Musicals! -Drama

 Starting off the second term in drama we are looking into musicals, musicals can be defined as a live performance or a film that has singing or vocal aspects along with dance or choreographed movements. There are 5 different types of musicals, Book Musicals, Revue Musicals, Jukebox Musicals, Film Musicals, Concept Musicals, and Pop/Rock Musicals. 

Masky Mask Mask

 

BASEL MASKS -

These are the masks that we were lucky enough to be able to use during our class. 

What are basel Masks?

Basel Painted a traditional white, the Basel masks are made of light, long-lasting neoprene. Developed as theatrical tools by legendary mask and movement innovator, Jacques Lecoq, Basel, and Larval Masks are excellent for teaching theatrical projection and timing.

COMMADIA MASKS - 

What are Commedia masks? 

Commedia dell'arte masks are one of the most integral aspects of each stock character. Each mask design is paired with a specific character based on its appearance and tradition. Masks were originally all made of leather, but now more commonly made of neoprene.

GREEK MASKS - 

What are Greek Masks? 

The masks were most likely made out of lightweight, organic materials like stiffened linen, leather, wood, or cork, with the wig consisting of human or animal hair. ... Greek mask-maker, Thanos Vovolis, suggests that the mask serves as a resonator for the head, thus enhancing vocal acoustics and altering its quality.

MASQUERADE MASKS - 

What are masquerade masks?

Masquerade masks had many uses including hiding one's identity and using a different color to express one's freedom of speech and voice one's emotions and opinions without judgment. There were two types of base masquerade masks; black masks and white masks.

Making Our own masks! 

It sounds pretty simple but this activity took more time than the performance. I and my group were focusing our masks off of the emotions happy, sad, angry, and scared. My mask was based on happy which I thought was the hardest one to do as I couldn't use the paper template as it already had a blank face carved out, and that wouldn't do so I cut my own out of cardboard and made different eyes and mouth. This was a very good decision as I thought my mask turned out excellent! To finish it all off I added some details like freckles and outlines everything in yellow to make it look happier! 

Creating a performance! 

This in my opinion was the best part! and my group gathered backstage and decided on an uplifting song and what better music than carnival music! After we all agreed on a song (it took a lot longer than it should have) we choose our setting but in the end, it didn't really show the setting but that didn't matter because it was more focused on our performance and how we held our bodies to show the emotions that we were trying to present. Over I think my group did well but could have been better if we had more time, so it was a really really short performance but it was still really really fun! 

Making My Own Melodrama Character!

 Introducing..... Priscilla the Poor!!! 

Full name- Pricilla Eveningtide 

Parents - Mother (Deceased) Maria Eveningtide  Father, Harold Eveningtide 

Siblings - older sister, Babra Eveningtide 

Age - 15

Gender- Female 

Backstory - 

She and her sister grew up alone as their father was a useless drunk and never came home. They were only 7 and 5 and they were on the streets fending for each other. As bad is it was it got worse for Priscilla when their father came home after 2years of the kids not seeing them, he had run out of money and now that Priscilla's older sister Babra Eveningtide had turned 13 he sold her, took the money, and ran. Priscilla was left on her own. It's said that the two sisters grew distant for awhile the only thing keeping them together was their hate for the world. After Priscilla had spent her whole life growing up with her older, she became her role model. And it was no surprise that when their older sister turned evil, Pricilla followed in her footsteps. 

Occupation - 

Pricilla is undercover as a maid working for the hero of the story but is a spy for the villain who is her older sister (But its a secret so no one knows that they are siblings)

Skills - 

She is very intelligent, good under pressure, calm and collected, And an AMAZING liar. She also has a big influence on the hero as the hero doesn't know what he's doing. 

Weaknesses - 

She has a growing fear of her father, specifically her father trying to sell her.

Best friend - 

Scarlet Evergreen, Also works for the villain but is a bit thick and is usually drinking. 

Interests - Making the villain (her older sister) proud, Making the world pay for the way they treated her and her sister when she was young. 

Melodramatic Acting Style

The Melodramatic Acting Style

Remember in Victorian Melodrama, all emotion is externalized. There is no such thing as inner psychological depth!

Generally, this means “Over the Top” in every way. Here are some techniques which help create this effect

• Slower, clearer delivery of lines with huge projection. Remember Victorian Theatres were huge and there were no microphones. 

• Play everything to the audience, even if you are supposed to be talking to another character on stage! 

• Indicate whom you are talking to by looking sideways at them and holding your hand out towards. 

• Address the audience directly whenever the script will allow you to do so. 

• The Pose: Invent poses of shock, horror, love, evil, intent, cruelty, desire, dilemma, forgiveness, begging forgiveness, etc. A pose should last at least three seconds and should be clearly visible from fifty meters. 

• The working yourself up to the pose: lasts two to three seconds --let's see you get there! 

• The Gasp - very loud expressing a range of emotions. Often accompanied by a pose. 

• The Swoon - often preceded by lines such as "Alas! I can hardly bear it." The swoon should be graceful and provision should be made for someone to catch you. 

• The long walk downstage/upstage/across the stage when hatching a plan or in a dilemma. 

• The Pacing- to and fro across the stage when hatching a plan or in a dilemma. Move before you speak so that the audience can track who is speaking. 

• The Tableau (freeze frame)- the still picture made up of a number of characters to freeze the moment, eg: The Happy Ending/ The Secret Lovers. The tableaux should be very explicit. 

• The Sigh/The Groan/The Tubercular Cough 

• First Entrances are important - may even bow, this is related to the cult of “The Actor” – the Star system. 

What is Melodrama?

In drama, we are focusing on Melodrama! The question we have to answer is "What is victorian melodrama?" Melodramas are victorian dramas where music is added to an action to exaggerate the emotion during the scene. Melodramas feature stock characters which are usually, the villain, hero, heroine, sidekick, and overbearing parent. The Melodramatic acting style includes Slow, clear delivery of lines with a huge projection as victorian theatres were huge and there were no microphones. The acting style also consists of the actors always playing to the audience even if they are supposed to be talking to one another. With melodrama comes huge dramatic gestures one of the most commonly known ones being the "gasp" and the "Swoon" The gasp should be very loud, expressing a range of emotions and often accompanied by a pose. Whereas the swoon is often preceded by the lines such as "Alas! I can hardly bear it." The swoon should be graceful and there should probably be someone ready to catch you!  

                

Teenage Stories

For this week's two lessons of drama, we have created a performance portraying a story about a teenage issue, that presents a message throughout the performance. Our story was about a teenage girl who wants to follow her dreams and become a photographer whereas her mother wants her to be perfect, therefore forcing her to do writing and studying. Our message that we wanted to get across was to put trust into teenagers and let them follow their dreams. Here is the video of our performance!

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Prop Stories!

This week in drama we looked at what props were, for the activity each member of our group selected a prop then created a story that would justify each prop. Our first prop that was selected was a giant syringe, afterward, we carefully selected a prop that went with a scary doctor's theme so that we could create a horror story which I thought was really fun as I have never performed a horror story! 

So what are props? Props are objects that are used on stage or screen by actors during a performance. A prop is considered anything on set that is moveable/portable, yet distinct from actors, sets, costumes, and electrical equipment. 

Prop Weapons - 

A prop weapon is a prop such as a gun or a sword that looks realistic and functional but lacks the intentional harmfulness the real weapon has.  

Hero Prop - 

Hero props are more detailed and are intentionally made for close up inspection from the camera or the audience. 

Stunt prop - 

Stunt props like rubber bladed swords are used in film and stage performances to minimize injury to the stuntmen who use the stunt props. 

THEATER ETIQUETTE - 

PROP MAKERS! 

 

Silent Movies & Time

Today in drama we created and performed a silent movie where you act usually over the top without dialog.

 The movie was set in a wild west bar with rowan the bartender and >>>> the piano player in the corner. We had boxes as the bar with flowers and metal cups along with guns as our props. For our costumes, we wore a cowboy hat, wigs, and beards because why not!

  The scene starts off with the bartender (Ella) serving drinks and the piano player (Tamsyn) playing classical music. In stumbles, the drunk gold miner (Damien) and orders a drink, chug it then order another while the sheriff (Emily) walks in and greets the bartender with flowers. After the sheriff orders, a drink the outlaw (Me) Stomps into the bar and rushes over to the sheriff and starts up a fight. The sheriff draws their weapon and shoots the outlaw, while the outlaw falls they pull out their gun and shoot the sheriff. ENDD!

This was really fun to make because it focuses on acting instead of dialog. This movie that we made shows a lot of emotion such as, Betrayal, anger, affection, and confusion. All of the actors who did this activity were really excited to perform and it was so much fun to "shoot" your friends!

During the performance, we used the element of TIME. We had a person from the audience call out an activity to do with time. For example, the audience member can say, Slowmotion, Fast forward, Rewind and FREEZE! One of the scenes I had to storm in angrily and stomp over to Emily the sheriff then had to rewind back off the stage. This was really hard sometimes especially when the member of the audience tells you to rewind when you have just died and killed someone.

Here are some examples of silent movies by Rowan Atkinson

How To Make a Sandwich!

Telling a story with dance

Today in drama we had to tell a story using a dance from tik tok.  After choosing our dance we turned it into a story about a girl who is going on a date with a guy but the guy shows up late and they end up getting into a fight while on the date. During the performance, we used each of the dance moves from tik tok as our fighting moves. We started off with choosing a song that we thought was appropriate and had cool dance moves to it, afterward we took inspiration from the moves to create the story, while also including the dance moves into the performance smoothly yet noticeable.
The hardest part of this lesson was trying to find an appropriate song with useable dance moves and creating a story for them in the time we had. This was really fun, even though I'm not the biggest fan of tik tok, learning the dances and creating a story was a refreshing change to what we usually do.

Dance in Musicals!

Dance in musicals! I adore musicals to death and today I got to write about dance from two of my favorite, Grease and Hairspray. Our task was to choose a dance from grease then choose a dance from a musical of choice, the reason I choose hairspray was because grease and hairspray are both set in high school and a dance show is featured in both of the musicals (hairspray- Is about a dance tv show called hairspray), (Grease- has the filmed dance competition scene).

(click on the photos for links to the dances)

This dance has two parts a hand jive, and rock and roll dances and tricks. The hand jive is a type of dance that is mostly used with rhythm and blues from the 1950s. A hand jive involves complicated patterns of hand movements, claps, and/or imitating percussion instruments. Think of it as a very extreme groovy version of pat-a-cake! The story behind this dance begins with everyone wanting to be in the spotlight of the camera whereas sandy prefers to stay away for the spotlight wich gives a more goody two shoes look, then Danny decides to follow sandy which gives up his "gang" attitude. During the lineup dance it shows how much Danny cares about sandy as he makes sure that they are together. During the dance competition, Sandy gets dragged away from Danny, yet Danny decides to stay on the dance floor with cha-cha which creates conflict between Danny and sandy.

Drama Gender roles in musicals!

Today in drama we watched grease and that got us thinking about gender roles in musicals compared to recent musicals like mean girls. In grease, the boys are expected to be tough, race cars, and smoke like in the scene where sandy and Danny meet at high school. Danny is pressured by the members of his gang, The T birds to act tough and careless. Whereas girls are expected to be Polite, gentle, and wear dresses.  In mean girls, the idea of LGBTQ+ is more accepted, as two of the main characters are gay. Boys are free to be who they want to be, and girls are free to have their own fashion and personality.

Theatre!!

Today in drama I read a book about stage makeup by Cathy west! The book told me about tips and tricks about stage makeup, like lighting tricks, color, and details. The book had two main sections, stage makeup, and film makeup. In the book, it told us about the differences in stage and film makeup, for example, stage makeup has to be suitable for indoors and outdoors. Whereas film makeup has to be suitable for closeups and longshot making it easy to spot mistakes in makeup, therefor film makeup has to be perfect. The reason we were reading books is because we wanted to gain knowledge of skills and careers that we would be interested in. The most important thing on stage is energy if you don't have the energy you won't get the part you want or the character you portray will not give the effect that it is supposed too, therefore ruining the energy of the performance.