Theatre Studies Teacher

The new theatre class is fantastic, offering a great depth of talent in various areas.  Already, after just a week, the group is gelling together extremely well.

I was thrilled with the script reading and people’s reaction to the play.  Even with a cold read, I personally can picture how the final performance may look.  I must say though, it feels like we are quickly jumping into the work and will need to to get this play to the stage by the middle of May.

In my journal entries each week, I will provide you all with some of my thoughts on how the classes go, how rehearsals and production work is progressing and I’d also like to include details that I have posted in each of your individual journal entries for each of you to read.  They will be ‘qoutes’ so if you want to understand further, you should go and have a read through each other’s entries.  We can learn a lot from each other here, which is the main purpose of writing our journals as Blog entries, online.  I will indent them, as I have below, so that you understand these comments have been made within a context of someone else’s Blog.

As far as the ‘actor’s notes’, you might remember that I mentioned the need to undertake some Dramaturgy tasks and across the following week, that is just what we’ll do.  We’ll spend another session in IT/library and part of your homework will be to find out some more info on people’s near death experiences and what different people believe about what happens after we die.  On the surface, sounds a little morbid, but there is some really interesting stuff there as last year’s Yr12s discovered when researching stuff for their ensemble.
I’m happy that your feelings about the play have waivered.  I’d hate it if you all immediately liked what you saw/read.  To me, part of the challenge in performance, is making something work for your audience.  There are elements of ‘Fame’ that I found difficult, so I made slight alterations to the script and there are other areas that I still don’t like totally.  Part of my job as the Director of ‘Fame’ is to take these elements and present them to the audience in such a way that they will work better.
I also agree with your summation of the play now you have read it.  I hope one of the things you guys might learn this year is to not be closed off to the possibilities of a script/performance and instead to take the challenge on board.  There were some students who struggled with their practice monologues last year because they expected it all to come easily.  They chose the monologue they ‘liked’ best, which isn’t always the wisest creative decision to make.  You however, are willing to look for the challenge and work to overcome it, which is what made your monologue one of the most successful last year.
On your comment about the audience thinking about their lives when watching the play….if only one person in the audience is affected this way, then as performers, you have done your job.  You can’t force the audience to be touched by the subject matter, but hopefully, they will.  And I know that sometimes, it can be years later that the experience of seeing something like our play will come back to impact on a person.

 

Thanks to Lisa for providing the impetuous for these comments.

And these from Jarrod-

Your feedback on the cold read were especially welcome. As a Director, the hardest part is actually getting the casting right…which I think we are close to doing. I aappreciate your evaluation of the efforts by Josh, Lisa and Burak. Let’s make sure we support each other by also being willing to share our thoughts in class.
An important part of creating a “Production Team” as we need to for this exercise is that we are supportive of each other. Being supportive doesn’t just mean providing positive feedback, but being honest about your ideas. I always appreciate it when you guys give me feedback. The second tier to this then, is to take comments on board as professionals. This means that you can choose to agree or disagree with the comments, but you also genuinely listen and even if you don’t agree, you are willing to process the comment and try and work out what has led the person to make that comment. I have always said to you all, that I am constantly learning from you as much as you might learn something from me. And we can all learn from each other.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 10th, 2007 at 12:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.