Technical Run

Today in Drama class we learnt to run a Technical Run. The Technical Run consists in the testing of Lighting, entering the stage, exiting the stage, music, etc. This is fundamental for drama practices because, we need to make sure that everything is fine and ready for the day in which we will present the play.

To do the Technical Run for the Lighting effects, we need to keep track of which lights we turn on and off, and when do we turn them on and off. Another thing that we also do, is to fix the light intensity and colour of it. Lighting is very important to be able to give the audience a more accurate vision of the play scenario.

Picture above shows how how to record the lighting that is needed during the scenes, the number of the light and when it should be turned on.

Pictures above and below show how does the lighting effects affect the feeling that the audience has towards the play.

Drama Class

In drama class today, Mr. Evans told us to change the the father and mother of Claire to be their brother and sister. We finished elaborating the play, now we need to practice and remember our lines.

Last night we made some practice in the drama studio about our play. We had put names for the characters instead of using our own. We had made changes in scene 2, where Phil enters the house, instead, we just start the scene by lights on, and Phil sits on the chair being angry at Claire for disappearing. Then we had made changes, we switched the doctor and the father of Claire, because Mr. Evans thinks it is more suitable, and it indeed is. I had a really good experience acting during this rehearsal, this was because I really put the effort in acting out the character and being angry.

Drama Practice

Today in drama we did some practice according to our play, however, this lesson, Lydia was not available so we had to practice without her, which was quite hard to accomplish since she as the main character. Today Mr. Evans told us to change some of the things in our play, like in the moment the doctor call the mom to inform her that her daughter is pregnant, we cut the scene because it is obvious. Then he told us that we could make more characters by changing the costumes of the actors very quickly, to create the guy's parents, using the servant and the doctor. Summary of our play:

-There is a party where the guy attends and is influenced to have sex with his friend

-It happens

-The guy goes to the girl's house to visit her, and find out she is pregnant.

-They go to the doctor to abort it, but is too late, later on the girl's parents join the conversation.

-Parents are angry at the guy and the girl.

The Phantom of the Opera reflection

The 7th of October, we went to see The Phantom of the Opera at the Guangzhou Opera House. The experience was indeed amazing, it was indeed one of the best special effects that i saw.  The Phantom of The Opera is a play about A Phantom that is called the Phantom of The Opera, and he is deeply in love with a opera singer called Christine. But Christine has a boyfriend and the Phantom of the opera is jealous. Christine is a secondary character in her opera plays and this makes the Phantom of the Opera feel bad, so the Phantom of the Opera wants to change the scripts and the play to make Christine be the principal character.

Acting:

The acting of the characters was very real, all the expressions that the actors made were very convincing, like if they were living the play, this teaches me that to act better, the actor needs to live the play like if it was life. All the actors were following the script and i was not able to see any mistake they did if they did. The actors had a really loud and clear voice, this is really important in drama, so the audience is able to hear and understand the play. This is very important so that the message that the play wants to transmit, gets to the audience. I think that to act with such skill is very hard and need a lot of practice. The dialogues were very long sometimes, the actor needs time to memorise the play and the script, when is he or she going to come in, when does he or she have to leave the stage, its all very hard to remember. Besides drama skills, the actors also showed singing skills, thus, their voices are very skilled. 

Staging:

The stage was really complex but well organised. It could literally summon anything in just a flash in time, it could also remove objects as well. At the start of the play, there was a big lamp that was held up into the stage with strings, the lamp had many small lights and there was music playing, to make it more dramatic, the use of lights flashing and the scary music, had created a very demoniac    style of effect on the stage, this was my favourite special effect. In the stage floor, there were some rails so that the wheels could follow a track, when they came in or out. This was a supporter for the special effect in which the boat that carried the phantom of the opera and Christine, look like it was flowing, the smoke in the floor hid the wheels and made it feel like there were mysterious waters. The lights of the stage, made focus on people or objects, this made me look at what the light was pointing, very carefully, thus, lights are important to highlight something in the stage. Also, when the lights went off, and started flashing thunder lights, it was communicating the audience that something evil was going to happen, The entrance of The Phantom of the Opera was coming, this was really interesting and astonishing. At the end of the play, the Phantom of the Opera sat on a throne, covered himself up with a black cover cloth, and then vanished when Christine took the cloth off, i think this was really mysterious, but at the same time, i realised that it was a throne, not a chair, so that the staging preparations could prepare a throne that flips back and the actor can vanish instantly.

This is a picture of a flier of The Phantom of the Opera, photo taken by me.

Teenage pregnancy scene 1

Today we made a lot of changes to our first scene, we changed the fact that the boyfriend visits the girlfriend now, and there are two plays that can go on from the point that the boyfriend notices the pregnancy. From that point, we ask the audience if they want the boyfriend to accept this fact or reject her. This is a form of interaction with the audience. This makes it interactive and interesting. Also we included a part where the public can talk with the characters so they know the play better. Our instructor gave us a lot of feedback and ways to improve our play. Overall, I think that our group work is not as good as group 1, they are very organised and collaborative.

Real life situations about our TIE theme

Today we made some research about about real life situations in our Theatre in education theme and found some interesting stories but none of them were useful for our product because they were all positive and had a happy life which is something useless in drama. These stories about teenage pregnancy were all very perfect and had a happy ending. What we needed to find was how to make people reflect about these consequences and stop having sexual intercourses with anybody at this particular age. We needed to find a sad story about this, but we failed. Some of the stories we found were about people who had a lot of support from everyone and they succeeded as parents. But this is not the case, it is possible but the chances are so few, thus we want to warn everyone the consequences of teenage pregnancy.