My IBHL Theatre Blog

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Journal Entry: November 29th, 2012 SHOWTIME

Today in class we practiced the speeches we’d deliver before the show started. It’s supposed to give the audience a taste of what our vision is.

Mine was this:

“Hey, my name is Sarah, and the name of my play is “To Our Dear Friend, Wendy.” The inspiration behind this play was directly from reality, because it is actually based on my life, because the events that take place in the story actually happened. It is in memorandum of a dear friend, Wendy, who committed suicide last April, a few days before my birthday. This drove me into a spiral of confusion, because, to me, it was completely unbelievable. The play deals with my wonderings of the situation, and how much you can NOT know about someone. I thought it would be interesting to write about this, not only as a tribute to Wendy, but as a question to the community, which I’ll leave to you guys to find. Though I intended for it to be a realistic play, it is an expressionist play, because I incorporated almost fantastical elements into it, since I’m always imagining bizarre happenings around me. For this reason, I use sound-scaping and breaking of the 4th wall, which are a very Brecht type of theatre. The method of acting, however, is naturalistic as well: the Stanislavski method, which asks the actor to recall real emotional memories to try and “become” the person they’re interpreting. I wanted it to be something of a “sit-com,” where the audience is just watching reality happen from a set position. The view of the stage becomes a reflection of life, which eventually comes and confronts the audience as well. I also wanted to demonstrate my personal interpretation of adolescent frustration that people in high school face, and how you don’t want to fall into this mentality where you forget about what it means to enjoy yourself…It’s a trap.”

Of course, it is cut down significantly because I can’t really memorise the details of this paragraph, but this is what I intend to say. It’s so hard to refrain from using pause words (i.e. like, sort of, um, and, or) because it makes you seem uncertain. I am so nervous for my cast, but I do believe that they can do it. I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach though, and I can’t focus on anything at all. There’s nothing more I can do except to let the show become theirs, and hope that the audience has an idea of what I’m trying to say with my play. I wish that if Wendy were alive, she would be taken by the gesture…I didn’t want to invite my mom to watch it, because I’m sure that she would be extremely offended that I’m telling such a personal story to the whole school. I’m pretty sure she’d say that my perspectives of things are totally wrong. Perhaps they are flawed, but this is my interpretation of what happened, and there’s nothing she can change about it.

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Journal Entry: November 28th, 2012

Last rehearsal before the actual show, we met on the Auditorium steps. I needed to clear up some light/sound cues since we’ve had very little chance to practice with them. I had people use their costume and props, and we started right away. I had to work with Fiona a little, since her portrayal of my mother was a little bit off. I feel she could do much more, so I told her some ways to make her “worried” expression more anxious and concerned, for it looked a little nonchalant and vacant. Though I wanted her to look slightly detached, I wanted her to be nervous as well. In scene 4, I had Josephine work some more on her short monologue. It’s strange, because she always seems to be laughing at herself on and off stage. I do not understand why. Perhaps she thinks she’s foolish for appearing such way? I asked her to really imagine how she would walk when she was angry, and how she should use her hands. The body language is so important, and she doesn’t do a very good job. No matter how many times I’ve told her, she still does it the same. Leo has the same problem, where he is unable to take the scene seriously. In Scene 3, he is supposed to be a door knocker, but he smiles at times during the scene. All sound effects are not supposed to have any emotion, so I’m quite angry that he can forget what I’ve told him even right after I’ve said it. In scene 8 (Anjo and Alec), I noticed it was a little strange how their cheesy friendship appeared almost creepy. For this reason, I asked the other actors to observe their scene and make suggestions. I even asked others to try and be Alec in his scene with improv. This did not turn out very well, but with the opinion of everyone, we decided that he shouldn’t touch Anjo’s hand, like it said in the script, but bump her with the shoulder, since it would be “cuter.” I did like the effect this had on the scene, so I made this last minute change. Overall, however, I think that we may be ready for our performance after all. I was apprehensive at first, but I think that comes with all productions. It’s probably different because I’m a director this time. I now know what it feels to have something you’ve created transition to real life, and it’s starting to make me nauseous and excited at the same time.

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Journal Entry: January 1st, 2013

First day of my final year in high school. The second I get back, I will have several assignments…One of them being the Practical Performance Proposal (I think), which will give us 5 stimuli to inspire a concept of a play….I AM READY.

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ilovederenglish:

I finally watched the book that contributed to the making of my IOP play…I forgot how amazing it was. The adolescent coming-of-age theme of it makes me nostalgic, because I’ll never be able to empathise with Charlie as much I do now. Being a teenager only happens once, and it’s rapidly passing by before my very eyes. I am sorrowful I have not embraced all of it.

(Source: snuffahufflepuffugus)

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Notes I took during the actual performance of the play.

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I wonder what went on in Michael’s house around dinner and TV shows. Michael never left a note or at least his parents didn’t let anyone see it. Maybe it was “problems at home.” I wish I knew. It might make me miss him more clearly. It might have made sad sense.
One thing I do know is that it makes me wonder if I have “problems at home” but it seems to me that a lot of other people have it a lot worse.

— The Perks of Being A Wallflower, Stephen Chobsky

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Journal Entry: November 27th, 2012

The final rehearsal in the small theatre, tonight was extremely important. Everyone showed up on time, thankfully, and I wanted to begin ASAP. However, there seemed to be some technically difficulties with the projector, which I wanted to display chat boxes and word documents to the audience. It took a good 30 minutes to figure out the details, and I was freaking out, because we didn’t have much time left. Thankfully, Mr. Held saved the day but imputting a special option in the computer that allows them to manually control it from the tech booth, but now the actors were told that they would no longer be controlling it themselves. Though this may pose some problems for the pace and timing, I was relieved that the problem was solved. After that, the run was quite smooth, though the lighting/sound cues were often off time and wrong. I was informed that I got an extra techie to help me, but I was unaware, so I had little for her to do. In the end, she was in charge of the computer that would project onto the screen, Emma was on sounds, and Tasha was on lights. The first run allowed me to see the surface technical problems of the play, making the second run far better. Some people were still forgetting to get on stage at exactly the right time, or getting their cues, but I made sure that they ingrained it into their minds (i.e., by talking to them sternly). I may have been a bit moody within the first run, because of all the chaos with the tech. I realised that the actors were very quiet on stage, so I encouraged them to speak up. In fact, the technical elements required me to change a lot of the blocking, but it was necessary for the tech is very important. Mr. Edwards helped me a lot because he a) calmed me down b) gave me really helpful advice on how to make the play better. Since I’ve seen it so many times, I really have no idea if it’s awkward to watch at all, since I know it so intimately. He told me that some of the long pauses made my actors seem as if they’d forgotten their lines, and that silent transitions would make the audience bored. For that reason, I made them move at a faster pace in dialogue, but not enough to take away from the realism of it. Also, I added musical transitions, which were composed of recent overrated songs of 21^st century, to contrast the heavy topic and mood. It created a sort of absurdist quality, which I liked a lot. Even when you’re very sad, that doesn’t stop that world from being happy, so when you see these type of things in inappropriate contexts, I feel that is very authentically awkward.

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My poster for the play

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Journal Entry: November 24th, 2012

Today is the second time that I’ve actually been in small theatre. I met with Tasha to talk through the lighting/sound cues. Though it was a very rough run though with the tech, it was still good that we had a chance to meet with the tech. It was excellent to have the black boxes there so that we could practice moving them for the actual show. I still can’t believe it’s in 5 days….BUT WE CAN DO IT.

Scene 6 Car Scene~

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Pictures of various rehearsals