Hello.

It's been a long time since i wrote here...

the first theatre class of the year was a little tricky for me, when we were asked to choose and give reasons why one of the plays we produced during last year was the "odd one out" of the bunch i knew which one to pick but i wasn't very sure of the why. I chose Supermarket and gave simple reasons why: it was shorter with simple concept and preparation and it had a different relationship with the audience. I was wrong in many ways, to begin with yes it was short but also was la ropavejera, in fact they were almost the same length. I still stand behind my "simple concept and preparation" reason because it's true. For all the other performances we had to either prepare a research study beforehand to further understand the theatre tradition (andean theatre) we were getting ourselves into or simply create the whole play from scratch ourselves (yes we created this one ourselves as well, but, the process is still far shorter than that we had for any other play: we wrote a script for the one act play and for down to earth.
The relationship with the audience was the tricky one to explain for me because i kept contradicting myself by saying reasons that involved the other ones thus making them the odd ones out aswell.
then roberto suggested we think of the progression of the relationship with the audience we had through our presentations:
Let's begin with la Ropavejera: it was a simple entremes with Spanish golden age theatre conventions, it involved the audience in a minimal level. Then along came Down to earth, a play that had theatre for children conventions, hence the involvement of the audience grew exponentially, we now asked questions directly to the audience, we asked for their help (during the hide and seek scene with sophie) and during scenes we ran around the whole theatre screaming and making silly faces at the audience. This involves the audience but we are still on the surface, on a superficial level because the play itself did not involve the audience (referring to the themes and a more personal level). After that we did The other side, a play that encouraged the audience to discover what was happening, even before the characters themselves (the game of the mirror and alternate realities). This engaged the audience on an intellectual level and allowed them to think along with the characters, more so even, because the characters were not aware of what the audience was aware of, the mirror.
Then came Paucartambo, this is were we created the presentation from a socio cultural point of view, hence establishing our relationship with the audience from the very origins of the play. We were part of the audience because the audience was in the same social and cultural environment as we were. The concept was useless authorities, something everyone in the audience could relate to. Let's not forget the fact that the whole thing was us running around the audience and teasing them, screaming and not expressing words but a few.
Now comes the final one, Supermarket. my idea was that there was little relationship with the audience because we used no words and were not using any particular idea or situation but a more trivial one (a casual encounter in a supermarket that resolves in shenanigans). However when i really thought about it i came to the realization (not sure whether right or wrong) that us not using words we were shutting our audience out, BUT, weren't we including them so much that they had to go along with us and interpret our body movements and facial expressions? doesn't this technique of, when someone is feeling sad instead of saying "i`m sad" they act "sad", deepen the relationship with the audience because we make them feel what we feel? we make them see how we feel and they interpret it and come to their own conclusions? take Hebras for example, their use of masks was fantastic because it stripped the characters and actors of a self, of an identity, therefore the plot is so general that the audience is forced to give faces to the actors hence relating a general and very possible situation to something that they have lived or someone they know has lived through. And if it hasn't happened to them or anyone they know it's even better because the possibilites for the audience to use their imagination and get involved in their minds as the play goes on become limitless, thus the emotional impact of the play is infinte.

I do not know which one is right or wrong, the possibilities are limitless but what i do know is that i am one step closer to the meaning of "making sense of things" after we do them, to the construction of a rationale. This is why the rationale comes last of the PPP and this is why people get this wrong sometimes, we set the rationale first in our minds and base the whole PPP on it whereas had we saved it for last the rationale would be a fantastic explorational technique and we could give sense to a whole lot more things we would've had we set the idea beforehand in our minds.

so hence i come to one final question, one little bug that is actually humongous in my mind. Which one is better? Which one is more effective? To have one purpose and one thing we want the audience to feel or experience with our play before we do it? and therefore go full force on making the audience feel and experience what we want them to? or to just let the audience explore alongside us as dramaturgs and allow them to make sense of what they saw?