A Good Start to the Collaborative Project

In order to get back into the performer mindset after the Director’s Notebook, our class did some warm-up activities such as “Honey, I love you,” and devising our own mini-productions. The mini-production part was a bit tough because we only had 45 minutes to work on a piece – although we had a really good basic stimulus, which was Mobi’s song “The Last Day,” we had some challenges in terms of our believability for the audience. For once, we used A LOT of dialogue which we hadn’t practiced before, and so the characters did not sound as authentic as they could have with more practice. We were also lacking a lot of movement and use of space – an area on which the other group did brilliantly. We did have a pretty solid pitch though, and I think with more time we could have developed our piece into a touching performance and much less superficial than it did today.

The pitch:

“Our production, titled "Night Sky," is based on the genre of Naturalism and centers around the emotional journey of a boy as he deals wity the trauma of losing his dad to a war overseas. Left with no parents and no home, Sam is taken to the local orphanage which only makes his grief worse. However, things take a turn for the better when Sam encounters Charlotte - his new roomate in the orphanage. Bonding with Charlotte allows SAm to move past his grief and begin to see his world in a more thankful way, as Charlotte has suffered more intensely than Sam - she is a victim of leukemia. A magical tale of love, grief, friendship, and hope, Night Sky will leave you in tears as Sam triumphs past his trauma successfully: it is only when he plummets into the dark that he is able to find the light.”

Last class, we also started to divide into our collaborative project groups. After our experience with Theater of Cruelty, I was thinking that small groups we be more effective. But since Noah (theres a new guy!!) and Abdul are already working together, we decided that Rema, Talah, Chris, Alia, and I would all work together. I’m scared that we will have conflicts because we are all so head strong, but I think we have definitely learned to respect one another after the cruelty unit. In fact, we have already started coming up with a brilliant idea about appreciating the small things in life, including 5 scenes about each of the different senses. All of us are very excited about this idea – a good sign. I hope I can overcome my flaw of not voicing my opinions firmly enough so that we don’t end up with as much conflict as we did during the cruelty collaborative project!!