500 Reflection For Performance (actually 790)

Linda Li
Ms. Guarino 
IB HL Theater
1 November 2019
Solo Project 500 Reflection
This reflection is the reflection for the end of my solo project. By this time, I have finished all the rehearsals and performing and also the talk back with my audience. I am going to talk about my actual performance, my talk-back with the audience, and also my own thoughts.

In the morning of the day of my final performance, when I was running lines, line cues, light cues, and sound cues with my teacher, I was not able to tell whether I was ready or not for my performance. I realized that this is a very common feeling for all the actors before they go on the stage. And, this feeling became more and more intense as I got nearer and nearer to the show time. My audience population is composed of teachers and students of my current high school. Some of the students are from IB Year One Theater Class, and some teachers teach or coach Literature and theater too. This speciality of audience actually made the aspects of Brecht in my play easier to perceive and understand since many of them know Brecht really well and even the play that I referenced the text from really well too. 

Overall, my performance went pretty well. I knew it from the reactions and the questions that I received from my audience. I was able to say my lines fluently and make my actions very clear. This performance gave me a very complex feeling of anxious but also excitement and happiness since I have never been sitting down on a chair for a whole performance. I was worried that this might bore me audience, but the result is they are so interested and attracted into the play, and they were willing to ask me a lot of questions  and gave me many comments and compliments after the play. 

My costume is pretty simple but also very meaningful and symbolic. I wore the uniform and blue jeans I would normally wear on a school day under my white apron costume. I also wore a mask on my face and two hand-puppets on my hands. Why I did this is because the audience mostly know me well in private and I want to blur my own identity with the apron and mask to create more of an alienation effect for the audience. I tried to alienate them from the true me. During my talk back time, some of my audience asked me why did I pick the crocodile for Cinderella's Prince and the wolf for Baker’s Wife. I replied that the wolf and the crocodile are both Brecht’s aspect of symbolism, and the wolf represents the nature of greed and disloyalty for the baker’s wife, which is because she cheated on her husband and her desire of possession of the prince, and the crocodile represents the smartness and cunning nature of the prince. I love how my costume evoked curiosity and interest of my audience. 

Also, the audience were able to catch exactly on all the aspects that I reference from Brecht, especially the center of my solo project: the alienation theory. In the talk back, one of them asked me what is alienation and how did I expressed it. I told her the definition of alienation and how I did it in my solo project by my costume, multi-rolling, switching in and out from a character to another and from one world to the other. This is one of my purposes: to let more people know about Brecht and the alienation theory. One of the audience is a teacher who is very familiar with Brecht and whom I have worked with for a Brecht production: The Caucasian Chalk Circle. He was able to say that he saw and understand clearly all of my Brecht theater aspects I was trying to show. This made me feel most accomplished since I know he is very strict and has a very special vision for direction productions. 

Another thing I did really well besides expressing the Brechtian theories is distinguishing the roles. Gladly, one of my audience complimented me on how well I did with separating the different roles through tones, actions, facial expressions, body positions, and etc.. This was one of the things that I had the most struggle on with my previous draft. However, I can still improve on mimicking certain tones and voice pitch for different people, which takes a large amount of time and adjustion. Also, I can still improve on putting on costumes or props on stage more obviously. 

Thanks for watching my performance! Thanks to my teachers and classmates who have all helped me tremendously! 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Linda Li’s Director vision

Image
Linda Li Mrs. Guarino IB Theater HL 23 October 2018 Linda Li’s Director Vision of The Caucasian Chalk Circle     When we cheerfully completed the play The Caucasian Chalk Circle last year in the Black Box theater, the images and the script were stamped into my brain. The Caucasian Chalk Circle was about a peasant girl, Grusha who rescued a baby, Michael, and became a better mother than its wealthy natural parents, George Abashwilli and Natella Abashwilli. For the particular scene that I have chose from the play, which is the scene that Natella screaming and fighting the judge Azdak because he decided that Grusha would be Michael’s official guardian and her own property would be taken for public usage, I have decided to plot the scene again by in a independent and different way. Additionally, I was inspired by Mr. Aronson’s style of arranging the scenes of the play and the very aggressive and powerful image of Natella Abashwilli who is one of the most important i...
Read more

Notes on Theater class Plarwights Presentation on Sep 26

Peter Brook Education: Oxford University Born in London, Britain Worked at The Royal Shakespeare Company and directed some of Shakespeare’s plays. EX. Mid-summer night dreams - “Common Sense” -“ A really good actor is all that’s need for a Shakespeare’s play.” - Neither more poetic or more natural. Depends on Actor’s own  sensitive perception and thoughts. -Simplicity is desirable as long as the audience get what you could generally perceive. -wrote The Empty Space Four types of theaters 1. The Deadly: Constructivism and old practices of doing things will no longer do. 2. The Holy: expose reality by creating abstract scenes. 3. The Rough: dramatic scenes challenge simplified thoughts. 4. The immediate: Clean state made by audience. Creation if International Centre of Theatre Research (founded in 1974) King Lear, Lord of the Flies (films directed)
Read more

Collaboration Project

Image
Love Is Complicated Ideas based on stimulus The inspiration for our devising group project titled, Love is Complicated is derived from the stimulus, the painting the hole on the wall.     We gathered our information and ideas about the theme of the play by recalling what we see and what we think of the art work. The very first thing that we realized/noticed about the painting is the distinctive red balloon. Obviously the balloon used to belong to the human figure on the left side and now the balloon is gone, we can tell this by looking at how the hand of the “human” is trying to reach for the balloon. Also the balloon has a shape of a heart, which is possibly referring to love. Combining love and the sense of distance/abandon, we’ve decided our topic to be about the sad facts of love. This piece has allowed the members of our group to explores themes of the following: The longing for love Heartbreak Unfaithfulness Betrayal Love is complicated ...
Read more