Supermarket

So for the arts evening a couple of weeks ago we had to present a small performance in representation of the theatre arts department, there was a twist, we had less than 3 weeks to prepare. so straight from the bat we knew it needed to be simple, entertaining and have no other purpose but to entertain the audience (this is extremely rare because out of every performance we do we need to give it more meaning than it actually was intended to have) however when it came to the process and choosing what we could do we were rather stuck, we had no idea what to do so Roberto gave us a tool, inspiration. turns out you could be inspired by something as small as a song?! whoa, what do you know, guess we can do a PPP know!

on a more serious level though, having a song be the inspiration for a performance is a very effective technique and can result in solid performances. songs can indicate many factors of a performance, if the song feels dramatic and strong then the performance could be dramatic and strong, or you could go the opposite and have the music inspire you to do the contrary of what it inspires you to do. so we arrived to "the gift", a song that had a very beachy and relaxed feel to it, hence we came up with what would be our acting concept, being inside gelatin, everything is slow motion and dense, you need to exaggerate your movements and facial expressions so that they can push through the dense gelatin.
however i come to wonder something that didn't occur to me during the process and final performance, we know we are in a gelatin, the audience does not so wouldn't they feel rather overwhelmed by the over the top slow motion and facial expressions? well, the answer is no, in fact, if EXECUTED PROPERLY this effect can be extremely interesting and awe worthy for an audience so we had a challenge, we had to make it as perfect as possible so that the performance wasn't a stinky pile of hoo hah.

when it came to working with the acting concept it was rather difficult at first and continued to be towards the end, slow motion is easy if you are in a gelatin, we weren't therefore we had to keep our balance perfect and timing flawless as well so that one actor doesn't look like he/she's inside a different gelatin and thus ruining the overall effect of the performance.
we needed to resort to the first teachings of theatre we had, working with our centre of energy so that it will maintain balance to our bodies, i found this particularly challenging because there was a part when pineda kicked me on the leg and i had to jump up without jumping (it's impossible to jump in slow motion unless we are in slow motion) and grab my leg (yes, standing in the other one.) in pain. this helped me figure out the very useful artifice of lying to the audience, you see, production elements and concepts and such are irrelevant to the audience (non ib theatre students) they care about being entertained by a good performance (yes they do consider good visual effects that could be provided by production elements but in the end they won't say to their friends "hey, you have to spend money to see this play that sucks because the scenery is SO worth it.") so we as actors/directors or playwrights have to, eventually, adapt our work and ourselves so that it is able to keep an audience engaged so that the performance is successful. little things like the fake "jumping" and over the top facial expressions kept the audience entertained, in fact, the swaying at the beginning also kept the entertained and brought the performance to a whole new level because it kept it from ever becoming static, boring.

the "design concept" (we chose not to go with the obvious Miami theme the song conveyed, so we decided to go with a supermarket since they often have that kind of music.) (sort of?) was chosen to enhance the acting concept, black pants and white shoes (against a dark backdrop) to enhance the effect of our legs moving in slow motion gives the scene a much more fantastic feel, however i would have wished to have this constant in every character, for example arianna's character didn't have any black in her legs, some black leggings would have made the effect more cohesive, however for the effect to be cohesive and successful there needs to be an extensive rehearsal process, something we didn't have.

we had no props whatsoever, everything had to be imagined but still, it HAD to be present, because if the imaginary props weren't clear then the performance will be an utter failure since the audience will not be able to understand a thing. this also proposed a challenge because of littel coordination elements, for example if holding a jar of pickles from the supermarket our hands had to be kepts as if we were holding it, for real, thus we are not able to move our hand or close it because if the jar were there we wouldn't be able to magically put our fingers through it.

overall i think we had a very successful little performance, that as simple as it may sound it turned out to be quite entertaining for the audience (SUCCESS), in fact some people were more enthusiastic about his than they were for past years plays, this leads me to wonder: is it more effective to have a short and sweet performance that will inject the audiene with our message and purpose (yes, we are back to having a purpose and message FOR EVERYTHING) in, shall we say no more than 8 minutes? or is it better when we have a large scale play that lasts 2 hours and sends the same message but it is spread out in a long play rather than 8 mins? what do people really want? and how far can we compromise to give them what they want?

Overall i think it was a very succesful little performance