Monday, September 3, 2012

Drama 9 Journal: Ensemble, roles, relationships and status. (Week 1 ...

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This week, in our first few drama classes, we learned about roles & relationships, ensemble/improvisation, and status.

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Our first drama class consisted of roles and relationships. We started off with a game of communication. In a group of 2 we had to form the object Mr.Meiklejohn would shout out? without using any form of speech. We tried hand movements, head nods and taking form of part of the object so the partner could finish the rest. This enabled us to gain trust in our partner and get to know the drama group. My partner (Louis) and I were very cooperative and had good use of communication which made us complete the task easily while understanding it?s purpose. The final exercise of the day was to introduce our partner on an online dating website, we exchanged our likes/ dislikes etc. One of the two performer would start by introducing partner 1 while partner 2 would wave to the audience and present their likes/dislikes by using once again anything other than speech e.g actions. We didn?t get a chance to perform because of the lack of time, but the point of the activity was to get to know the performers and, therefore we did not miss out on the assignment.

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Our second drama class consisted of ensemble and improvisation. The meaning of ?Ensemble? in french is ?together? which gave a clear perspective about of our activity would consist of today; working together/engaging. On the other hand we also had to work together while improvising: making up the situation, characters/identity and motivation through the scene. We first chose our partner and worked different improvisations on each one another to test and get a feel of the task. Later we would group the class in circle and randomly choose different partners to perform with in the middle.Partner A would start the, partner B would engage, switch and so on. Although adding the principle of improvisation in made it a little more tricky, it also encouraged our creative thinking, self-confidence and decision making. My partner and I had a great social relationship in working as well as outside of class, there was easy engagement as well as communication and development of the scene. A few Problems I encountered were not revealing the opposite characters identity and also finishing the scene. I think I was to focused into balancing all elements (situation, characters and motivation) through the scene that i was only complicating the ending. When I had to chose the context of the scene, l avoided a complicated ending. In conclusion, a scene can be overall in control if the communication of a situation, character and motivation are clear and effective.

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Our third drama class consisted of understanding status. A status is a social position or rank. In acting it is known as who is in control of the scene. Our first short preparative task was to? partner up, then make a Person A and Person B. Person A would wear the hat; this meant Person A belonged to a higher status while Person B belonged to a lower status. The only way Person B could possess the hat was by having Person A kneel down or lose their social ?strength? (crying, lower self-esteem etc).When practicing the task, most of our practice skits would start with obvious contrast between rich and poor e.g king and servant. Later the skits developed into Mother and child, to 2 of the same type of characters with the same age, sexe but different levels of confidence/attitude. For the final performance we were asked to pick a scene that had multiple change of status. At the end of our final class performance, my partner and I had performed a scene of a dog getting his fleas checked at the veterinary. What I liked in our roles was how even a dog can take status. It can be the least expected that make it so exciting also how discrete and subtle it underlined the meaning of status. It was a clever and indirect methods to achieve the task. What I think I could have improved was taking the hat faster away to claim my status.

A few things I took away from this weeks lesson were?

-Drama lets you explore various ways of communicating ideas in different and creative manner.

-A?successful performance consists of 3 main steps: identifying, communicating, creating.

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Source: http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/16mellinandm/2012/09/01/drama-9-ensemble-roles-relationships-and-status/

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Source: http://stoptbpartners.org/1880/drama-9-journal-ensemble-roles-relationships-and-status-week-1/

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