The big day has come and passed- our ensembles were performed last night.

I have mixed feelings about how we performed. Actually, let me rephrase that: mixed feelings about how I performed. I felt my group was very, very focused and that Ash, Cassy and Kaitlyn all gave fantastic performances. I don’t feel I gave it all I had, I think I could have done better, but whenever I have been in front of an audience, I feel that. Also, I came in to early on an occassion and I also forgot a scene at the end (ironically that I wrote). The plus side for this was that it actually helped the ending be less drawn out and probably more dramatically effective. The bad side was well - I messed up - simply put. This can be put down to rehearsal I suppose, I personally thought we could have used another run-through before we performed, however the rest of the group was fine with what we had done, so maybe that’s just me. I’m not discouraged by this at all, it has given me something to keep in mind for the solos - that I am forgetfull and I need to rehearse quite a bit to really nail a performance. This is great: more encouragement for next time.

Another good thing about the forgotten scene was that it clearly showed how focused we were as a group. Not even Mr.MacLaren realised what had happened. All four of us maintained focus and to use a cliche - the show went on.

All in all, working on this ensemble has not only been memorable, it has been really fun and enjoyable. I honestly enjoyed every second of the creative process of this play and just getting to hang out with and work with three other dedicated and talented performers. I think we have all learned a lot and have matured as performers because of the experience a great, great deal.

Long Live The Puff Daddys.

(To alleviate any risk of this blog becoming too sappy and/or sensible/self-reflective, here is a silly picture)

Our performance and assessment evening is a mere two days away now.

We know our performance pretty well and we have have streamlined and edited the entire thing. We’re gunna need to do several run throughs before we perform - BUT we do have Monday period 2 and lunchtime, lunchtime Tuesday and then after school until the big moment arrives. I’ll tell you what, we are fifty times better off than my ensemble group last year. I’m not 100% comfortable with the position we are in at the moment, but we will be able to do good. I was hoping to have done a few run throughs of the complete and edited performance by this point, but oh well. I like our performance, I think it addresses the criteria well and that our didactic messages are clear and relevant. Hopefully our audience will leave D7 thinking.

Anyway, I’m off to rehearse and/or listen to the Pixies. Rock on.

We go to the other school to perform tomorrow, and I think that not only will there be a rivallry, but a full on brawl. I’m bringing my brass knuckles and my machete. All seriousness aside, I’m not totally confident we can perform our whole performance without stopping…wait… no WAY can we do that yet. Oh well, we’s gunna need scripts. I just remembered something funny I never blogged - the day we were brainstorming about Dreamscape ideas. We ended up coming up with this: our whole performance being part of a tour for a tour group of magical elves on a spaceship through time. Their names were Eeny, Meeny, Miney and Moe. Insane. This eventually changed to the spirits of the music genres we are covering.

The ensemble is now about 98% scripted, with one TINY scene that needs to be done, and we ran through the whole performance today. We’re definately going to be ready by the big day. Over and Out.

Tomorrow the editing week will begin, and we are very close to having the entire ensemble scripted (which I believe means we are a teeny bit behind). I’m just really happy my english oral is over, so now I can put more work into drama now and I won’t have to feel guilty. Things are indeed coming together and since we will be performing this thing in a bit under 2 weeks I think, that is probably a good thing. Anyway, I’ll be posting another blog soon I spose with an update on how the editing process is coming along.

Wow. I haven’t done a blog in well over a week. Shniz.

Since my last blog, we’ve been simply focusing on new material brought in by the group on Live Aid and the FUTURE, and we’ve also been discussing ideas for the dreamscape setting that we haven’t really worked on much. I’ve been developing ideas involving our scenes for the future and I’ve come up with the following ideas:
*In the future we will all be kittens.

That’s it. Nah I’m kidding. Here’s my real ideas:
*In the future, anyone will be able to have a number one hit, as anyone can upload songs to their myspace or itunes or whatever, and people can buy them - sending the song up the charts. (This is also a continuation of our present day scene showing Australian Idol and “anyone can be a star” mentality)
*All music will be digital - musical instruments will be a thing of the past.
*Radio will be completely digital / computerised and only on the internet.
*Computer mixing programs allow people to create songs in the same style as their idols from the past eg. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Nirvana etc.
*Shallow corporate greed - appealling to the masses with catchy but ultimately repetitive and unoriginal music that neither innovates nor has anything to say prevails over actual artistic talent and integrity. Oh wait, that’s the present. My bad, soz.

That’s what I got so far. I’ve been working on scripting scenes to portray these ideas most of this week. I’ve been having a bit of trouble getting this all across - it’s hard imagining the future and how people will act/think what they do, whatever. But I like it because I can be as creative and pessimistic as I like. YES!!!

We decided today at lunch that we are going to try and get the entire script basically done by the end of the week. We’ve been slacking off since the return of Clarry - it’s like we built up this insane creative intensity, it peaked like a wave, and the tension broke on that wacky Friday before he came back. Since then we’ve been slacking off considerabley. After our little lunchtime meeting today hopefully we’re all going to get fired up again and regain the creative vibe we had just a week ago. Time to get this play finished and kicking face. Anyway, I’m off to keep working. Hoo-AH.

This week we did insane amounts of rehearsal and everything is coming together really well. We went from having about 2 minutes of the ensemble done to about 15 or so, maybe a bit more. Obviously there’s some editing and changes to be done, and we have a lot more work to do, but I feel we did as much as we could possibly have done this week.

Some funny incidents during the week:
*The division between the two groups - D7 is literally divided … by a line of tape.
*Kaitlyn’s story about the random girl that rang her up 17 times to repeatedly insult her for no apparent reason.
*Me forgetting the rehearsal at Friday lunchtime
*Any time when Kaitlyn becomes incredibley stressed and the rest of the group stirs the pot and hilarity ensues.
*The pterodactyl and chupacabra sightings.
*Aaron doing the crazy handheld absence thingy.
*The re-occuring tension between groups and ridiculously petty arguements - “Well our performance has Vanilla Ice!” and the comparison between both group’s raps - good stuff.
*The discovery that other classes had been tampering with our puffs - leading to Ms. Deslandes’ suggestion that we should laminate a sign. I personally thought landmines/C4 would be more effective.

Anyway, overall it has been a very productive week. Who would of thought we could get so much done without our leader and hero, SuperClaz (*cough* extra marks *cough*)? And I even get to play a redneck protester. All in all it’s just another sprinkling of onion.

*** For anyone wondering what a chupacabra is go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chupacabra
Hint - It’s small, green, mexican and drinks the blood of goats.

Just got home from open night, and after a milo I’m ready to blog. To put it plainly, we got so much work done tonight. At first I didn’t like the idea of rehearsing in front of people, but it turned out to be alright and gave us more experience performing in front of an audience, something we haven’t done since last year’s solos. But more importantly, we got heaps of rehearsal done! I’m really liking the scenes we have done so far and I think we’re addressing the criteria well. Looking forward to more productive work tomorrow.

I’ve just finished my script for the Beatles related part of our ensemble. And it’s my turn to be director/dictator tomorrow! HooraH! I’ve tried to make it non-naturalistic, but it could probably use some polish. There’s a few parts of the script I think will work well and other parts that I think aren’t so hot, but I’m confident our group together will make it awesome. I also tried to use some ideas from Exit the King and my knowledge about absurd theatre to make the dialogue more disjointed and alienating. Alienating… Epic Theatre… they all go together!

Anyway I’m pretty tired now, might watch a movie and hit the sack. SNES on.

On Monday we decided that the best way for us to really get things moving is if we all focused on developing ideas for certain artists and scenes in our performance seperately. So we divided up our topics amongst our group and are all going to be working on ideas for scenes outside of school which we can then share with the group, collaborate on and improve. I think this will be good, and we all will get our own creative freedom and input as well. That’s pretty Snes if you ask me. Anyway, I better get going and get some ideas for scenes about the Beatles. Catch ya man.

The realisation that the holidays have come to a screeching hault dawns on me and my brain hurts.

Today in drama we again got some productive work done (YES!!!). Mr. Mac gave both groups a place to start with their scene: contrasting characters. This grew well, and by the end of the lesson we had a fully fledged new scene which demonstrates the differences and similarities between sub-cultures. YEZ! We included a plethora of non-naturalistic techniques as well, and it fit in perfectly with the topic and the direction our ensemble was going, so I was really happy.

Some of the important criticisms of our performance were that when doing the narration at the end we needed to have a neutral character. I agreed and thought that was what we should have in the scene and we could also use that technique again in the performance.