Pre I Am My Own Wife

I am throughly excited for the performance of I Am My Own Wife at The Long Wharf Theater. After reading the review and watching the video I have a much better understanding of what the show is about. I think that the subject of this show is incredibly interesting especially between tying the difficult subjects of transgenderism and Nazi Germany. The time period it takes place in is a very difficult time for people part of the lgbtq community so it will be interesting to see how she is portrayed. I am also very curious about the way the show is being done by only one person. The concept of doing a show that has over 30 roles as a solo act seems very stressful and rushed. I hope that the show does not become a stressful experience because of all the rushing to change from one character to another. I wonder if tech and set will play a big role in this show because not as much of the setting can come from the characters. I am over all very excited to see what Long Wharf has done with this production especially because in the past productions of this play have not been very highly rated or as successful. This is something I am looking forward to a lot and I hope that it is a successful production just because it's such a difficult show to do.

Collaborative Reflection 2/10/20

I think that our group has to work on a couple things to complete our project. One aspect is our ending. At the moment, we do not have a completed ending for our piece of theatre. I have had a couple of ideas for the end of the show but its not entirely clear with my group how we want to end it. We haven't decided yet what mind state we want to leave the audience in after they watch our show. There are a couple of options. We could go in the direction of resolution which would give the audience an ultimate feeling of relief or satisfaction, or we could leave the individual plots unresolved. This would leave the audience with more feelings like uneasiness and discomfort. I think that ultimately, leaving the audience without answers is a better way to end the piece of theater. We also have to decide if we want to include music in our scenes when we are walking in the space. Sometimes music is useful and makes the scenes more interesting and intriguing. However, music could also distract from what is going on on the stage and take away from the intimate experience that our theater piece is. It is something we will have to experiment with and see if it makes the piece better or worse. We also have to make a lot of decision based off of lighting and how we want to use it to focus the attention of the audience on to the stage. Along with all of this, we really have to work on our in between moments in our scenes. Making them more interesting and also get the point of transition across. A lot could be said using these negative moments just like in photography how the negative aspects of the image can be more impactful than the positives. Our piece of theater could have the same impacts. Over all, I think we have a long way to go, but once we get our audios recorded and lights figured out, I think we will be in great shape.

Collaborative Reflection 2/21/20

Our group has come a long way with our second draft. I lot of aspects of our original idea are shown in the piece of theater we have created. In Rhythm 0 there were a lot of individual moments with the performance artist and the people viewing the exhibit. We have a very similar idea with our individual scenes. I really like the way we have separated each scene but in the end connected them all together. I think that there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of connecting the scenes and creating a better flow because as of right now it is still feeling very block like. In terms of sound lighting and tech, I think that there is a lot of work to do. Our voiceovers are not complete and we haven't timed out the piece with them. Our lights are solid but I think that there are still ways we can further use them to our benefit. Our background sound also needs to be looked at. I am not sure if we are planning to use music or anything especially in the last scene. It could really bring out a good side in our piece of theater or it could disrupt the energy and flow. We will have to try that out and see how it works. I think that overall, I am super happy with how much progress we have made but I am still concerned that we may not have enough time to finish. I also am occasionally worried that we don't have enough material or plot to draw in the audience. Hopefully, with sound and lights we can draw the audience in better and give them a little more context to the plot of the show. I also want to spend some more time exploring the moments in between each of our scenes. I think that there is a lot that we can do in the transition periods to make it more interesting and we haven't been taking full advantage of that opportunity. I hope that we can incorporate other aspects of viewpoints like levels, speed, flocking, etc to make it more visually interesting. I also think this will help to separate the individual scenes more so it is more clear. I can't wait to finish this project and get the last couple of pieces of it together.

Collaborative Reflection 1/20/20

Our group has kept up well with our goals for the pervious two weeks. We had a very easy time with the first week of our goals. However, our second week was a little tricky. I was out for the most of the week and have found myself slightly behind the rest of the group. For our project we used the stimulus Rhythm 0 for our project. Rhythm 0 is a piece of performance art where a woman stood still for many hours and lat people do whatever they wanted to her body. Our initial ideas for using this stimulus were to create a piece of theater that was very physical and less verbal. We wanted to make a piece that was very impacting and almost like a PSA type project. However, our project has shifted drastically from its original format. We are exploring lots of ideas of mental health and personal battles in our lives. Everything performed in our piece will be in reference to real events that occurred. We wanted to raise awareness on the fact that everyone is fighting they're own battles. Our plot will be like a clip from each of our lives. Maybe tied together by own character. Maybe not. There will probably be not a lot of resolution to the theater because there may not be a lot of resolution in real life.  Our character/characters will grow and change mostly based off their surroundings and how that impacts them. There will be lots of gain in knowledge and hopefully understanding. Our hope is to use tech to play the majority of our side characters. Most of the time on stage we want the goal to be just one physical person on stage. The intended audience is not a particular age group. Maybe high school college age. We want to raise awareness with this piece and give a voice to those who may bury their battles. There are multiple moments of tension in our piece. Some self vs self., Some self vs parents, as well as some self vs society. This play is extraordinarily important to me because I feel like this is a perfect outlet for me to voice met battle as well as educate my peers about how tough a day to day can be. I think I will draw from some techniques I learned at ISTA. Threading stories together and such through one object.

Project Reflection 12/19/19

These past couple weeks we have been working on our collaborative. I think we are having a bit of a hard time with this project. One area I am struggling in is the plot. The plot of our piece doe not exist. This is problematic because now we don't have a piece. Instead we have the message we want to convey and I think that our group is having a hard time finding a more literal way to get the message across. I also think that our group does not have enough material to cover 12-15 minutes of a production. I think that I had a lot of ambitions and ideas walking into this project and not all of them were feasible. For me, this has been super frustrating because I feel like I want to do so much with this project but coordinating it and making it as legit and powerful as I envision it is really difficult. I worry that we all have different ideas and that putting them all together will result in a mumble jumble of theater. I also think that we have a lot of work to do with what we want our end message to be. I think the group has sort of split up on what we want the final project to be and that has made it very difficult for us to work together and make forward progress. My hope is that when we all get back from break we can get more on the same page and figure out exactly what we want to happen with our collaborative project. Maybe we can all come up with individual ideas over break and hopefully we can merge our ideas and b ring it back to a solid project.

Project Reflection

Our collaborative has been a very difficult process. The group that I am working with has a very unusual split of contradicting approaches to this project which has made it a bit of a challenge. Half of our group is thinking with much more abstract and interpretive outlook while others have zero'd in on one aspect that they like and want to focus only on that. This has made our group dynamic somewhat difficult and has ultimately slowed us down in our process. However, we have also don't a lot of incredible work. As a group, through a lot of trial and error, we came up with a fantastic outline for a very powerful piece that uses both behavioral and abstract gestures to tell an incredible story. I have personally spent lots of time working on the physical story and moments we would like to include. I have lots of visions for how I see this piece working out but I have noticed that are group also struggles with motivation and actually getting stuff onto the stage. I have a lot of ideas but I think at this point we really need to start kicking it into high gear and making much more visual progress. I also want to make sure we haven't strayed too much from out original Rhythm 0 concept. I think that we have lost some of the connections to that inspiration and I think that there are definitely ways we could revisit this and make them intertwine more. I hope overall that our group dynamic strengthens overtime because we have lots of little things in the way of us succeeding. I have noticed though, that we have been working better together the past couple days in a way we haven't before. Pieces have been clicking and I have noticed less disagreements and more compromise so this is really great. My hope is that I will be able to learn a lot from all the different thinkers in my group and further my theater experience so that I can have a better understanding of some of the techniques that don't come as easily to me. All in all I think our group has come a long way but still has a far journey ahead of us.

Fall Play Review

On November 16th, last Saturday, I had the great opportunity to see "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime"by Simon Stephens at Cheshire Academy. It was directed by Mrs. Guarino, Mr, Hunton, as well as assistance from Mrs. Roller, and other members of the community. Some of the major actors in it were Amelia Williams, Pacifica Yang, Olivia Williamson, and William Lempling. The story is of a child battling autism as well as family issues. It is the journey of him growing up and learning more about the world and how it works. Many moments of this show are painful and emotional but there are moments of reward and joy too. In this production, he goes on both an internal and external journey. His external journey battles things like family issues, comprehending divorce, dealing with dog deaths, and even independent traveling. His internal journey battles the simple things like taking a train, taking care of pets, obeying adults while also having an independent opinion, and other things. Throughout the story you are given chances to sympathize with many characters but ultimately you are living Christophers story and learning about how he deals with such difficult issues. These are some reoccurring themes that appear throughout the play.

One aspect of the show that really stood out to me was the minimalism in the set. Instead of clogging the stage with lots of other elements, the choice to make the stage pieces almost completely not exist really opened up the concept of autism. Relating to people who battle such difficult things can sometimes be difficult and create boundaries between people who don't struggle with things like autism, so physically opening up the space and eliminating all excessive blockers really helped as an audience member.

The set had one moment that stood out to me in particular.  In one scene, Christopher's mother is talking to him and she is trying to validate and explain why she left. Instead of paying close attention to her words, he starts building this train track and slowly as the mothers monologue goes on, he builds a whole track around him. It closes him in and separates him from all his external fears. I thought this was really powerful as a directors choice. It created this incredible visual connection from what was going on in Christophers brain to the physical stage. I think that this was a genius choice as a director because it again gave the audience this opened door way to connect to Christopher as a person.

The sound in this production also really stood out to me. There was a consistent feeling of this ominous sound that went on throughout all the scene changes and sometimes in the scenes. As well as this, there were key noises like doorbells, and knocking, and other actions to help orient the audience. Especially because of the lack of visual aids to orient the audience this was incredibly helpful.

One scene I really liked that connected directly to sound cues was the train scene. In this scene, Christopher is at the train station and he is trying to figure out how to get to London. He doesn't yet understand the flow and patterns of a train station so, Siobhan comes into the scene on the side and tells him to watch the patterns and learn the ways of the train station before he takes action. Christopher then stands at the platform for a long period of time watching, " train coming, train stop, doors open, train going". He repeats this time and again and you suddenly gain this connection and deeper understanding to how Christopher's brain works. I think the repetition of the physical movements combined with sound cues really created this clear understanding of Christopher.

The show also used lighting greatly to their advantage. Throughout the whole production there was a track of lights that ran around the whole perimeter of the stage. I thought this was very smart because again it created this sense of separation and boundaries between Christopher and his peers.

My favorite actor in this show was Willjam. He had a very difficult character dynamic to attack and I thought it was really cool the way he portrayed his and Christophers dynamic. Throughout many moments in the show he was illustrated as this bad guy who was holding Christopher back, but there is a evident change of pace in the middle of the show and Ed becomes this sympathetic character who almost needs his sone to lean on and giver him something to do. I thought Will did and incredible job with this difficult character transition.

Overall, I really loved this play and although sometimes it was anxiety invoking for me, it really was well done and allowed for you to directly connect with all of the characters.

In-Class Writing

In-class
1. Reflect on Monday's session --> what did you do? what did you learn?
2. Design some (1-3)devising exercises to run next week.

In class on Monday we did a really cool session. We started with very a verbal beginnings with words and quotes written on index cards that were scattered around in the ground. We each picked words and then eventually devised a whole scene out of these simple beginnings. I really loved the process of starting with something so verbal and making it so visual. As a theater student I love experimenting with very abstract ways of portraying simple things. My favorite on Monday was mother. Instead of taking it as a direct member of the family, my group took it as Mother Earth and we were able to create a magical and mystical moment. I learned a lot about my peers. I thought it was so interesting how we grouped almost exactly by learning type. Some of us are more speech oriented while others are more abstract. All in all, I loved our session on Monday.

I have many ideas for some exercises to do with my group. I think that open viewpoints with no probs and then slowly integrating other elements like light would be beneficial to our group. I also think that different outlooks and repetition of moments would be helpful for us. Our group is very abstract with our storytelling so I think that being in the moment and adapting what we've got to be better is going to be something that will make your collaborative much more deep and impactful to the audience. These are just some ideas I have for exercises to do with the group.

Solo Performance Review

Watching the IB Solo Performances on Tuesday was an incredible experience for me. I found each one to be so incredibly powerful and while they all were student projected, it really felt professional. Livi's performance was stunning. Many aspects of it really affected me. First, the lights. I found the lights to be extraordinarily powerful. It gave the audience a focal point every time she picked up a spotlight. I also really loved the sound affects. It created another level of emotion and impact. The sound quality gave the feeling that she wasn't the only one on stage and it impacts an audience member because it takes the performance to the next level. I also thought that the glass allusion was really impactful. I loved that she used rock candy as a substitute for glass. Although you could tell it was candy, her emotions were so real that it didn't matter and it still hit you like she was eating glass. Linda's performance was also amazing. I loved that she translated the lyrics from the songs into the script of her original piece. The thought behind each puppet also really showed how much effort went into it. I would hope for her in the future to vocally have a different sound when she was playing each of the different roles. Finally, Willjams performance. He did an absolutely incredible job. Using Stanislavsky as his inspiration made the emotion behind the scene so powerful. I really loved how in the moment he felt while he was doing his monologue. As well as that, m I also loved how he experimented with some viewpoints in the beginning of his piece boy not being visually accessible. It added a level of unknown that I really enjoyed. Over all, I really really loved these solo projects and how different each one was.

Start of the Collaborative Project

Strengths
- visualization
- movement

Experiences
- on stage as a main character as well as ensemble

Interests
- backstage tech

What do you need
- people with strengths different then mine so I can learn more

Stimulus Ideas
- pretty ugly poem
- art

ISTA reflection due -- 500 words -- post on your blog: What were the most memorable experiences you had and what did you learn?

While at ISTA, I learned many things. In my ensemble, we worked on pick up scenes. I found this to be very interesting. Seeing peoples different interpretations of the same 30 words really inspired me. I also loved having the opportunity to work with different people. There were people from all over there world in my ensemble. Having these different outlooks really allowed for a lot of creativity in the shows. Also, in my ensemble, we worked on this really interesting exercise for stimulus. We each picked old postcards that spoke to us and spent 10 minutes just looking at the illustration on the front. My postcard had a beautiful drawing of a tiny red house with a black buggy outside and a horse in the   field next to it. There were also lots of roads coming off the sides of the house, all going in different directions. I interpreted this as someone on a journey trying to figure out which path is the right one to choose. Each path was slightly different which I felt signified different strengths and weaknesses in each ambition. Turning this then into a 10 minute play was such a wonderful experience. The collaboration and detail oriented people in my group really created this incredible thing.

We also did master class with the tectonics and the Beijing opera. I thought both of these were super interesting. Personally, I liked the tectonics better. The concepts we covered in that class were much more interesting to me. The leader of the master class did this really cool thing where he asked all of us our favorite moment of theater we had ever seen and everyone came up with different moments. We eventually came to the realization that script in a show is one of the least important things. Everyones moments were all with lighting or movement or something else. I really liked this concept. Movement on stage is one of my favorite things so it was very validating to hear how important it is. In Beijing Opera, we did some work with sticks. Similar to color guard, we did some twirling and spinning with the sticks. I haven't done anything like that in like 5 years so it was super exciting to go back to it.

Finally, at ISTA I made so many new and incredible friends. Meeting people from all over the world including Colorado, Florida, Belgium, and many other places was absolutely amazing. I love meeting people who have the same interests as me so this as a wonderful experience. 

1. Blog post due BY CLASS TODAY -- write a reflection of what we did and class and what you got out of it. Think from the perspective of a performer but also a director. 500 words.

In class these past couple weeks, I learned so much about viewpoints. Before doing this class I had no idea what viewpoints were and how deep you could dive into one single movement. My favorite aspect of this whole experience was the layering of the process. The concept of starting with something so simple and adding bits and pieces to create something so amazing is absolutely incredible. 

Starting with tempo and duration I thought that it was very similar to stuff that I had done before. The gridlines as well as speed were things I was familiar with and while it was nice to start in a comfortable place, I couldn't wait to start learning new things. We soon moved to kinesthetic response and spacial awareness. Both of these viewpoints I really liked. The slight addition of communication and a more physical awareness of your surroundings really changed my perspective. It allowed for me to acknowledge what others were doing with their bodies and react off of them. This also added flocking which I really enjoyed exploring. I had some really cool moments in open viewpoint where me and another student made alternate dimensional mirroring as well as unspoken conversations. These viewpoints were definitely some of my favorites.

We also worked on, topography, shape, gesture, and architecture. Topography really opened up a door for me. As a person who really likes to explore levels, topography helped a lot. I found that most of my movements changed drastically when brought up or down. Especially the emotion behind my movements. I also absolutely loved shape. Because I do aerial circus, exploring shape is something I do all the time except in the air. Moving all those shapes to the ground was super explorative and interesting. Furthering to add architecture was definitely difficult. I had a very hard time separating my movement from the physical objects. Overall, I really enjoyed viewpoints and I would to explore it more.

About Me

1) Try to summarize your experiences in one paragraph including some specific examples of theater you have been involved in. 2) What do you like about theater?  3) What do you find challenging about theater? 4) What do you want to learn more about or grow in? (can be as a perfromer, technician, director, designer, etc.) 5) Set 3-5 specific goals for this year for yourself.

I have been doing some form of theater yearly since 3rd grade. For 7-8 years I went to a summer camp where we made up our own show, wrote a script, choreographed a dance, and rewrote lyrics to songs to make a 30 minute musical. I also have done many school musicals and a couple shows at an arts sleep away camp. Although I have been apart of many shows in my life, I have never really taken time to work on technique. I am a very extroverted person but often when on stage (with an audience) I loose a lot of that confidence. Throughout rehearsals, I am outspoken and practice well but something in my brain clicks and usually negatively affects me during performances. I absolutely love theater. The whole concept of digging deep into someone life, so deep that you can impersonate them is really fascinating to me. One thing I struggle a lot with in theater is self criticism. I often don't dig deep enough into my character during a rehearsal and have lots of anxiety right before a show. One thing I want to learn more about is preparation for a show and how to best use my rehearsal time to fully play the role I am given. Some goals I have for this year are to learn how to better my skills and apply them to the stage, decrease my anxiety and judgement of my self, and learn ways to support my peers on the stage. These are my theater goals and reflections.