Final Project

https://youtu.be/RKgXJ6lY6Xs

Reflection of "Life as We Knew It"

This project was different from anything we've done all year. It entailed us getting a little creative with what we thought of in the fact that it was up to us to choose a book to work with. Normally when we act out a scene, it is out of a book that was assigned to us but this time this project was out of something we read on our own time, whether it be a poem, novel, short story, anything. I feel like it was really fun because instead of being limited by certain aspects, being the novel we read, it was fun to finally go and find a book or short story on our own and act it out. We acted out a book called "Life As We New It" by Susan Beth Pfeiffer, the story entails a little girl named Miranda, her older brother Matt, her younger brother Jon, her mother and her boyfriend Peter. An asteroid hits the moon so hard that it moves closer to Earth, therefore changing the weather, making it cold, very cold. Their family is out of the way from town and since the snow is piling up, cannot get there as it is a four mile trek. The family just basically start slowly dying as they cannot eat because they have to save food in order to survive. In our scene, we take certain scenes from before and after the incident and we basically start going after, before, after etc. In order to show this in our scene we used lighting changes, dimmer for after and brighter for before, we also tried to make our characters seem weaker in the scenes where we are reenacting the parts after the incident. The cast for scene was me as Matt, John as Jon, Grace as the Mother, and Maddie as Miranda. In order for all of the cast to have an equal amount of lines, we made sure the scenes focused intensely on one character, some characters got more than one scene that did this but for the most part all of the characters were accounted for and everyone had an equal amount of lines. I feel like as a group we worked well together, we clearly had good chemistry with each other and in acting it is understood that in order for a scene to be good there has to be good chemistry and with us, we all got along and were able to work well together. In total our project consisted of 8 scenes and was around 10 minutes long. Individually I feel like this scene improved my acting skills because I had to learn how to change emotions and the emotions I had to change back and forth between were quite different, in the before sequence I was a caring, loving older brother figure and in the after sequence I turned into an emotionless, hopeless figure who has lost all hope and was basically just waiting to die because his family was dying around him. Overall I feel like we did well on this project and it was really fun. Individually, I'm glad we did this project because it allowed me to explore different fields of acting and expand my views on what is possible for me as an actor, I was also able to improve and learn new things on emotion which is really good because I can use them in future productions. This was a very fun, creative project and I'd definitely do this again.

Project Progress

Our group has made great strides in our project, the majority of our lines have been memorized and staging the scenes have gone smoothly for most parts. However, sometimes we tend to skip lines and/or replace them with others and then further on down the scene the lines get jumbled and we have to start over. We have been troubled a lot sometimes by issues such as switching between before and after as sometimes the audience does not know which is which but we are working towards fixing that issue. The most important part of our scene is character chemistry, I feel like our group does well together because we all know how to work together cooperatively and play our parts the way they are intended to be played. The character parts in a lot of times have to switch emotions, for example, my character has to switch from a loving, caring older brother figure before the incident into an emotionless, feelingless, careless figure who has no hope whatsoever for survival, the same goes for the lot of us, except Johnny, who tries to in a way keep us hoping. I have progressed in the sense that I am learning how to act out the feeling of emotionlessness, I struggled with this before because I normally always feel something whereas the character I played is basically numb to all feeling and doesn't care about anyone anymore not even his own sister when she tells him she is leaving and probably will not return, my character responds with basically and "oh well, it was nice knowing you" type of response. Overall, our group is coming along and we are pretty much ready to film the final project, I feel that this is going to be a very successful project if we all just stick to the script and are all memorized. There is no questioning the skill of each and every one of us to do the job right, its just all about memorization and sticking to it.

Theater Review

This weekend I saw the spring production at CA called "Comedy Tonight". It featured skits written by faculty and staff about any subject as long as it was comedic enough and easily adaptable to the stage. Each actor in the production directed, wrote and acted in a skit which I thought was really cool and a twist on what theatre is and what we've done here as we normally just have a student director or 2 student co-directors. Going into this production I didn't really know what to expect, I kind of just went into it expecting anything and everything to happen because if guys can play girls in this production then honestly, what can't happen? I thought the mix of a musical aspect in the beginning was cool and the fact that they gave Abigail her own solo number was also good and well deserved, I thought that Anna's number was well done and even more impressive that she did it herself, it takes a lot of preparation and self discipline to write your own dance number and she seems to pull it off every time. I have to admit, I wasn't as impressed with the Punstoppable scene as I thought I'd be, I just thought the concept that it entailed was kind of cheesy and didn't fit well with the subject of puns and I had trouble finding the amusement in the puns. In my opinion, the best skit was the Morning meeting skit just because the actors were all perfectly cast and that the things that they talked about were just so true to the real thing which made it even more amusing. All of the actors did a great job of reenacting the real people, especially John as Mr. Dykeman and Peter as Mr. Gilpin, probably my favorite performances of the show. I do not want to overshadow the Bonnie and Clyde skit thought because not only was it quite unique but it was touching as it featured the Leser sisters together in lead roles with this being Charlotte's last show at CA so I found that very heartfelt and well done. All around I thought the show was a success and that all of the actors stuck very true to life with their parts and the show was very well cast, making for a very entertaining entertainment. Another banger from the CA Varsity Players, well done to all cast and crew.

Project Update

After working for a few days on this project we have decided that we are going to plot a book called "Life as We Knew It" as our project. We have cast the characters with Grace as Miranda, the eldest sister of the siblings, me as Matt, the eldest brother of the siblings, John as Johnny who is the little brother of Matt and Miranda, Maddie is the mother, Laura and the father or Peter is Jack. The story is based on an apocalypse like situation where it is snowing all the time, there is no electricity and therefore no heat, food supply is going low and they are all starting to eat less and less and at one point start giving most of the food to Johnny who is the one who is supposed to survive. We are doing five scenes and each of the character gets their own scene where they are the star of the scene. My specific scene is with Grace and I and she is proposing that she go into town to look for a letter from their father but in reality that means she wants to kill herself because the trek into town is miles away and there is no way she could trek back up the hill to the house. Matt, who is normally a very compassionate character who looks for the wellbeing of his family is no longer sane and has completely lost all emotion and makes no efforts to stop Miranda from going and simply tells her not to take this skis because Johnny needs them to which she simply replies that she will leave them behind the oak tree and that he should come get them as soon as she leaves. As a group, we have made huge progress and are all excited to start practicing lines and staging scenes.

Proposal: Final Project

For my idea, I'd want to do the book The Outsiders by S.E Hinton which is a story about a rivalry between two rival gangs, one is called the Greasers who are the poor kids with slicked back hair and t-shirts and jeans and then there is the Soc's who are the richer kids who dress more upscale, this story talks about their rivalry and how much it impacts the life of both groups who fight over everything. The story is told through the eyes of Ponyboy Curtis who is part of the Greaser party but he is not violent and likes poetry and watching movies and going to school. I would want to adapt the scene where Johnny and Ponyboy are in the park and then Ponyboy is jumped by the Soc's who are drunk. Johnny comes to the aid of Ponyboy who is being drowned by the Soc's and stabs one of them and then all of the other Soc's run off. I want to do this scene because I feel like this scene is significant to the whole story and is the buildup to the bigger plot which goes into the portion where they run up to the church and hide there where no one can find them. Staging this would be difficult because we could need something to resemble a fountain for when the Soc's attempt to drown Ponyboy but other than that it'd be quite simple to stage. With this, the costuming is quite simple, t-shirts and jeans for the two Greasers and more upscale clothing for the two Soc's. We would have Ponyboy and Johnny sitting under a tree in the park talking about how Ponyboy's brother had hit him in the face for being out late, causing Ponyboy to run out of the house and run to find Johnny in the park. After about a two or three minute dialogue between the two, we would have the drunk Soc's pull up in their car and start making trouble with the Greasers. In the movie, one of the Soc's splashes whiskey on Ponyboy so we would need a small glass of water to imitate whiskey for that sequence and other than that it would be all words and actions. For the real stage setup, we would have the fountain at centerstage and the tree that Johnny and Ponyboy sit under at stage right, the Soc's would pull up from stage left and walk towards them stumbling and stuttering to each other, walking in front of the fountain where in that case the confrontation would start and that would how the staging would be. In terms of timing, the scene would probably run around 10-13 minutes in length with each character having at least 10 lines each. Overall, this scene is a classic in literature and in film history and is very open to adaptation and it'd be fun to put a unique, theater-ish type spin on it.

IB Exam

Overall I think I did well on the Exam. I feel like having the book on the first day made it a little bit of a stronger performance and since I was talking about staging I could really let my creative side show and get creative which I found really relaxing and stress-relieving. I also felt having the book with me was quite a relief so I could refer to it. I felt like I was able to go into depth about the novel very well which was quite surprising to me because I didn't have the book so I was really happy that I was able to do so well on the textual analysis because talking about the staging for me was quite simple. I was able to finish the first paper with ease without any hesitation or looking up from my paper to think because everything was right there in my head ready to be put on paper. On the second paper I felt a little bit more shaky because I only had one poem fully memorized. Although I tried hard to memorize Shihab-Nye's poem, I couldn't get it down pat so I memorized what I could and what I thought I'd need and just rolled with that. I was able to get two solid paragraphs down though which was better than I thought I was going to do, there was a bit more hesitation and looking up to think on this one though because I had to think of how to phrase it since we are dealing with poetry. After writing Shihob-Nye's section of the paper, I started on Dickinson's section and about half way through the first paragraph I hit writer's block and I looked up from my paper for about a solid 20 minutes and then I started writing down things just to write something and try to hit my stride again, which I did eventually but by then i'd written down about 10 or 12 lines of stuff that was just not well put. I did finish the second paper strong though which was good, so overall I think I did alright.