Blog #6: My Mistakes Were Made For You

Description:

The fourth week of April is now gone and once again the school play rehearsals involved the idea of practicing and polishing the first scenes of the play. Throughout this week, we continued with the idea of dividing actors into different groups which included the people from the same scenes. In my case, once again, I did not contributed to the process in a practical way, but rather helped with the direction, coaching and giving opinions on how to improve the scenes by applying any German Expressionism conventions that were not being explored or developed to their fullest. I helped with two scenes; including the "Estación 1" and the "Estación 3" on Tuesday/Thursday and Saturday respectively.

Analysis:

On Tuesday, I had the almost imponderable joy of helping on the direction of the "Estación 1" of the play. As I previously mentioned on my last blog entry, this scene depicted clearly the idea of monotony and suffering from the workers by setting a repetitive sequence in which the characters repeated simple yet boring jobs over and over again. For example, in the case of Bruno's and Jorge's characters, they just poured pigment or glue into the large container which Salvador's character and someone else are in charge of stirring. The audience somehow connects with these characters and is able to feel identified and understand them, they feel and know that those jobs are boring and even depressing. This idea of depression is even highlighted by the sounds generated within the set of movements from the characters. The most clear example is the sound of the paint tins made by Daniel's character; he lifts them from the floor and harshly puts them down on top of the metal table. The sound generated by the two metal surfaces hitting together, created an auditory effect of imprisonment; as the audience's imagination is stimulated and makes it relate the sound to the one created by the prisoners hitting the metal bars of their prison cells.

Anyways, this day we concentrated on polishing the transition between scene 1 and scene 2 (Estación 1 and El Sueño respectively) by using as a guide the musical piece made by Jennifer Kim for the play. At a certain moment in the song there were sudden changes in dynamics (dynamics refers to the volume of a sound, but also refers to every aspect of the execution such as pace, pitch, etc) which we used to mark the exits and entrances. What "El Jefe" finally says in scene 1 is used as a cue for the music to start; after he says "¡¿O tienen alguna queja?!" the music is started and once he leaves, the workers continue working in "D" the pace which meant that everybody had to do their actions really slowly. Afterwards, there is a sudden change in the pitch of the music and the workers slowly begin to lower their heads in three steps, marked by three beats. Finally, the music becomes more bizarre and distorted which is used as a cue for the actors to start making incoherent and strange actions; this part marks the beginning of "El Hombre's" dream as everything begins to be rare and unnatural. 

For example, the "Volantes" began to use their pencils to stab themselves slowly which creates tension and ambiguity in the scene; on the contrary the workers that moved paint tins or manipulated them did things such as liking them (Joaquin's character) or drinking the paint from the inside (Juan Pablo's character). In my opinion this actions really helped to build up this new level of reality which is the dream, in which the 6th graders acted. The workers slowly begin to disappear and the 6th graders' character appear from different parts, some come out from the inside of the barrels and some will come out from the trap door. These actions define the new level of reality and thus confuse the audience as it might be somehow difficult to understand what is happening; but that is another convention in German Expressionism, in which bizarre actions reign over coherency and comprehension.

On Thursday, we continued with the rehearsals of scene 1 and Roberto suggested that the "Sindicalistas" should have some animal/beastly characteristics in their physicality while speaking to the workers and trying to raise the masses. By now, Patricio Strube became the "Sindicalista 1" instead of Alejandro who became the counsellor in scene 5; and started to implement some sort of snake characteristics to this new character. The delicacy and subtlety of his character were contrasted with Jose Alex's new character who implemented characteristics of a gorilla, using a lot the  strength of this arms and legs to move across the stage. 

Again, the contrast between these two characters was visible and created this effect of empathy amongst the workers, why? Because, since one was more physically powerful and the other once was more psychologically powerful they could both relate with the workers as they covered a range of characteristics and aspects. Both of them began to use a stick which somehow gave the visual image of power and strength as it reassembled a king's sceptre and gave them somehow the same hierarchy as "El Jefe" however the fact that they use it in a different way make the audience realize that they are part of the workforce too. 

Moreover, on Saturday the intention was to begin working on scene 5 (a.k.a. Estación 3) and on scene 4 (a.k.a. Sueño Morado). However, many actors were absent, mainly for scene 4 which limited the quality and quantity of work that could be done on Saturday. The rehearsal started by the warming up of the actors, which intended to make them get into character step by step. First the breathing, then the body characterisation and finally the voice characterisation. Actors had to be aware of the fact that their movements had to be grotesque, strong and big with the purpose of showing a feeling in a bigger scale. The use of the face was pretty straightforward, big eyes accompanied with sudden trusts of the head. We then, made each actor say an emotion out loud, an emotion which they thought was being represented by their character; and afterwards made sure that their body and face reflected it. For example, Mora Endruhn said that her character represented hypocrisy...To what extent was this true and accurate? Well, starting with her body characterisation, I can say that the fact that she had her shoulders being raised gave the feeling of contraction and being constrained which could be linked to idea the that she was not expressing her opinions with total freedom and always hid something. Moreover, since her shoulders covered her neck and gave the impression as if she didn't had one, gave the audience a more physical image and feeling of she hiding something and always showing herself as someone who she really wasn't. She used short steps and walked using the tiptoes which gave the audience the idea of she been really cautious with her movements, so she could not be discovered. This idea of cautiousness helped to highlight the idea of hypocrisy as we perceived her as someone who was hiding something. Likewise, the face expression also highlighted this feeling since her eyes were wide open and she had a subtle and little smile which showed her teeth and gave this impression of creepiness and mischievousness; which reminded me of Cheshire, the cat in "Alice in Wonderland", the film by Tim Burton, the American film director know for his dark, gothic and macabre movies which depict an expressionist essence. So, I can therefore say that Mora's character effectively showed the feeling of hypocrisy through her body and face expressions. I would recommend her to use a high pitched voice which would add to her character a more unnatural quality and thus complement that feeling of mischievousness generated amongst us.

Afterwards, Roberto made the actors improvise with "El Hombre" which in this case was being played by Jorge Ignacio. However, the lack of energy and determination shown by some of these resulted in Roberto assigning me the task of working with Alejandro Goicochea, and helping him with the characterisation of his character, creating a scene and giving him confidence. Previously, Alejandro was "Sindicalista 1" in the "Estación 1" but due to his discomfort, Roberto gave him the opportunity to be a sort of counsellor/ work advisor for "El Hombre" in the "Estación 5". We started by defining the intentions and attitude of this new character. We reached the conclusions that this character will be a useless, incompetent and crappy advisor who's advice will be total nonsense and balderdash. We also had in mind this idea of him having a physical disability maybe cause by past trauma or experiences; this disability involved his left arm moving by itself at times (movements which he could not control). 

This disability gave Alejandro the possibility to explore with different actions that will give the scene a more humoristic and funny atmosphere. For example, the fact that his arm was always tense and moved in staccato (German Expressionism convention) when ripping the job application from his hand which was being handed to "El Hombre" gave the scene more energy and fluency. This humour was being intensified with the absurd dialogue that was used; what do I mean by this? This means that the things that were being said by the counsellor made the scene more fun and light. For example, when he said "Opción 2, ¿le gustaría trabajar en una fábrica haciendo escobas?" and then suddenly ripping the paper and throwing it to the ground intensified the nonsense. Moreover the fact that he hit her left arm with the right hand made the audience realize how inefficient he was. His voice characterisation resulted in him having a rusty and scratchy voice which gave the idea of him being really old; the fact of him being old made the audience realize that due to his old age he was not aware of the fact that his advice was really crappy and useless, on the contrary he felt as if it was good and helpful. 

The purpose of the "Estación 5" was to intensify the fact that "El Hombre" was useless and that he was always being overwhelmed by a bunch of different ideas and emotions. In the scene I created with Alejandro we are able to make the more stressed and chaotic side of "El Hombre" because in one moment he explodes and starts attacking the counsellor due to his bad advice. This outburst however, could have been a little bit more clear as it demands a lot of energy in the voice which needs to be supported by the face and body. I picture this scene to be a more sarcastic scene in which the advice that is given to "El Hombre" is sort of making fun of his capability as the audience already has the perception of him as being useless; a perception which was created in the "Estación 2" by the family which is attacking him by pointing out his negative qualities. Finally, it was also interesting to see how in this scene, first the counsellor/job advisor enters through downstage left and moves into downstage, then the two female counsellors (Pamela Flores and Micaela Olavarria) enter from downstage right and move into downstage, and finally the two other counsellors (Mora Endruhn and Natalie Braun) each enter from one side of the stage, downstage right and downstage left respectively, and move towards "El Hombre" at downstage. This idea of the counsellors entering each from different sides of the stage create a visual impression of imprisonment and being chained. This can also be connected to "El Hombre's" state of mind at that precise moment of the scene, since he is reflecting upon what to do with his future so his family somehow feels proud of him, rather than disgusted; he wants to be free of the tag he currently has, the tag of the outsider in the family.

Connections:
Time to start connecting...yay! The first connection I found was between scene 1 ("Estación 1) and "Proyección Privada". In "Proyección Privada" we are able to see a strong contraste between the woman and the husband, since they both have opposite personalities. As I mentioned in my play review, the woman is identified and represented by the rabbit, an animal which represents comfort and vulnerability whilst the husband is represented by the horse, an animal that represents power and freedom. These two attitudes help to intensify the idea of being totally different but at the same time manage to transmit one idea; the fact that love diminishes over time. Likewise, in scene 1 of the school play; the two contrasting attitudes being presented are the ones from the "Sindicalistas". For example, Jose Alex's character has this sort of aggressive momentum and presence which is clearly depicted by his voice and body characterisation. On the contrary, Patricio's character is more delicate and sagacious; which helps to intensify his mental power. Although both of these characteristics are not the same and somehow different (mental vs. physical) they are complementary at the same time. The fact that both of them are "Sindicalistas" gives the audience the impression that they can tackle problems from different points of view as they can easily relate with the workers in the factory. Therefore, I can say that the use of contrasting characters is really useful when trying to represent a somehow strong and complementary idea.

Moreover, I also find a connection with "El Ultimo Ensayo" and the first two scenes of the school play. In "El Ultimo Ensayo" there are no clear changes between the scenes; lights do not fade nor they turn off, therefore the use of of props and music is essential in order to make a clear contrast between scenes. Likewise, we are trying to implement this idea of connecting scenes with music and slight changes in the use of lighting and props. This intends to maintain the energy, pace and attention of the audience at its fullest. As I previously mentioned, the use of music accompanied by a series of actions is really effective in the transition between scenes 1 and 2. The progressive changes in pace is useful to create another level of reality from scene 1 onto scene 2, the grotesque and bizarre movements made by the workers give a sense of dreams and illusion. Therefore I can say that the use of music and lighting will in fact be helpful in order to help transitions between the scenes of the play. However, this continuity will demand a high level of concentration and energy from the actors who will be on stage most of the time unless they have to leave because they won't appear again. 

Reflections:
As I mentioned in last week's entry, the creative process of making an expressionist play is so far so good and the work we've done so far demonstrates how easy it can be to apply a theatre practice's conventions into our own play. However, there is always room for improvement in order to make the quality of these scenes to improve. Through the experimentation and practice in the school play I have been able to sort of back up my hypothesis and initial idea for my research, the fact that music is able to create dark and bizarre atmospheres. As I learnt from investigating for my production task, music in German Expressionism is characterized for having high level of dissonance, from having strong contrasts in dynamics, for implementing a chromatic scale, for having distorted melodies and harmonies, for not having a prevailing tonic and using polyphony.  Dissonance basically refers to a harsh and disagreeable combination of sounds; this helps to create a sense of confusion and uncertainty in the scene. The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches which allows for the generation of different sounds for different moments in the scene. A melody is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener/audience perceives as a single entity; the fact that expressionist music has several melodies being played simultaneously (polyphony) creates once again a sense of confusion and it makes the audience feel overwhelmed. Therefore I believe that the use of a piece with sudden changes in dynamics would be really effective in the part of "El Hombre's" monologue in the "Sueño Azul" as it will help to reflect the different emotions he is feeling. For example, in Jake's "Twilight" in the minute 1:20 the building up of tension begins to be noticeable until there is a sudden outburst around the minute 1:38 and the confusion depicted by the song is really evident. In the end, it is said that music is able to create it's own scenery and I believe that by linking music with actions in the play, the emotions and ideas will be transmitted in an easier way. 


I have been able to realize that music in fact helps to create a feeling of paranoia, in this case the paranoia felt by "El Hombre" since he will now feel that he is always being judged due to his quality of "inutil". The music therefore makes the listener/audience feel as if they were in a maze without a map,; lost and confused. Instruments such as violins and violoncellos will be useful to depict changing moods in the scene; the violins' high pitched notes are for a more happy, energetic and joyful scene although they can help generate tension by the use of "ligados" as the feeling of being chased is present. On the contrary the slow violoncello reduces the pace and therefore creates a more soothing and nice atmosphere by the use of its low pitched notes.

I can therefore say that the scenes are beginning to solidify and become more complete as the implementation of sound design is being really useful to make clearer the ideas that want to be transmitted. Music also helps to establish a better connection with the audience as it might help to bring them back memories of their past in which they remember situations that are similar to the ones being presented in the play. I also learnt that the use of more comical scenes in the play will help to somehow alleviate the tension generated by the already depressing actions taking place throughout the play. I also believe that on scene 2 the use of levels will be really effective to help generate this idea of oppression by the characters that talk using chorus and unison. If these characters are located higher than "El Hombre" the feeling of depression and fear felt by "El Hombre will be more clear and strong.

I will close this entry with the following questions
To what extent are costumes going to help define the characters' personalities? Will we be able to effectively highlight the physical exaggeration of the characters? Will the audience be able to empathize with "El Hombre" by using of grotesque scenery which gives the impression of oppression  Will the audience understand the context of the play?

PD: Last week there wasn't one "Just in case you were wondering" link... but this week there is one, enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23PkA3G6NL8