Yillian's IB HL Theatre Journal

Monologuing

yillianburek — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:47:18 +0000

In today’s theater class we rehearsed and performed the short story “Appointment in Samarra” a traditional story translated by W. Somerset Maugham as a monologue. Me and Kumudu were told to perform the same text in anyway we like and it was extremely interesting to see how one text can vary when put on stage.

I chose to perform my monologue in the theater classroom with Kumudu and Jen sitting on the floor facing me watching. To me this gave it the feel of story telling which i think was a good way because it is a traditional story. This was part of my intent in my performance as well by changing my stance and how i was speaking depending on the different characters something i often do when reading stories to children and just felt like a natural idea of how to perform it to me. I felt i did a good job in getting the impression i was trying to convey across.

Kumudu on the other hand in some ways made her performance a little more formal by having it in the early years well and having the audience watch from the balcony. Her intent was to do it in a middle eastern style performance in which the women watch from the balcony. Her interpretation was very interesting and she held the tension well however when she got to the end to the punchline she went out of character. Also she was pacing the entire time so as the audience i found that a little distracting.

Grade Twelve Begins

yillianburek — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:41:31 +0000

This is a new year and a new start i hope. Today’s class was spent figuring out where we left off and what is still left to be done in terms of assignments. As well as getting a better over view of the Research Investigation. I personally need to find a topic for my RI and Jen’s suggestion that i do it on one of Brecht’s plays because i already have some background knowledge is a good idea however i would still have to locate and read one in order to use it in the assignment. Overall i believe it is going to be a good year as long as i do all my work something i know i have had trouble with in the past but am determined to get better at.

costumes and practice

yillianburek — Sun, 02 May 2010 01:45:55 +0000

Today we had a bunch of run throughs and discussed our characters costumes as well as what sort of looks we want our characters were going to have. Today we were supposed to have a full dress rehearsal but because nobody really brought their costumes or masks we just went through it in regular clothes. It was decided my character would be a skater boy type so after research online i have an idea of what to wear. Also i am going to be doing some stunts on a skate board which i think could be quite fun to do but hopefully i won’t actually break my leg…

Commedia prep

yillianburek — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:42:25 +0000

Today we discussed our blogs and then we had our first real run through with everybody in attendance.

commedia issues

yillianburek — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 05:00:30 +0000

Today in our triple period class we were meant to do a sort of dress rehearsal sot of thing however as usual we were behind. Our biggest problem is the masks that we were supposed to make but unfortunately according to all of the internet sites i have looked at on mask making to way to make one is to have those plastic template half things that of course you can not find anywhere in Bangladesh leading us to be sort of lost on how to make them. Another problem is with our casting since in the last play that we did i was cast as a male part i had thought that this time it would be interesting and more fair to change it around and this time get a CHANCE to play something completely and after initially having some trouble with it today when Kumudu and i went to the back room to rehearse i think i had the talk and the personality down although i will admit my walk still needed some work however i had already planned on spending lots of time working on it but instead of letting us work hard and improve and trying not to type cast Ms Gisele has decided it would be less work to rewrite the entire story out line making everything we had done before that period irrelevant so we can play the same roles we always do without hearing our suggestions so it is a good thing i did not make my mask yet

commedia presentation

yillianburek — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:57:29 +0000

On Tuesday we were told to look at scenarios online however since we had a substitute teacher it was very difficult for us to know what to do after we found this information as the instructions were not that clear. On Sunday when Ms. Gisele returned we finally presented our power points on Commedia. It would have been better to do it on the day we had originally planned because i had had everything ready at that time however due to unavoidable circumstances this was not possible.I still think i did a fairly good job on the presentation putting all the necessary information and speaking well so i will hopefully get a good grade on this. The others in the class also did good jobs but some were not that clear.

Commedia dell arte

yillianburek — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 08:43:16 +0000

this past week we have been focusing on our new unit of commedia dell arte the traditional Italian comedic theater. After briefly knowing some background on commedia and some more modern comedy with the same concept. When trying to attempt to try it ourselves i found that it is quite difficult to make sure that the audience actually finds it funny while trying to act and not get hurt. We tried doing a scene where someone falls down and creates havoc at the beach however we couldn’t quite set the scene and we were a little scared to actually fall which created a challenge also it is difficult to predict what other people will find funny. The rest of the week we focused on working on a powerpoint on the characters i got assigned the Zannis or the servants which although there are quite a few characters i found it difficult to get a lot of information that was relevant so i hope that it is good enough.

Independent Project Preperation

yillianburek — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:51:03 +0000

Today we watched our mini plays on the projector and analyzed how good a job we did as a director. Personally i think i did a fairly good job because everyone knew what they were supposed to do and when and that i had good ideas about blocking and such. However if there was more time available to us for rehearsals it would have been a lot better. After this we discussed the independent projects that we have to complete next year while i think i got the basic concept i am still not sure about a lot of the details because it is kind of confusing but we still have a while until we really have to worry about it.

Robin Hood Pitch

yillianburek — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:15:54 +0000

Today after receiving back our written pitches and plans we then had to orally and briefly present our ideas to the rest of the class and discuss things like assigning parts and who will bring in what costume. For my pitch and plans i got an 11 out of 25 which is not fantastic but not completely terrible I am proud of how i did on my actually pitch part and i do agree that the rest of my plans should have shown a bit more detail and i understand why i got this grade. I think the rest of the class liked my idea and for the casting of my play we decided that i will be Robin Hood the main character, Kumudu will be Maid Marion and Mehzabeen would play the Sheriff of Nottingham which is basically what i was originally thinking when looking at the three of us in class and the parts that i had. I also found the other people’s ideas interesting and i am going to play Goldilocks in Kumudu’s adaption of Golidilocks and the three bears which i found slightly ironic since this was a childhood nickname of mine the only thing about this part that has me slightly worried is that although the part seems simple enough there is a part where Kumudu stabs me in the heart that will be a 3D version but still i am a little bit nervous if she is using a real knife. in Mehzabeen’s play i play the girl another part that also sounds very interesting. I think that our miniature shows should be interesting and we will see how things will go on Tuesday.

Pitches

yillianburek — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:04:02 +0000

Today although i was unable to attend class due to a basketball game i handed in my pitch and proposal for our 5 minute plays based on our practitioner. I finally came up with an idea for a stimulus for my play based on the style of Epic Theater and I decided to base my play on Robin Hood. I think I did a fairly good job on it overall because although some parts were not very detailed i covered all the basic areas. One exception to this is possibly the area on plot because i did not do a story board or include a script which will make it difficult when it comes to explaining to the other actors what they are supposed to do so i suppose i will have to give a more coherent idea by Tuesday when we get to acting. Otherwise i think i touched upon every other aspect. I am particularly happy i finally came up with a good idea for the stimulus because it took me a long time which caused me to have to rush through the other sections possibly not making them as good as they could be.