Comedy Tonight-

Outside of class, I have been working on the school's spring theater production. I have been working with the cast and crew on the performance for several months in preparation for putting this show on. The show is a mix of skits written by members of the CA community, including myself, and musical numbers from a variety of different sources. My job for this performance was to sing in the ensemble, direct and write one of the skits, and act in several other skits. All of us worked really hard to put on a great show and  I think that all our hard work paid off.
Most of the performers in the cast and crew were returning to drama, as they had worked on previous shows at school before, but many of the people were trying out new roles, like being actors, directors, writers, and crew members. I was one of those people, as I have never written or directed any kind of performance that was outside of Literature and Performance class, let alone in front of an audience of about 100 people! I am extremely exited to say that I think that it went well, as the audience was laughing so hard that I could hear them backstage. All the other skits also got a lot of laughs and the audiences loved it both nights.
We also had very few significant bumps, yet the three big ones we had all, coincidentally, involved me. The first was that one of the actors in one of the skits that I was in forgot to come out on stage in the beginning of the scene, so that when the narrator of the documentary in the skit made several references to him, despite him not being there. He did come out at the perfect time, so I didn't need to talk to the air. I also accidentally came out at the wrong time for a scene change and ended up having to be in a, thankfully, short scene between two aliens. One of the other actresses was sick and could not go on during one of her scenes, so I had to go on in her place and read her lines from a clipboard, because I had never read the script and had rarely saw the scene. It went well, as I was proud of my performance, read all the lines correctly, and even got some laughs along the way.
I loved being in all three plays this year and can't wait for the next one, but now I have more time to focus on my final performance for class, which I also love doing.

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Final Project Progress Report

For my final project, I am putting on several different scenes from Life As We Knew It with a group of my classmates, Jack, John, Grace, and Michael. We have been working on it for a couple of weeks now and my group has made a lot of significant progress on our final project over the past week. We worked on memorizing our lines and blocking, so that we could perform our first draft. After getting some feedback yesterday from the class, we edited our script and blocking, that we now are working on memorizing. I think that it is going quite well.
I helped Grace revising the script, which included adding information about Jack's character and what happened to the moon, by giving her suggestions of what people could say and where they could say them before she wrote the script outside of class. This enables us to make the entire plot more clear to the audience. I also did a good job at memorizing my blocking for the scenes. I also worked on developing my character, Miranda, by making significant changes in her behavior and personality before and after the moon is moved, which disrupts the planet. I also worked on being able to do the scene changes needed for the performance with the people in my group quite well. We just assigned people to certain props and set pieces, which they were in charge of moving, which was a lot easier than when I had to do most of the scene changes during my last Literature and Performance project.
The biggest issue that I have is with memorizing my new lines. For me, the task of memorizing lines is one of the most challenging things that people have to do when they act. I am better at memorizing blocking, because it usually is somewhat logical and smaller amounts of it than the amounts of lines that I have. It also helps that if I do it enough when I practice I can remember it better and I am able to remember it at a much faster rate than the lines. My group is quite good at memorizing the lines and their blocking, so it gave me a less time during class to focus on learning them with my group in things like read through. Now, that I learned my blocking, I can now turn my focus to learning the new lines and getting more confident on the older ones that I know.
My group has clarity of their scripts as the biggest problem that they have to deal with. I think that this new addition to our script, plus adding lighting, costuming, and potentially sound clues will help make some of the more confusing parts more clear to the audience.
The other group, whose performance about a man's murder, was extremely entertaining, because it was extremely comical. The actors in that group had very good characterization and the ones that were memorized were able to do a great job. The other group had a problems with the clarity of their scene, because some aspects, like some of the relationships between the characters, was confusing and had some seemingly contradictory information. However, they are going to revise their script, use props, and wear costumes that would all help with this.
I am having a great time working on my final project and watching the other group's. I just can't wait to see the results of all our hard work look like!

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Final Progect Update!

For my final Literature and Performance project, I get to work with Michael, Grace, John, and Jack. Our adaption was originally going to be based on several scenes from the book, The Giver, but we decided to change the subject of our adaption to a different novel. We chose to adapt, Life As We Knew It, a novel told from the perspective of a young girl named Miranda about her and her family's life after the Earth drastically changes when a meteor pushes the moon out of its orbit. In the adaption, I will be playing the role of Laura, Miranda's mother and one of the central characters in our adaption.  In class, we have been working on our adaption  for about a week now and we have made a large amount of progress on the project.
One of the areas that we have made the most progress in is the selection of the scenes from the novel that we are going to perform. As Grace was the only member of our group to have read the actually book and I only read a summary of it, we were quite limited on the scene choices. This was because of the fact that we had to heavily rely on Grace's information about the novel and her opinions about the individual scenes when choosing the scenes. However, we were able to work together with Grace on picking the scenes, because we read several different summaries on the book, some of which were very detailed, and Grace also provided us with further information. We also had to chose a scene for each actor that centered around their character.
We also made a lot of progress on our script, as my group worked together to finish it on Friday. By using Google Docs and discussing it at the same time, each of the members of my group were able to work at the same time on the script that we were writing. It also allowed us to have a large amount of say in the creation of the script. It also let us have a large say in the creation of our characters, as we all worked on writing our own character's lines.m
I think that we are off to a great start to our project. I am having a lot of fun working on it with my group. Soon, we will start to stage our adaptions and I will tell you all about it.




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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time The Play Edition

Recently, my classmates and I went into New York City to see the play "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" on Broadway. I had a lot of fun going into New York City with all my friends. I even got a cute little button with a face on it because I won a game that they play at the show. However, despite how much fun I had, I had mixed felling about how they  adapted the book into a play.
I really enjoyed the fact that they tried to simulate the mind of an autistic person for the audience by playing loud noises and bright lights randomly. I also liked how the stage was set up as a giant grid, because this is an excellent way to reflect how much Christopher loves numbers and how integral they are to his ways of thinking. I also thought that it was super inventive that they used a screen that could have images that correspond to the plot rejected as the backdrop of the scene. This made a very interesting way around having very limited amounts of props, set pieces, and actors. My favorite part was when Christopher was looking for Toby and almost got run over by the train, because they got to use a lot of different projections and kinds of lights to make the set seem realistic for the audience. The only part of the play that I enjoyed more was when Christopher got Sandy, because Sandy was one of the cutest puppies I have ever seen and I loved how happy Christopher got when he got Sandy.
I did have some problems with the adaption, despite the parts that I greatly admired. I think that Mr. Shears is presented as a nicer character and more sympathetic than in the novel. This was greatly disappointing, because Mr. Shears is the main villain in the novel and the play presented him as a sarcastic guy that was placed in a difficult situation, instead of the abusive, drunk monster he was in the book. I also thought that the acrobatics that were part of the play were kind of strange and I didn't really like them. I'll admit that they were cool, but they mostly felt random, out of place distractions for the audience that served legitimately no purpose whatsoever.  It also ignores the fact that Christopher states several times throughout the show that he hates to be touched. I also was kind of let down by the large amount of humor that they added to the show, because it kind of takes away from how serous the story is.
Overall, I really enjoyed seeing the play on Broadway. It gave me a lot of insight into different ways to stage plays that I would never think of, especially that acrobatics thing, because I am a stickler for sticking to the basic points of the plot. I also thought it was so cool to be able to see a book be brought to life before our eyes, because bringing things from people's imagination to life is one of my favorite parts of theater.

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