November 28, 2009 at 4:33 pm (Daily Entries)
Tags: Dabby, Our Country's Good, Perform, Script
Well I finished the script.
I like it,
I’m excited to be performing it,
And it sort of makes me want to go back to school on Monday,
Sort of…
The more I read of it, the more I want to be Dabby; but also the more I wouldn’t mind being someone else. All of the characters in this play are interesting and dynamic. Fun to explore no matter what.
November 18, 2009 at 8:08 pm (Daily Entries)
Tags: Objective, Our Country's Good
Today Jane wanted to get through the rest of the script for Our Country’s Good.
We also meditated today. The most interesting part was probably the discussion that came after it. What we talk about it drama is often the highlight of my days. Points were brought up about over-crowded minds, and being unable to clear them. Then a small wondering of, is meditation actually healthy for you?
Let us never stop having these conversations…except when we should be reading the script.
I miss doing the read-arounds, where each person says a line and we go around in a circle. It seems to bring a life to it, I mean, when we had people reading certain characters, it was lacking in expression, and how the lines were said. I think that was mostly because we’re only reading it now, not adding physicality of some sort. When we read it in a circle, the interaction between each new person was fun, and kept it upbeat.
November 16, 2009 at 10:55 pm (Daily Entries)
Tags: IB Drama, Our Country's Good, Staged Reading
The IB drama class settled down in a circle after stretching. opening up the script, Jane started the class off by reviewing some of the points from what was read yesterday.
Round robin style, the whole class read, line by line, the last of the first part of our script, and the beginning of the second part. I would say what scenes, but my backpack is around 30ft away from me right now.
I actually really like the script. It’s rather funny, and the more I read it, the more in to the characters I find I’m becoming.
I think one of the best parts of reading is when we stumble upon a rather racy line and Jane pauses to say something like, “yeah, I think we might have to edit this part a little.”
*****
I’m picturing us performing this, and I don’t see scripts. I think that we could memorize the play, no need for a staged reading.
Staged reading worked well for Laramie Project, because there were a lot of monologues, and people moving on their own. But in some of these scenes, with the interactions, I think it would me much more freeing if we didn’t have scripts, and were able to fully utilise both of our hands.
November 11, 2009 at 4:51 pm (Assignment Posts)
Tags: Casting, Our Country's Good
We’re supposed to write an entry on who we want to be cast as in Our Country’s Good, so that Jane can take our opinions in to account while assigning parts.
I want to be Dabby. She seems like such a character. I don’t think she’s formally educated at all, which adds some humor to her character. The thing I really like about her is her ability to read dreams. I heard that comes in to play later in…the…play…haha. She also seems like she’s really nice. I don’t know, she’s just a cool character overall.
Mary would also be cool to play, but I think Shannon would be really good in that part. I can just imagine her as Mary.
I also agree that Curran should be Sideway. Hearing him read that character in class was awesome. I think he would really act that role well.
Actually, all of the characters seem interesting, I don’t think I would mind playing any of them.
November 9, 2009 at 11:59 pm (Daily Entries)
Tags: Accents, Our Country's Good, Review
Actually the post I read really wasn’t that interesting. It was a review of someone elses production of ‘Our Country’s Good’ and not a very nice one. If you really want to read it, click here.
The thing I wanted to bring up was the part about the accents. The post states: “a consistent inability to produce and maintain understandable British and Irish accents proved to be extremely distracting to the audience, and effectively ruined the entire experience”
Doing accents was brought up today in class, and I think it would be a fun thing to try to learn, but I don’t want this to happen. I think that when we actually perform it we should go without accents.
I think that communication of the idea and theme is more important that the realism.
November 9, 2009 at 10:34 pm (Daily Entries)
Tags: Australia, Editing, Our Country's Good, Prisoners
Last week Jane and the class decided that they would perform their IB play: Our Country’s Good, in January. That’s it! Everyone’s just jumping in to the big pile of characters and emotions.
I haven’t read any of the script yet, save what we read in class, but already I can tell, it’s heavy stuff. We only read nine lines, and we’re already editing out language not appropriate for a high school production.
Jane will be casting the play based on her judgement of us as people, acting abilities, and req. that we have to meet for IB. I’m interested in how this is going to turn out.
So, here’s the oh so scandalous line:
At night? The sea cracks against the ship. Fear whispers, screams, falls silent, hushed. Spewed from our country, forgotten, bound to the dark edge of the earth, at night what is there to do but seek English cunt, warm, moist, soft, oh the comfort, the comfort of the lick, the thrust into the nooks, the crannies of the crooks of England.
We’re editing it so that it goes something like this:
At night? The sea cracks against the ship. Fear whispers, screams, falls silent, hushed. Spewed from our country, forgotten, bound to the dark edge of the earth, at night what is there to do but seek comfort into the nooks, the crannies of the crooks of England.
Much more PG, no?
November 7, 2009 at 1:04 pm (Daily Entries)
Tags: Performance, Spotlight, Super Glue
So far the senior directed one-act performances have been going well (we’ve had 2 so far, an A night and a B night).
The right rubber handle on the spotlight kept falling off when I was using it though, so today I’m bringing super-glue (if I can find it) to attach it permanently.
It’s an A night tonight, which means I’m spotting it. Kate is spotting B nights, so she was on yesterday.
