Final Blog Post

This class has taught me a lot that I didn’t know before. It taught me how to work individually and as a group. The first day of class, I remember I looked confused because I didn’t know that this type of class would be with different grades. The first person I saw was Brooklyn, and I was wondering if this was the right class. Being shy was what I needed to work on, and that is what exactly  happened by the end of this semester. I learned how to perform with other people. Now that the semester is ending I am comfortable with working with everyone in my class, and became good friends with them all. Learning how to do a sonalogue and doing a scene from The Office, taught me different things. The Office scene was very well written for my group, and we enjoyed working with each other.

My final project is a dance with myself, Brooklyn, and Hannah. This shows how we all used to dance and shows what we are good at as a performer. From this experience, I have learned how Hannah and Brooklyn perform. I feel like on this final project my group has learned more of my style of dance. We also feel more comfortable performing in front of our class then we were in the beginning of the year.

Final Project

For my final project, my group decided to do a ballet dance. All of us have danced before and ballet is one of our strengths. The song that I will be dancing to is angry bird. We all are doing different emotions and a different type of dance that showcase our strengths. My song mostly has jumps and light movements. I feel like each dance expresses how we feel and the acting that we are doing for our dance. The dances are going to be very different from one another to showcase our talents. My group is myself, Hannah, and Brooklyn and we have all danced before for a long time. This project will help us get into character. By the end of our dance, we are all going to come and have maybe a couple eight counts together. For my part, I am going to be also the more flexible one than Hannah and Brooklyn. I feel like we are going to struggle working with the dances as the group because we have never danced together and we don’t know how we dance together. For my dance since I am angry fire bird I will be wearing red to showcase that I am the angry one. Brooklyn is sad so she is wearing cool colors. Hannah is the happy one so she is wearing pastel colors. We all need to show our emotion of our character. We chose these characters by flexibility and acting. We all thought the dancing experience and the acting will be the best for our dance. All of these ideas we have now will just build from here as class goes on. We are going to try to make it as clean as we can. It is important to work together because if we don’t it won’t get done very well, and we are good at that because we all get along very well.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:

• Jordan improving every time we do a scene to make it better
• Remembering all of our lines and sometimes improvising if we forget
• Everyone doing what they were supposed to
• Getting to work as fast as we could
• Working together as a group and getting along
• Making our character our own and not copying our scene that we used
• Getting it done early so we have time to make some changes
• Having everyone do something in our scene
• When we mess up everyone just makes a joke out of it, but isn’t mean to the person that messed up
• Have bloopers to add to our scene
• Trying new things in our scene and being accepting in it
• Was a success in our scene last Friday, and was really funny
• Finding the right character for the person
• Including everyone to be something

Weaknesses:

• Laughing when I look at Jordan
• Not remembering my lines sooner
• Having my phone in my hand when I did know them
• Not staying in character to try to tell someone they did something wrong
• We kept on laughing when trying to do our scene
• We would get off track some of the time
• Sometimes we wouldn’t listen to the director.
• We would fool around a lot
• We would have to do the scene a bunch of times because sometimes we would mess something up or start laughing (mostly laughing).
• Wouldn’t listen to someone’s ideas if we don’t agree
• Yell at each other if we mess up sometimes
• I would look at Jordan and start laughing because of how his character acts

Fall Play Review

I did like the seeing the play last week. I had friends in the play that I never knew could act the way they did. I feel like the director’s vision was to keep it simple and have the students improve on some of their movement. I heard that the actors did improve some of their movements because it would be hard to remember everything. I feel like the director wanted the students to act how they thought the character would act.

The acting on some of the characters were surprisingly good. The character that ate a lot during the play was very good. He was funny, and entertaining to watch. I feel like everyone did such a great job, and made the character there own. Everyone put there little spin to the characters. I feel like the characters were very well casted and couldn’t have been any different.

The lighting was very bright in the play and could have been a little darker when the characters were in the house. When they were all outside, it still could have been a little less bright. I feel like some characters should have had microphones because I could not hear some words that they were trying to pronounce. The lighting could have also switched up a little bit, and be a little dimmer at one point, and brighter at another.

The set design was very creative because even though the play was taken place at the time 1895, the props fit the scenes very well. The set design was very unique and organized. I feel like every prop fit the scene very well

Strengths:

• Acting the character
• Making there character there own
• Talking slowly
• Making it flow
• Not just saying line, after line, after line

Weaknesses:

• Pronouncing the words fully
• Looking at the audience when talking to another person
• Starts out strong in a sentence and then starts to get softer
• Mumbles some of the time

Director scene

Scene I want to direct: Friends scene “How you doin”

Characters: 4 people

Joey would be flirting with another girl, and everyone yells at him, and pushes him out of the room.

This scene would be good for this class because most people have seen Friends and it will be really fun to act.

My Director View

As a director, I would stage City of Stars in the black box, where the actor is the only one on stage. The actor would pretend she is outside at night, with a spotlight on her. She is somewhere silent in a small town in front of a fancy restaurant. It would also be drizzling and she would be talking to the sky. By the end of the scene, in front of the restaurant there is a bench and she sits down very slowly, and then has her head down.

Directing Videos

Elizabeth Williamson Discusses Henry V:

• Henry V was written in 1599
• Tells a story about history back then
• When Henry becomes king he needs to make sure he is in charge
• Henry decides to go to war
• To know who is impacted on your decision is incredibly timeless

From Script to Stage: The Director's Concept:

• Students speaking the casual language of the 1890s but once they get to the rock songs they are going to be singing like teens today
• The show is timeless when the students act it out
• Spring Awakening is the new rock video
• Takes an old take on a play

A Director’s Interpretation: The Comedy of Errors:

• The idea of being estranged from who you are and being an outsider in the play
• Shakespeare can be in so many different world
• Dominick wanted a vibrant look for the production
• Setting it in London
• Anchor the play in something true
• Shakespeare makes sense when your in the moment
• You can’t define the play forever