Blog #14: Giving birth to the One Act Play

To what extent does comedy rely on absurdity?

Description:

The first week of July is now gone, which means that... we are getting closer to my birthday! However, it also means that we started with the One Act Play rehearsals/planning. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday we started noting down ideas and brainstorming on the starting ideas that will help our play to build up and consolidate. This entry will be used to note down some of the ideas discussed, to analyze how these could be developed a little bit more, and to see to what extent they will be "effective" for our game. 

Analysis:

On Tuesday was our first rehearsal/planning session for the One Act Play Festival and honestly we were kind of short of ideas. We started to ask ourselves about what should the play be and what genre should it show. Should it be a comedy like every year? Should be something more dramatic? Maybe a story of mystery? We weren't sure. I personally like when the audience laughs and enjoys a play, it gives me the impression that they are more engaged and connected to it, which somehow makes me feel satisfied. Since we weren't on track, Roberto asked each one of us, what is it that we like to do. Ideas involving movies, sitcoms, TV series, videos, theatre, photography, etc. began to arise. Therefore, Roberto came up with an idea of the play involving a death, and actions taking place around that death creating a play of mystery and suspense. Afterwards, we tried to come up with ideas of possible settings for the play, trying to be creative and propose fantastic and imaginary settings also. We had ideas of a bathroom, a mouth, an anthill, etc. It was interesting, as settings could represent many things, and we could give them a meaning. A mouth, could depict the idea of sickness, old age, youth, etc. depending on the way it is set. For example, by setting a mouth with few teeth, we could argue that it represents old age as many of the teeth have fallen and thus the play could have dealt with the idea of a man dying to old age, however the other people surrounding him wish to know the "truth" cause of his death. Moreover, if we present a mouth with no teeth and just two baby teeth, it will give the idea of vulnerability and weakness. In this case, the play could treat the idea of an abortion of a miscarriage, however those topics are delicate and harsh. In the end, we decided to research about mysteries and crimes to create a storyboard on the next rehearsal. The rehearsal ended with Roberto telling us to start thinking about possible ideas for a mysterious play for Thursday. It is important to start the process with the right foot and thus come up with an interesting game, concept and play. 

On Thursday, we intended to consolidate and develop even more the previous idea proposed by Roberto, the one about having a death or a mystery to solve. Since we weren't sure if a death would be the most appropriate thing to do, we decided to try something else. Roberto asked each one of us what would be the scariest thing that we could imagine if we arrived to our houses. Ideas such as finding flour all over the place, a death body on the couch, finding your mom and sister motionless, the glass broken, etc. were said. We then tried to get ideas from that, and got to the idea of a man arriving home and finding something out of place, something strange and weird; a photograph of a stranger holding something of personal value for him: his teddy bear...? However, we realized that it didn't allow us to explore further the idea and develop a long play. We just got three characters; and the story ran short, due to the fact that it ran out of actions once the man asks his grandfather about the photograph, however, his grandfather does not remember and does not know anything about it. We finally, decided to play with melodrama, involving a simple story in which the conflict is somehow simple and ridiculous, we the purpose of creating humor and exaggerating basic things. The interesting thing about melodrama is that it allows actors to exaggerate a lot and play with their voices, body and physicality with the purpose of expressing clear feelings and emotional states. A clear example, would be "Maria la del Barrio" the mexican soap opera which is exaggerated and at moments pathetic.

This is the link to the video that Roberto showed us. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajvmOU2AIWI

As we can see on the video of the "Maldita Lisiada", melodrama intends to exaggerate situations more than what is usual, making a great deal about little things. We believe that humor will be created as people will see that it is stupid and dumb to worry about such small situations. Therefore, I believe that the tradition of the One Act Plays will be maintained, as the comedy will still be present, but in the shape of a melodramatic play.

We then started to think about the plot itself and the setting of the play. I gave the idea of a bathroom (I was pretty obsessed with them) and got to the idea that it would be interesting for three different scenes to take place in the same bathroom but in different areas all around. We divided the bathroom to 3 different areas: the area with the sink and mirror, the area with the toilet and the area with the bathtub. It was interesting the idea for the actions to take place one at a time in the different areas on stage, using spotlights or similar to indicate and focus the audience attention on one specific area at a time. The purpose of this would be to give the impression of connection, as well as creating a sense of absurdity as the setting is weird and dissimilar from the conflict itself (the family recipe has been exposed). We organized the play into three scenes as already mentioned, and the structure of it will be of a flashback; meaning that it goes backwards...starting with the present and looking back to what happened before. 

1. Monologue - Brother
2. Conflict 2 - Mother vs. Daughter
3. Conflict 1 - Maid, Father, Grandfather

This structure, of going from the present to the past, and from the past to the past even before that past; will stimulate the audience's imagination. By leaving many actions untold, the audience will start to imagine what happened before and thus be more engaged. For example, through my monologue, the audience will realize that my sister hit me and yelled at men, however this is not explicit as we aren't going to show it. Another example, is the moment in which the maid goes and yells at the mother; once again this moment is not going to be shown, but clearly expressed through the dialogue and actions. 

Summing up, we intend to show the story of a family that is jealous of their neighbors. The neighbors eventually find out the family recipe, and the family is worried and intends to find the guilty of exposing this recipe. The mystery will still be present, and we might even leave the case inconclusive; letting the audience imagine who the guilty was. 

Connections:

I can make connections between this creative process for the One Act Play and the one done last year for the "Independent Project". My group and I started with a stimulus, the Rubik's Cube and used it as an inspiration to create a short and possible play.  In this case, we started with a stimulus and used it to get ideas, however at first we started in the same way; we were kinda lost and started to suggest various ideas until little by little, some ideas were better than others and thus we developed these to reach a final product. Moreover, our final product can also be connected to the potential final product for the One Act Play, as both deal with family problems, and their members arguing about something with the purpose of finding a solution. The purpose of this, is for the play to connect with the audience who will or might identify with the conflicts shown in the play, and due to its simplicity they might find it more absurd and fun.

Moreover, I also find it interesting to connect our potential play to "Proyección Privada" as both of them treat the genre of Melodrama. In this play, the use of melodrama was really effective as it gave more energy, pace and dynamism to the play by creating humor and engaging the audience who pay full attention to the actions being shown. I hope that our play work as effective as this play in terms of melodrama, as this genre gives energy and humor to the play as long as it is backed up with exaggerated body expression and voice characterization. 

Reflections:

"Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead."

What this quote is telling us, is that before starting to work on something, we should have clear from the beginning what is it that we want to achieve and accomplish; that is in fact, the key to success. In our case, the answers to these questions are simple and straightforward. Why are we doing this? Because it is obligatory...? Nah, just kidding, besides that, it is because this is something we like and truly enjoy; creating a play is something really difficult and laborious yet really gratifying. What could the results be? We could end up with an amazing play as every year, and let the audience enjoy it; as it is one of the conventions of theatre. We could also, learn more about the task of production that we were assigned for this production, in my case: scenery. Finally, will we be successful? Well, time will answer that, we should keep focused and motivated so the final product is as good and interesting as every year.