This was the final play of the festival our drama group had been attending during the week, it was in the San Marcos university campus, FAR FAR AWAY.
The play began with a married couple who got into their new house and set up a boxing ring with christmas lights, this is the main metaphor throughout the play, marriage is a boxing match because of an abusive husband. (This metaphor, although used many times, I'v never seen been interpreted in a play before.)
What i really liked about this play is that it had a concept and it was different, i loved the unrapping of the furniture and the way they showed the audience how the couple had children. I think they were very creative in the aspects of scenery, props, etc. The acting was also quite good but what really stood out was the physical work. The actors were so much in control of their bodies, which is one of the things every actor needs to master. The way the actor carried the bride around the stage and she managed to stay perfectly still and stiff was incredible, the way in which they slept was my favourite part because not only does it show the precense of skill but confidence in your fellow actor which is also something every actor needs.
I also think, even though they had an almost metaphoric approach to domestic abuse, they were spot on on what was domestic abuse.
Despite its tremendous effort on physical work, the play was not perfect, i think it started rather slow (some people fell asleep) and the parts when there wasn't any strong actions i just can't remember, that cannot be a good thing can it? i think they forgot to find a balance that keeps the audience just as entertained when they speak without extreme movement and when they perform fantasticly choreographed actions.
So, on that note, how can we find that balance? and what to do when one of those actions goes wrong in the middle of a performance? how can we appeal to everyone?
domingo, 25 de abril de 2010
Complete Failure
We went to see a play but we didn't get in the theatre.
Final Question?
Why are our outings to the theatre so disastrous? why? What did we ever do to them?
Final Question?
Why are our outings to the theatre so disastrous? why? What did we ever do to them?
Niña de cera (Maritza Nuñez visit)
This was, by far, the best extracurricular theatre experience of the whole year, mainly because all the other ones were complete pieces of c-r-a-p but also because it came at the perfect time.
A few days before that wednesday Robbie gave us a script, Niña de Cera, a monologue written by Maritza Nuñez and inspired by the life of famous Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. We were supposed to read it, well, I didn't. The very idea of reading a long monologue that composed an entire play was just painful, but when the day of her visit came i was proved to be wrong.
Gabriela was read by our very own Miss Alicia, the other characters were read by the author herself and the rest by Robbie Ray.
Their voices smoothly read the whole script with very few stumbles, a rather emotional and spot on interpretation from Miss Alicia blended with the marvelous melodic and, what I think to be, one of the best voices since James Earl Jones' (googlealo Robbie) of Maritza Nuñez and the monotone ( as it should be for the reading) voice of Robbie. I am very pleased to say I really enjoyed the play, it was rich with symbolism, character depth and beautiful quotes that fit its perfectly with certain scenes.
After the reading there was a Q&A section, the questions were either related to the play itself or to her experience as an actress-playwright-director. I payed most attention to the answers she gave about playwriting, since that is my task for this year's play, i was very impressed with her answers and the warmth she put into them (it felt like sitting with a friend for coffee) though i do think she went along the edges a bit too much i think they are useful to help us understand what is in them.
One of her answers to a question about playwriting was about the stage annotations, she said she writes what is vital otherwise you limit your actors. I thought that was very useful and i realised that i write too many ones, mainly because i have a very clear image of what i want to happen in a scene i write but, then why have actors? why have actors with ideas? why not just do it myself? and i came to the conclusion that it isn't useful to limit the actors because otherwise, the beauty of theatre that is having different people act out a play in different ways, different interpretations, dissappears therefore making going to the theatre a very boring experience.
In general i thought this was a very useful learning experience that i would love to repeat again with another playwright or actor or director.
A few days before that wednesday Robbie gave us a script, Niña de Cera, a monologue written by Maritza Nuñez and inspired by the life of famous Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. We were supposed to read it, well, I didn't. The very idea of reading a long monologue that composed an entire play was just painful, but when the day of her visit came i was proved to be wrong.
Gabriela was read by our very own Miss Alicia, the other characters were read by the author herself and the rest by Robbie Ray.
Their voices smoothly read the whole script with very few stumbles, a rather emotional and spot on interpretation from Miss Alicia blended with the marvelous melodic and, what I think to be, one of the best voices since James Earl Jones' (googlealo Robbie) of Maritza Nuñez and the monotone ( as it should be for the reading) voice of Robbie. I am very pleased to say I really enjoyed the play, it was rich with symbolism, character depth and beautiful quotes that fit its perfectly with certain scenes.
After the reading there was a Q&A section, the questions were either related to the play itself or to her experience as an actress-playwright-director. I payed most attention to the answers she gave about playwriting, since that is my task for this year's play, i was very impressed with her answers and the warmth she put into them (it felt like sitting with a friend for coffee) though i do think she went along the edges a bit too much i think they are useful to help us understand what is in them.
One of her answers to a question about playwriting was about the stage annotations, she said she writes what is vital otherwise you limit your actors. I thought that was very useful and i realised that i write too many ones, mainly because i have a very clear image of what i want to happen in a scene i write but, then why have actors? why have actors with ideas? why not just do it myself? and i came to the conclusion that it isn't useful to limit the actors because otherwise, the beauty of theatre that is having different people act out a play in different ways, different interpretations, dissappears therefore making going to the theatre a very boring experience.
In general i thought this was a very useful learning experience that i would love to repeat again with another playwright or actor or director.
lunes, 19 de abril de 2010
Las not-so-fantastic aventuras de la capitana Gaspacho
After a long lasting streak of really bad plays, Robbie had told us we would go to see "Las fantasticasm (or tremendas, not quite sure) aventuras de la Capitana Gaspacho" in hopes of actually enjoying it.
In true friday night play fashion, the play was a complete, almost painful disaster.
Although it did possess a very interesting concept and premise, a captain and her one man crew embark on a journey, there was a slightly entertaining sequence where the captain asked for different things on the ship be fixed/prepared and only one man did them.
The scenery for the first scene was good, instead of having your typical ship, you had a wooden platform with unconventional elements representing other objects from the ship (eg. A wheel was the stiring wheel, a toilet was a seat or throne, a teddy bear was a star.)
I also liked the fact that there were three different scenes going on and that they eventually bled into each other (this is one of the few liver driven comments i will do, sorry robbie.) it was a la-it's all business.
The other scene was about two sisters, one talking about how a man had stolen her 5 o'clock, therefore tea time, and she would now go on to take tea at five always, she was now british.
The other sister wasn't actually listening, she responded according to a "movie" she was watching (another interesting element, the movie was the first scene), this had potential but the actress was not very good, there wasn't the necessary umph behind her lines, i think she was just blurting them out in a trying-to-be-sweet way, without actual intention.
The first sister, the one that wouldn't shut up about the tea, she was good i thought, but again, the extra punch several of her lines required (eg. when calling her sister a whore) was lacking for me, monotonizing her character a little bit, thus making her boring.
The scenery of this scene was pretty, interesting yet, it was just a pretty set of table, chairs and clock, there was no creative process present which, let's be honest for the simple pedestrian man with no studies on theatre, is absolute non sense because pretty furniture will forever be pretty furniture, but for us, IB theatre students it is very important, vital even to have a concept behind a play, this will help with absolutely every aspect of a play.
The third and last of the little scenarios was a simple table with chairs and table cloth (no creative concept again.) it was a housewife who cried over a bird, sh wouldn't cut onions nor chicken because she thought "if i cut onions and cry, what would happen if i cut chicken." , her abusive husband beats her.
The woman was not a very good actress, she did not know how to deliver her lines and the infamous and extremely painful, boring and overused "Alguien tiene un fosforo?" at the end was by far one of the worst jokes of the play.
When the husband chased her around the table, it wasn't believable enough, believable in the sense that the audience knew the effort put into it, and although i do think there was effort, i don't think that part of the scene, and other chases similar to it, were completely squeezed out of their whole comedic potential.
The oral sex scene was very funny, yes, but it was such a Risas Y Salsas kind of thing, and having her sitting on the table was not a very good idea, because of the whole When Harry met Sally (ijij) fake orgasm scene with Meg Ryan, i mean, for the actors to take such a defining scene that had strong cultural impact and try to emulate that (aware of it or not) they had to have amazing results for it to stand out, yes it got a few laughs but i think it was mainly because of the situation rather than the execution of it.
Another major problem for me was the lighting, it was too yellow and created so many shadows in so many wrong places, at times the actors faces were completely darkened and it was impossible for me to see their facial expressions, and since, let's face it, they weren't good enough at the actual delivery of the lines, i was also completely oblivious of the character's feelings.
In the end all the scenes mix with each other, the characters eventually meet and chaos ensues. The court scene i thought was well executed in a technical sense, the acting was not quite there yet, except for, who i thought to be the standout of the play, Jorge (not his real name.) However, his character started on an energy level of 10 (out of 10) with lines and actions to match, so there was no space for the character to grow in intensity and overall impact. He almost flatlined in a high level throughout the whole play.
Las tremendas aventuras of la capitana Gaspacho, yet another example of a terrific script that combines good old fashioned verse with contemporary elements and potentially incredibly hilarious situations and characters, executed poorly or perhaps, rehearsed fantastically but in the final performance the energy went down the drain. Or maybe they were just bad.
Directing is key, i am not sure and quite certain i never will be, wether this play and its actors were pushed hard enough for it to be great during rehearsals by the director and in the end nerves got the best of them, or if the lack of creative concept was product of lackluster directing.
So, in terms of directing, if he/she works extremely hard enough with positive response and results from the actors, why is it that when it comes to the actual performance, all that process vanishes and what can the director do about it?
In true friday night play fashion, the play was a complete, almost painful disaster.
Although it did possess a very interesting concept and premise, a captain and her one man crew embark on a journey, there was a slightly entertaining sequence where the captain asked for different things on the ship be fixed/prepared and only one man did them.
The scenery for the first scene was good, instead of having your typical ship, you had a wooden platform with unconventional elements representing other objects from the ship (eg. A wheel was the stiring wheel, a toilet was a seat or throne, a teddy bear was a star.)
I also liked the fact that there were three different scenes going on and that they eventually bled into each other (this is one of the few liver driven comments i will do, sorry robbie.) it was a la-it's all business.
The other scene was about two sisters, one talking about how a man had stolen her 5 o'clock, therefore tea time, and she would now go on to take tea at five always, she was now british.
The other sister wasn't actually listening, she responded according to a "movie" she was watching (another interesting element, the movie was the first scene), this had potential but the actress was not very good, there wasn't the necessary umph behind her lines, i think she was just blurting them out in a trying-to-be-sweet way, without actual intention.
The first sister, the one that wouldn't shut up about the tea, she was good i thought, but again, the extra punch several of her lines required (eg. when calling her sister a whore) was lacking for me, monotonizing her character a little bit, thus making her boring.
The scenery of this scene was pretty, interesting yet, it was just a pretty set of table, chairs and clock, there was no creative process present which, let's be honest for the simple pedestrian man with no studies on theatre, is absolute non sense because pretty furniture will forever be pretty furniture, but for us, IB theatre students it is very important, vital even to have a concept behind a play, this will help with absolutely every aspect of a play.
The third and last of the little scenarios was a simple table with chairs and table cloth (no creative concept again.) it was a housewife who cried over a bird, sh wouldn't cut onions nor chicken because she thought "if i cut onions and cry, what would happen if i cut chicken." , her abusive husband beats her.
The woman was not a very good actress, she did not know how to deliver her lines and the infamous and extremely painful, boring and overused "Alguien tiene un fosforo?" at the end was by far one of the worst jokes of the play.
When the husband chased her around the table, it wasn't believable enough, believable in the sense that the audience knew the effort put into it, and although i do think there was effort, i don't think that part of the scene, and other chases similar to it, were completely squeezed out of their whole comedic potential.
The oral sex scene was very funny, yes, but it was such a Risas Y Salsas kind of thing, and having her sitting on the table was not a very good idea, because of the whole When Harry met Sally (ijij) fake orgasm scene with Meg Ryan, i mean, for the actors to take such a defining scene that had strong cultural impact and try to emulate that (aware of it or not) they had to have amazing results for it to stand out, yes it got a few laughs but i think it was mainly because of the situation rather than the execution of it.
Another major problem for me was the lighting, it was too yellow and created so many shadows in so many wrong places, at times the actors faces were completely darkened and it was impossible for me to see their facial expressions, and since, let's face it, they weren't good enough at the actual delivery of the lines, i was also completely oblivious of the character's feelings.
In the end all the scenes mix with each other, the characters eventually meet and chaos ensues. The court scene i thought was well executed in a technical sense, the acting was not quite there yet, except for, who i thought to be the standout of the play, Jorge (not his real name.) However, his character started on an energy level of 10 (out of 10) with lines and actions to match, so there was no space for the character to grow in intensity and overall impact. He almost flatlined in a high level throughout the whole play.
Las tremendas aventuras of la capitana Gaspacho, yet another example of a terrific script that combines good old fashioned verse with contemporary elements and potentially incredibly hilarious situations and characters, executed poorly or perhaps, rehearsed fantastically but in the final performance the energy went down the drain. Or maybe they were just bad.
Directing is key, i am not sure and quite certain i never will be, wether this play and its actors were pushed hard enough for it to be great during rehearsals by the director and in the end nerves got the best of them, or if the lack of creative concept was product of lackluster directing.
So, in terms of directing, if he/she works extremely hard enough with positive response and results from the actors, why is it that when it comes to the actual performance, all that process vanishes and what can the director do about it?
domingo, 11 de abril de 2010
Down to earth, Mr Malice and writing parts of the play
This year, the play is called Down To Earth, it tells the story of Sophie, a young scout girl who is recruited by some superheroes to help save the world, in the end act 2 (yet to be written) happens.
I have been chosen to help Diego write the play, the system is he writes a scene and sends it to me so that i add or correct things, the he checks it and turns in the final draft. The problem is that we write in very opposite ways, he tends to underwrite so to speak and i tend to overwrite, the play is supposed to be for children so we have to find a happy medium so that children and parents can enjoy the play.
Another problem is the input of the children who participate in the play, although i think it's very cool that the children's ideas are taken into consideration, some will be dissapointed because unfortunately, we can't write ALL of their ideas in and even if we do they won't be as spectacular as they want them to be because, well, the budget doesn't allow us to make a child dissolve into a black substance that creates fire wherever it goes...
so, how can we incorporate all the elements to get all the kids to be happy (remember, a happy worker is a good worker) without compromising the overall message and the play itself?
_____________________________________________________________
Mr. Malice
My character for the play this year is called Mr. Malice (frani's husband) and he's a villain, my power is karma inspired, whatever is done to me happens to frani and whatever happens to her happens to me, if frani dies i die. This is really great because Mrs malice and i have a disfunctional marriage, so when she hits me it hurts her too, this gives us plenty of things to do that could be very funny.
I still need to work on my character, i need to figure out what to do when i'm not saying anything and how to say things, what accent to have if i have any (i was thinking british, but, there are several brits in this play so i think i need to come up with something more original. I also need to work more with Frani since we are always together in the play we need to kind of rely on each other.
I think, since we have the whole karma thing going, working more with physical work would be very interesting and potentially quite funny.
My personality is yet to be defined, Mrs. Malice is crazy and bipolar, but i was thinking it would be very nice for us to complement each other in a disfunctional marriage way, when she's crazy i'm calm, when i'm crazy she's calm. I also came up with the concept of us being stepford-ish (not in a sense that we do as we are told but more of the overall feeling, unexpressive faces with fake smiles, cold, almost non-present but very present in a weird way because when i'm like that frani is going crazy and when she's like that i am, get it?), i know that the wives were the only ones that acted like that, but it would be nice for both of us to be, so that we create an uncomfortable but funny atmosphere with the audience and the characters around us.
I have been chosen to help Diego write the play, the system is he writes a scene and sends it to me so that i add or correct things, the he checks it and turns in the final draft. The problem is that we write in very opposite ways, he tends to underwrite so to speak and i tend to overwrite, the play is supposed to be for children so we have to find a happy medium so that children and parents can enjoy the play.
Another problem is the input of the children who participate in the play, although i think it's very cool that the children's ideas are taken into consideration, some will be dissapointed because unfortunately, we can't write ALL of their ideas in and even if we do they won't be as spectacular as they want them to be because, well, the budget doesn't allow us to make a child dissolve into a black substance that creates fire wherever it goes...
so, how can we incorporate all the elements to get all the kids to be happy (remember, a happy worker is a good worker) without compromising the overall message and the play itself?
_____________________________________________________________
Mr. Malice
My character for the play this year is called Mr. Malice (frani's husband) and he's a villain, my power is karma inspired, whatever is done to me happens to frani and whatever happens to her happens to me, if frani dies i die. This is really great because Mrs malice and i have a disfunctional marriage, so when she hits me it hurts her too, this gives us plenty of things to do that could be very funny.
I still need to work on my character, i need to figure out what to do when i'm not saying anything and how to say things, what accent to have if i have any (i was thinking british, but, there are several brits in this play so i think i need to come up with something more original. I also need to work more with Frani since we are always together in the play we need to kind of rely on each other.
I think, since we have the whole karma thing going, working more with physical work would be very interesting and potentially quite funny.
My personality is yet to be defined, Mrs. Malice is crazy and bipolar, but i was thinking it would be very nice for us to complement each other in a disfunctional marriage way, when she's crazy i'm calm, when i'm crazy she's calm. I also came up with the concept of us being stepford-ish (not in a sense that we do as we are told but more of the overall feeling, unexpressive faces with fake smiles, cold, almost non-present but very present in a weird way because when i'm like that frani is going crazy and when she's like that i am, get it?), i know that the wives were the only ones that acted like that, but it would be nice for both of us to be, so that we create an uncomfortable but funny atmosphere with the audience and the characters around us.
Cocina y zona de servicio
Undercooked, that's the perfect word to describe the play we went to see this friday with robbie. As we rode in his red yaris the words of a young student in our theatre class fluttered around my head "it was INCREDIBLE, the play was so much fun i loved it", did you arianna? really?
Cocina y Zona de servicio is an award winning dramedy written by the recognized duo that is Agnes Jaoui & Jean-Pierre Bacri, after a very succesful run in theatres the play was then adapted into another succesful venture, a movie in 1994. This year that play was put on La Plaza ISIL, directed by Marisol Palacios and starring Montserrat Brugue and Sergio Galliani.
The first thing you see when you enter the theatre is a perfectly put together kitchen, a glimpse of a beautiful living room and hallway, freshly washed sheets hanging from a cord in the outdoor hallway, yes, pure perfection... that is of course if you built a house, but it was scenery that i was looking at and even though it was beautifully built it showed no creative process, it didn't showcase the main concept of the play, because being the first thing you see, it should be, in my opinion, the most representative of the main concept of a play.
The play is about a group of friends who reunite after 10 years without seeing each other, although this seems like just your average reunion, there is and emotional backstory to it, Martina was or still is emotional about her old friend (who is now rich and famous and married to another old friend), the reunion begins an hour and 30 mins later, leading into total chaos which eventually "climaxes" (notice the use of "" since it doesn't climax, it just ends) in a discussion in the kitchen and all the characters are seen crying and depressed.
Rather than having an actual plot, the play developes through a series of mishaps that emotionally break the characters. This gives it enormous potential however this is a play that never reached boiling point, and after the first hour i was praying for it to do so, the climax of the play did get some laughs out of me but in the back of my mind i kept thinking "this could be so much better".
The acting became comedic one second and dramatic the next (especially with Martina, Montserrat Brugue is very good with comedic exaggeration but this performance fell in an awkward in-between, had it all been comicly exagerated it would have worked.)
The character Carla also had potential but the actress wasn't very good, i think she portrayed the character giving only 50 % of her energy because it seemed that whenever she walked into the scene it slowed down and eventually fizzle away, her dialog (and most of the play) was full of curse words that could have been exploited for her advantage, given more punch but she fell short of "punch", she didn't have any.
Even the actions of the actors when they weren't saying anything felt very awkward and just plain bad (when they were relfexive or depressed there was the typical fake-lean-on-the-wall and the character of Freddy always had his hand on his hip, that just made my eye twitch because it felt so fake and awkward, it was plain wrong.)
The music, OH DEAR GOD THE MUSIC. Even though the songs that were chosen are very popular and well known by everybody, they had no relevance what so ever to the play and personally i think made the play very cheesy especially during the PAINFULLY long scene changes.
At times, a song would play for a little more than a minute and the characters would do actions and say no words, i think this made the play look like a montage from a movie and overall i think that's what happened with the play as a whole, it tried to seem like something that would work on televison (like a sitcom) and lost its way through the process, i think it was trying too hard to be funny, so hard it seemed like it wasn't trying at all or perhaps it wasn't, relying too much on it's actors, on the script it self and on the lackluster directing.
Overall, the play never lived up to its potential and never quite exploded in such a way that it would turn into pure comedy magic, it just flatlined with some spikes of laughter but never really caught my attention.
After the play was over, the thought of putting this play ourselves occured to me, to make it better and more entertaining, however, i couldn't help but wonder:
If we did, how could we turn this play into something more artistic that has more of a concept rather than just putting a play that represents more how things would take place in real life?
Cocina y Zona de servicio is an award winning dramedy written by the recognized duo that is Agnes Jaoui & Jean-Pierre Bacri, after a very succesful run in theatres the play was then adapted into another succesful venture, a movie in 1994. This year that play was put on La Plaza ISIL, directed by Marisol Palacios and starring Montserrat Brugue and Sergio Galliani.
The first thing you see when you enter the theatre is a perfectly put together kitchen, a glimpse of a beautiful living room and hallway, freshly washed sheets hanging from a cord in the outdoor hallway, yes, pure perfection... that is of course if you built a house, but it was scenery that i was looking at and even though it was beautifully built it showed no creative process, it didn't showcase the main concept of the play, because being the first thing you see, it should be, in my opinion, the most representative of the main concept of a play.
The play is about a group of friends who reunite after 10 years without seeing each other, although this seems like just your average reunion, there is and emotional backstory to it, Martina was or still is emotional about her old friend (who is now rich and famous and married to another old friend), the reunion begins an hour and 30 mins later, leading into total chaos which eventually "climaxes" (notice the use of "" since it doesn't climax, it just ends) in a discussion in the kitchen and all the characters are seen crying and depressed.
Rather than having an actual plot, the play developes through a series of mishaps that emotionally break the characters. This gives it enormous potential however this is a play that never reached boiling point, and after the first hour i was praying for it to do so, the climax of the play did get some laughs out of me but in the back of my mind i kept thinking "this could be so much better".
The acting became comedic one second and dramatic the next (especially with Martina, Montserrat Brugue is very good with comedic exaggeration but this performance fell in an awkward in-between, had it all been comicly exagerated it would have worked.)
The character Carla also had potential but the actress wasn't very good, i think she portrayed the character giving only 50 % of her energy because it seemed that whenever she walked into the scene it slowed down and eventually fizzle away, her dialog (and most of the play) was full of curse words that could have been exploited for her advantage, given more punch but she fell short of "punch", she didn't have any.
Even the actions of the actors when they weren't saying anything felt very awkward and just plain bad (when they were relfexive or depressed there was the typical fake-lean-on-the-wall and the character of Freddy always had his hand on his hip, that just made my eye twitch because it felt so fake and awkward, it was plain wrong.)
The music, OH DEAR GOD THE MUSIC. Even though the songs that were chosen are very popular and well known by everybody, they had no relevance what so ever to the play and personally i think made the play very cheesy especially during the PAINFULLY long scene changes.
At times, a song would play for a little more than a minute and the characters would do actions and say no words, i think this made the play look like a montage from a movie and overall i think that's what happened with the play as a whole, it tried to seem like something that would work on televison (like a sitcom) and lost its way through the process, i think it was trying too hard to be funny, so hard it seemed like it wasn't trying at all or perhaps it wasn't, relying too much on it's actors, on the script it self and on the lackluster directing.
Overall, the play never lived up to its potential and never quite exploded in such a way that it would turn into pure comedy magic, it just flatlined with some spikes of laughter but never really caught my attention.
After the play was over, the thought of putting this play ourselves occured to me, to make it better and more entertaining, however, i couldn't help but wonder:
If we did, how could we turn this play into something more artistic that has more of a concept rather than just putting a play that represents more how things would take place in real life?
Spanish Golden Age Theatre Costumes
During term one we have been studying spanish golden age theatre (historical context, playwrights, scenery, costumes, the works.) .
We began by summerging ourselves in long lessons of theory with roberto learning the basics and general facts, from there we were assigned to do a power point presentation in order to dig deeper into the conventions of the time, however we needed to cut away our periferal vision by focusing more on a specific point, hence the research question. Since my area of choice was costumes i came up with " What would actresses that represented higher class women wear during plays?" this allowed me to focus more on one character (called the Dama) because costumes aren't just a materialistic thing that people seem to find so shallow, they are one of the most representative aspects of both, Spanish Golden Age Theatre and its characters.
Costumes can give you unsaid information about characters, they can give details that you couldn't know by reading the script not only by the way they are built but also by the way the character wears them, with pride? (a queen) carelessly? (a servant) or with selfconcioussness?
In order for me to research roberto gave a book to me about costumes in theatre and after reading through it, it didn't provide as much information as i thought it would, not because it wasn't a good book but because it wasn't focused, it provided general information about each period of theatre (from Greek to contemporary) and the rest was more about the costume building it self. So i found my self with just a glimpse of what the S.G.A.T costumes looked like...what to do? where to go? who to ask? well Google.
But Google had failed me, there was little or no information on the costumes on S.G.A.T but i realised that there was something that linked S.P.G.A.T with the rest of the theatre traditions during the 16th and begginings of 17th century, fashion. And luckily for me, the costumes in theatre of those times were pretty much people's everyday clothing so i researched all night and got really good bits of information and great pictures. The general consensus was this:
In the end i was really proud of my power point, however i couldn't help but wonder: if they wore clothes that were worn in everyday life, when we put on a play that was written in S.G.A should we wear clothes from that time or should we just wear what we want to? and if so, would this have the same impact?
_____________________________________________________________
We began by summerging ourselves in long lessons of theory with roberto learning the basics and general facts, from there we were assigned to do a power point presentation in order to dig deeper into the conventions of the time, however we needed to cut away our periferal vision by focusing more on a specific point, hence the research question. Since my area of choice was costumes i came up with " What would actresses that represented higher class women wear during plays?" this allowed me to focus more on one character (called the Dama) because costumes aren't just a materialistic thing that people seem to find so shallow, they are one of the most representative aspects of both, Spanish Golden Age Theatre and its characters.
Costumes can give you unsaid information about characters, they can give details that you couldn't know by reading the script not only by the way they are built but also by the way the character wears them, with pride? (a queen) carelessly? (a servant) or with selfconcioussness?
In order for me to research roberto gave a book to me about costumes in theatre and after reading through it, it didn't provide as much information as i thought it would, not because it wasn't a good book but because it wasn't focused, it provided general information about each period of theatre (from Greek to contemporary) and the rest was more about the costume building it self. So i found my self with just a glimpse of what the S.G.A.T costumes looked like...what to do? where to go? who to ask? well Google.
But Google had failed me, there was little or no information on the costumes on S.G.A.T but i realised that there was something that linked S.P.G.A.T with the rest of the theatre traditions during the 16th and begginings of 17th century, fashion. And luckily for me, the costumes in theatre of those times were pretty much people's everyday clothing so i researched all night and got really good bits of information and great pictures. The general consensus was this:
- Increase in opulence (bigger is better, more is better, more expensive is better)
- The farthingale was very important.
- Corsets, corsets, corsets.
In the end i was really proud of my power point, however i couldn't help but wonder: if they wore clothes that were worn in everyday life, when we put on a play that was written in S.G.A should we wear clothes from that time or should we just wear what we want to? and if so, would this have the same impact?
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