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Drama Journal #10

The drama class performed well-practiced scenes from The Dining Room at the CISDF drama festival and SJK's ArtsAroundUs.  I think both performances went really well, but all of my scenes were better the second time around, at ArtsAroundUs.  I personally felt more comfortable on stage during that second performance, and I felt I really only broke character for a second during the last scene I was in (Standish).  The audience laughed at a weird time that I wasn't expecting, and I couldn't help but smile too.  I tried to hide it by fitting it into the scene, but in this case it failed.  Paul and Margery was one of the main scenes that improved.  During CISDF, we had to improvise parts of our scene, because we weren't as familiar with the lines as we would like to have been.  However, during ArtsAroundUs my lines went a lot smoother and I think the overall dynamic of the scene was smoother.  My Agent and Client scene also went really well, and I found Tessa really easy to work with.  I think the energy and chemistry in the starting scene was a really great way to start off our performance, and we definitely warmed up the audience and gave them a few good laughs.

One thing that I wish I had looked at before the performance was in Standish, when my character says "YOU MEAN UNCLE HENRY'S A FRUIT!?"  Until I asked my mom after the performance, I thought that a fruit meant that his "bachelor attachments" were prostitutes, but it turns out that my character was referring to Uncle Henry being gay, and his bachelor attachments being men.  I think I might have played this more surprised, because at the time, this would have gotten a better reaction.

My favourite scene in the play to watch was the scene done by Tristan and Jessica.  They are both very good actors on stage, and I love the way Tristan gives speeches both with his performance as Midas in Metamorphoses and with his role in The Dining Room.  Jessica also did a great job in her role, and she played a very believable character.  The awkward pauses were very effective and drew me in as an audience member.

Overall, CISDF and our ArtsAroundUs performances were both great learning experiences for me, and I'm really glad that I had these opportunities.  I learned strategies on not breaking my character in front of audiences, and I also got a lot of good acting advice from the adjudicator at CISDF.  I hope we can repeat this trip before I graduate, and I can't wait to see what play we will be doing for ArtsAroundUs next year!

Drama Journal #9

This week in drama we started rehearsing our play for CISDF.  We are performing a play called The Dining Room.  This play has a very interesting idea behind it, with dynamic scene changes that flow together into one giant scene.  I am playing two types of characters in this play.  I have two roles as a more innocent child in times where children were very obedient and proper, and were meant to be seen and not heard.  I also have two roles where flirting is present, and the chemistry in between the two characters in the flirty scenes has to be apparent.

The hardest character for me to play out of all of them is probably Paul.  Paul is a carpenter, who used to be a stockbroker.  I would say he is in his mid thirties, and originally became a stockbroker because of the money he could make or because of pressure from his father, but then found his passion in a craft like carpentry.  He mentions he wanted to "see what he was doing, and touch it, and see the results."  This line gives me insight into Paul's feelings towards being a stockbroker, and his new job.  Paul is very likely single, due to his flirty behavior with Margery, the other character in the scene.  Finally, when Paul says the line, "My father was a banker," I imagine he is frustrated at his father for dragging him into the industry of being a stockbroker, when his real passion lay in the work of carpentry, and a more hands-on job.  I think I have struggled finding meaning in my acting for Paul because he is probably the most different character from myself at this point in my life.  As a result, I have had to try to connect with his character by linking some of his emotions to my own.  I have been trying to imagine what it would be like to disappoint my own parents with my career choice. That way I can more accurately relate what Paul is feeling during this scene.  Through my work on this, I have determined that I need to have some resentment towards my father, and my previous career choice, because that is ultimately the reason that I ended up in this situation in this scene.

In conclusion, Paul is a very interesting and dynamic character in the scene between Paul and Margery.  He has many feelings and motivations that we cannot understand until we dive deeper into his character, and use Stanislavsky's methods of examining characters, and method acting.  Through these methods, I can relate to Paul, and his resentment towards his father, his flirtatious behavior towards Margery, and his maturity as a guy in his mid-thirties.

Drama Journal #7

         As I predicted last week, this week was all about the prompt book.  One of the exercises that we did in class today was an activity to determine the underlying actions and emotions in each one of our lines.  This forced me to look deeper into the character of John Proctor, and what he was really trying to achieve with each line, and how each of his lines was affecting the characters around him.  Some of these lines were very easy, but when I looked back and saw that 7/10 of my lines were "I question you" I realized I had a problem.  I was being too superficial.  I erased my work and started again.  Slowly, each of the lines except for two of them became clear to me, and not only did it allow me to dramatize John Proctor more accurately, but it allowed me to dissect each of John Proctor's actions, and understand why he did what he did.

         Prompt books have usually just annoyed me in the past, but I realized in class today just how much they help me.  Jessica was gone the last class, so Bella and I just ran lines with no actions.  This left me a little foggy this morning as to which actions we had picked out before.  Luckily, I had written most of them down on the sides of my prompt book, so I picked them back up again fairly quickly.

         The last thing I wanted to comment on was how Mr. Newman changed the normal one on one line test into more of a rehearsal grade.  This was both good and bad for me.  The good: it allowed me and my group to have a more productive work period that class, and was obviously less stressful.  Now the downside to this was that I am usually not prepared for the one on one line tests, but I had it down cold this time.  I was looking forward to getting as high of a grade as possible for just straight line memorization.

         In conclusion, this week in drama was spent mostly working on prompt books, but our scene is really coming together as the date for the performance is getting closer.  While doing the prompt books, the exercise that Mr. Newman threw at us was challenging, but also very interesting and helpful at the same time, and I am looking forward to finding out if he has anything else like that to help us further deepen our understandings of our characters.

Drama Journal #6

This week in drama class we rehearsed our scenes from The Crucible. Working with Bella and Jessica was really productive, because when we focused on being dramatic with our voices and memorizing lines, we really got a lot done.

One of the biggest challenges for me this week was working on my accent.  Bella and Jessica both have an idea of what kind of voice they are going to use for their performance, but as of right now, I'm not sure how to play John Proctor.  I have been thinking of many different possibilities such as a lower class southern accent, my normal voice, and maybe a Boston accent, although that last one is hard for me.

Another problem that I ran into is one that I am familiar with.  I remember last year I had problems deciding what to write in my promptbook, and this year is no exception for me.  I look at Jeff's prompt book, and notice how much more writing he has in his, and I can't help but worry a little bit.  I will have to get working on it really hard next week with my group, and see if I can do a better one than I did in grade 10.

Overall, I love the group I am in this year, and I am happy with the scene that we have chosen.  It is a scene with a lot of emotion and John Proctor is an interesting character for me to play, because he is a very different person compared to myself.  If I can get the prompt book and my voice nailed down for next week, then our group will be right on track for the date of the performance, and I am looking forward to presenting our scene!

Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky was born in Moscow in 1863 and has had a profound effect on the process of acting today.  He began acting at the age of 14 in his family's theatrical group.  As he honed his craft, he began to believe that for the theatre to be truly meaningful, acting had to move beyond a simple external representation into deeper psychological and emotional realms.  The Stanislavsky System, also known as "the method," states that an actor's main responsibility is to be believed, to be authentic, to be truthful, as opposed to simply being recognizable or understood.

After reading about Stanislavski in our textbook, I began to try many of his principles and ideas about acting, into my own performance and practice strategies.  I focused more on making my acting believable and more realistic, by using the "Magic If".  This involved pretending that I was John Procter, and wondering how I would react to the different situations that he goes through.  We have done this in the past, but I never really found it to be very effective because I had trouble believing what I was playing and pretending that it was real.  This time however, I really focused on it.  I felt like I took it to the next level and I found it really helped me to understand John Procter more, and this in turn, made him an easier character to play.

Another aspect of Stanislavsky's acting system is the use of objectives.  This is what the character wants and is trying to achieve.  This was very important in helping me, because when I was reading through the play for the first time, I found myself sometimes confused as to why John Procter was doing what he does.  After I examined some sections of the play, it all came together and I realized that his overall objective is to patch things up with Elizabeth, and keep his family from falling apart.  When things were put into context for me, they made a lot more sense.

In conclusion, after learning about Stanislavsky's system of acting, and implementing his techniques into my practice methods, I found that it has really helped me understand and empathize with the characters I am playing, or perhaps more accurately, the characters I am becoming.  I found these strategies much more helpful for me than they have been in the past, as I began to understand them at a deeper level.  I can't wait to implement them into more drama activities, including, hopefully, next year's production.

Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen

Soulpepper Theatre, Toronto

Play Review

On November 14, elite members of the Upper School drama class, accompanied by Mr. Hoad-Reddick and Mr. Newman, went to see a play in Toronto at the Soulpepper Theatre.  The play was called Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen and was arranged by Morris Panych. 

As soon as we entered the theatre, I immediately noticed how interesting the scenery was.  It was very eye-catching and it drew me in right away.  It was quite intricate, and you could see they were trying to express transparency in many areas of it with a see-through wall, and two poles that you could see right through as well.  It actually reminded me a lot of a haunted house, which suited the time of year that it was being performed in!  This transparency was important for the play, because it echoed the theme of being haunted by ghosts and memories of the past.

I found that the plot of the play got off to a bit of a slow start, but after a few scenes, it had me really engaged and sitting on the edge of my seat.  Some of the material in the play seemed a lot more modern, dealing with STD's and cheating on spouses.  These would have been very shocking to some of the audience members back in the time that this play was written.  Although these subjects have been around since the beginning of time, they were not talked about openly.  However, the comic relief of the pastor really allowed me to feel comfortable with the play even with these topics in place.  This was probably an intentional technique used by Ibsen to help his audience members better deal with the subjects being discussed.  After the fire, the performance took a surprising turn for me.  I didn't expect the orphanage to burn down, and I didn't see the son's illness coming at all.  These plot twists were effective as they serve to keep the audience really engaged in the performance.

The acting in this play was some of the better acting I have seen.  During the scene where the son succumbs to his illness and is left completely helpless, I had chills down my back for the entirety of the scene.  The actors conveyed the emotions in that part of the play so well that it really made me think about it afterwards.  The way Nancy Palk showed her emotions on whether or not to overdose her son was incredibly powerful and very realistic.  She was looking out the window, away from her son, while she was holding the morphine in her hand.  You could see the possibilities running through her mind as she looked between the medicine and her son.  I personally found this part very moving.  Her silence was very moving and very effective.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed Ghosts and the acting in this play is nothing short of incredible.  Ghosts is a very emotional play and makes you leave the theatre with a lot on your mind.  I really enjoyed the overall performance, the plot, and the scenery, and I would definitely recommend this play for anyone who is in high school or older, because there is some content that I don't think is appropriate for younger children.  However, if you want to take in an excellent play that will leave you with chills, a tear or two, and a lot to think about, I would definitely recommend Ghosts at the Soulpepper theatre.

Drama Journal #4

         This week in drama class, we presented our monologues to the rest of the class.  I had spent many hours over the past few days practicing it, and I was only slightly worried for my performance.  I had my lines memorized completely and I was looking forward to seeing some of the other performances, especially Jeff's because it had been kept a secret all week!

          I think my monologue presentation went pretty well, because I didn't stumble over lines, and I think my movement and actions were good and fit well with the scene.  The whole thing went pretty smoothly, and other than a skipped sentence in the middle of the monologue, I don't think there was anything noticeably wrong about it.

         If I were doing this monologue again, the only thing I might change would be how much I immersed myself in the character, because I think that if I had been even more dramatic in the scene, it would have made the scene and the character much more interesting to watch.  I also might have brought a second lighter, because after using it in practice so many times, the lighter was actually almost out of gas when it came to do the actual presentation.

         Something that I have realized about myself over the last few years of drama is that the first time you try and really dramatize something, it might not work out the way you wanted it too.  You have to try different things, which is why practicing something like this a lot can really improve your acting.  However trying new things in front of a lot of people is really hard, because your brain doesn't want you to do anything extreme (which is really the point of drama) because you don't want to be embarrassed.  This is why I always make sure I have three or four hours of practice alone in my room.  This way I can experiment with different kinds of speech, actions, and movement.

         My favourite monologue that I saw during the drama class, was probably Jeff's, because of the amount of emotion and drama he put into it, or Robin's, because of how she managed to pull off an accent in her monologue that totally matched her character.

         In conclusion, my monologue went really well, and I think this is mostly due to the practice that I put in.  Watching some of the other monologues was also really fun, because we got to see our classmates pretending to be someone that was usually quite different from their normal behavior.  I am looking forward to getting some feedback on my monologue, so I can start improving for my next performance!

Drama Journal #3

         When I first learned about the drams warm up, it didn't really actually help me.  In fact, I found it was a waste of time at first.  We didn't really do a lot of the warm up in grade 10, and this year, I find we are doing a lot more of it.  I fixed some issues in my technique, and I find that the warm up actually really helps me.  It calms me down from the classes before hand, and loosens me up for the drama class ahead.  I might even argue that it is better than some of the athletic warm ups that we do before a soccer game.

         Another thing that we are working on in drama class is monologues.  While the grade 10's look over things for heir remembrance presentation this year, the seniors and grade 11's are working on monologues.  For my monologue, I picked one called 13 Objects.  It's a lot of fun to act through, and it makes you think at the end.  Overall I really enjoy it.  Even so, it is quite long (4 pages) and it has to be memorized by next Tuesday, with Thursday as a backup deadline.  I am quite worried about it, especially due to the fact that I have never done anything like this before.  However, I am looking forward to the new experience, especially since it is an acting opportunity.

         The last thing that I want to mention before the end of this journal is the play this year.  I am really looking forward to the production, even though I wish memorizing lines was easier.  The people in the play this year are awesome, and there is a wide variety of grades instead of there being a lot of people from my grade, and almost nobody from the lower grades.  I was very surprised to see that we had some grade seven's this year.  Plus, there are the people like Jeff who make the play incredibly funny.  I loved doing the play last year, and I am glad that I got a part again this year.

         In conclusion, so far this year in drama has been a lot of fun, and the warm ups at the start of each class really help.  I am pretty stressed about my monologue, but I can never pass up the opportunity to perform, because I love doing things like that.  I am also looking forward to the play a lot this year, because of all the awesome people in it.  Can't wait to see what you have planned for next week Mr. Newman! 

Drama Journal #1

Watching someone that is completely immersed and absorbed in an activity can be very compelling.  When we spoke about this in drama class, the first example that came into my mind was a hairdresser.  When you are getting your hair cut, you have an opportunity to watch in the mirror as someone carefully works around your head, crafting the perfect haircut.  Even though they know they are being watched intently (because after all, what else are you supposed to do as you sit there?), they focus all their attention on their work.  My hairdresser's name is Phil and I have been going to see him for many years.  He is actually very interesting to watch because he is a very animated hairdresser.  He moves around a lot and often appears to be cutting the same section of hair multiple times.  Phil steps forward and back, admiring his work and tousling my hair around like it's a work of art.  And for him, I think it is.  Cutting hair is a job that he takes seriously and he likes to add his own artistic flair to the process. 

  Actors can learn an important lesson from this.  If you are completely immersed in your characters and scenes, then your audience will be more interested in your performance.  This may be the reason that many actors don't just "pretend" to be like their character, but rather immerse themselves in every detail of their character's life.  Actors create elaborate back stories for their character, complete with their likes and dislikes, family background, their childhood experiences, and so on.  They spend time with real life versions of those they are attempting to portray.  They then take on these characteristics and stories as their own and "become" this character during the length of time they are immersed in that particular role.  This allows them to live as the character, rather than play the character, and can lead to a much more authentic performance.    

By watching the various behaviours of Phil, my hairdresser, over the years, I have been able to learn a lot about how I would portray being a hairdresser if ever presented with that challenge.  I think I could tousle hair just like he does if needed!