a few websites to add. I'm still working on the primary source; that's more difficult than anything.

The woman at the help desk in the library has given me more sources! However, I think I'm still going to have to order books (which I didn't want to do.) Used books might be a good idea, if I have to.

As for the play? Well, I guess I'm ordering that too. The only good ones aren't in the library, I've learned. Maybe I'll check out the bookstores...

Working, working, still working. I didn't see any plays over the summer (unfortunately.) However, I'm going to see Wicked again in December with my mom, sister, my friend from church, and her mother. It should be nice... I'm really looking forward to it. :)

g.b.

I am very excited about my one act. It is an absurdist commedy entitled "It." The plot goes as follows: A guy, minding his own buisness on stage, is tagged "it." In a nut shell, the play is about him trying to find out what "it" is and to pass it off to someone else. Unfortunatly, the script has not reached my house yet so I have no read it. However, I feel very strongly about the plot concept so I think I will like it. Also, no real set is required and I can have many extras plus my five main cast members. Since this is an absurdist piece, I am looking forward to playing around with design, costumes, and lighting elements. I am hoping to have a strong cast, although I do want to take a chance on some new faces. I want to find the talent lurking in people who have gone unnoticed. I am also worried about finding actors who are dedicated. Its often hard to tell at the auditions whether the person who are auditioning is dedicated or not. I also hope that there are a lot of people auditioning so that I will have a wide variety to choose from. I am looking forward to directing my one act.

The Shakespeare Theatre's performance of The Tempest was certainly an interesting one. Never having seen the play before, I had few expectations (besides a decent-quality performance.) However, the show was good, overall; it was a morning well-spent.

Creativity, when used correctly, is always something I admire in a performance. I did like the half-pipe ramp used in the set, even if it was one of the few set pieces. It left nothing to be desired, because with the other elements of the play, I never really wondered where the trees were, or the animals. The half-pipe just seemed natural and fitting. The water was excellent. Anything that can bring a play further to life is good. I liked their use of it.

The costumes were all fitting in with the time, and they matched. (I noticed it during the curtain call- one of the reasons why everyone looked good on stage together was that they were all wearing warm, similiar colors.) It was a good choice on costuming. The animals, too, were well-done. The pink flamingos were my favorite.

While the show looked good and sounded good, other things were missing. I was not bothered so much by Miranda's age (I thought it was simply an interesting choice of character portrayal) as I was by Ferdinand's entire... stage presence. He seemed like an awkward teenager: clumsy, and yet, he thought he was invicible. His almost-cocky attitude annoyed me, as did his voice. I barely had time to notice whether his acting was good or not, because of his voice and the way he carried himself.

Prospero and Caliban, I thought, were excellent.

The issue of whether it was a good idea to cast a middle eastern man as Caliban came up (it quickly occured to us that maybe it was to send a somewhat political message.) I thought his acting was great, even if the accent didn't work the entire time (diction wasn't so hot when he had to speak through it.) However, I have to agree: making the monster in the play middle eastern was an iffy choice. It comes down to people's biased opinions, and their political views, and might influence whether they liked the Shakespeare Theatre's Tempest at all. Luckily, like I said, he had the acting skills to make up for it (I thought he was awesome, so I wasn't thinking about events going on thousands of miles away.)

All in all, the show was good. Use of language and body movement was good: everything was understandable. Ariel's flying, the wedding, and the first scene of the play were absolutely mesmorizing, because of the special effects and the lighting. Afformentioned criticism of Ferdinand aside, seeing The Tempest was fun.

-gtb