after one morning of "puppet making" and an afternoon with fever and illness, here's a new entry·
Week #10
1. Description
This week in class we continued discussing about working with an stimulus for the PPP.
We came up with new ideas (explained below) and on thursday we started thinking how to apply those ideas and use the stimulus (Mozart's 25th symphony)to 'conceive' a play.
On rehearsals, I had to practice a new scene (8) and continue making the puppets.
Although I had to analyse the series of paintings "Ronda Nocturna", we've been analysing Mozart's 25th symphony in class. From that analysis, we came up with different ideas:
The song seems to show a 'struggle' to achieve something (as the tempo changes) and it is a single melody played by different instruments (homophonic).
And the question created was: How do we get to a possible play from the stimulus of the song?
"You have to look for details in the song that could justify your ideas and vision."
For example, homophony brought us the idea of a 'mirror', as the instruments seem to reflect each other when playing the same melody.
With this idea, the story of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" immediately came into my mind.
I started imagining a creepy vision, where mirrors everywhere on stage could represent the distorted personality that the potion creates, and how the character saw himself, which could be a false or wrong vision, or maybe an image showing that his decisions were always reflected on others or even himself.
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| "Its is a good idea to draw your vision and thoughts" |
I think this was not a 'well-developed' idea, and I learnt that it is better if your idea isn't "too straight-forward", such as this one, and that plays can get boring if you have a lot of 'developments in time'.
To avoid having to talk a lot about these developments, the technique of the collage is used generally, which creates the effect of knowing different events in the character's life without using a lot of time.
It also creates dynamism, and not a boring experience for the audience.
3. Connections
Was this technique used in some of the plays we've seen?
How could we apply 'in a better way' the idea of the mirror, or the use of this stimuli in one of those plays? For example:
In 'Vedova in Lumine', we could have the distorted image/reflection of the woman, who may see herself as a normal person having a good time with friends or her loved ones, while the reflection shows that she has 'lost control of her mind' due to the pain.
In "La Cocina", the idea of the mirror could be used to show the inside thoughts of the characters, which suffered from different issues such as racism and 'broken hearts'.
In 'Más pequeños que el Guggenheim' each character had a psychological mask, which could be shown in a different way using the idea of the mirror.
*Connection between the ideas Mozart's 25th symphony and "Ronda Nocturna" gave me:
the clearest connection was the idea of a creepy mood, due to the dark colours and 'mysterious mood' that I imagined from the paintings.
Images of faces and human shapes can be seen in them, and that also gave me the idea of 'different personalities', or, distorted images.
“His works of art are deep essays about the essence and condition of things, of life, and of the human beings”
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| One of the paintings from "Ronda Nocturna"- by Fernando de Szyszlo |
It REALLY takes time to analyse a stimuli and come up with ideas to conceive a play, as most things in theatre..
connecting this with the creation of the school play, I want to mention that creating the game, and now the elements such as the costumes, scenery and puppets has been a LOOONG process, which takes a LOT of time.
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| Before (April 19th) - After (May 20th) |
4. Reflections
Until now, I personally consider the process of conceiving a play through a stimulus very difficult.
It not only takes a lot of time, but a lot of imagination and concentration.
Do every single play start with a stimulus?
Without the director knowing, it could be ANYTHING.. even something saw on the street, etc.
How could I improve my analysis of stimuli.. and creation of visions or plays?
Roberto advised us to think about the form of theatre, get out of the "screens" and look at possibilities of the use of space (3D), for example, trying to break the fourth wall, which catches the audiences attention.
When creating ideas from the stimulus, we need to start thinking what would be on stage (Exactly), and should not "generalize" ideas.. or say things such as "always".. "everytime he is mad he...":
you need to start knowing how many times actions will take place, how many "main events" there are going to be, justify the use of the stimuli in your conceived play.. etc.
I also learnt that in theatre ACTIONS demonstrate things, and we should not only "say" them, for example: try to show in different ways that a person is sad, instead of he/se saying "I feel sad".
If the game appears first than the stimulus, can it be the stimulus of a play?
How could we improve analysing skills to 'extract' ideas from stimuli?
Is it 'better' when the stimulus is not directly used IN the play?
What other ideas could come out from this stimulus, apart from the aspects we noticed?
*How could I improve my 'analysing and connecting' skills?
ResponderEliminarI try hard but don't really achieve what I want in my entries:(
You're right: your weakest points are analyzing and connecting.
ResponderEliminarFor analyzing, you have to answer the following questions:
- what is the role of that element in the whole?
- what effect does that element produce?
- how does the element produce that effect?
- what have you learnt from that?
For example:
- element: running into the audience in scene 2 of the play
- role: it tries to establish a closer contact with the audience; it's the second scene of the play and has to catch the audience's attention; it should be fun and also show the fact that the princess is at the pirates mercy
- effect: it doesn't work
- how?: the puppets would have to move very fast and that is impossible without making it unbelievable according to the play's conventions; if they move slow the audience would get bored
- learning: running around the audience doesn't always work - it depends on specific conditions; the fight in slow motion will be better appreciated on stage
- connections: there is a relationship with the audience in "los músicos ambulantes" but it doesn't require chaos, rather addressing the audience directly and establishing a brief but specific contact with one of its members, like when they share the corn
I hope this was useful.
Roberto