Peer-Counseling Activity

This activity was actually very fun even though it started out slightly awkward because no one had anything to say. Not only did it take up class time, we could sit there and talk about whatever it was that we wanted to (sort of). For building up friendships, the ideas started out all proper and expected like respect and trust but gradually evolved into suggestiong like Cue! and some ramen store. I don't think this activity really brought our group together though. I still don't really talk to any of the seniors and they sometimes seems a bit intimidating just because they're seniors and I'm a junior. Maybe it's just a mentality thing for me. This has happened every single year except fifth grade and eighth grade. For things that destroy friendships and prevent people from getting to know each other, I thought that our list seemed a bit cliche since our first words were dishonesty and gossip. Those are lessons we're taught since we learned how to speak. My mom always told me not to lie for as far as I can remember. The situation we were given was a bit hard to come up with a solution to though. I honestly cannot say that I would speak up and get an adult if a kid was being bullied, especially if the people bullying him had the power to make my life miserable. The scenario we were given was also hard because it could not be interpreted as whether the kid was making fists because he was angry or if he was upset. I wouldn't want to accidentally bring an adult in when he was just trying to prevent himself from crying because there had been something going on in his family or something. Life is full of really hard choices.

Folktale/Fable Storytelling

I am one of the performers in our story, "Dancing with the Devil." I play the main character's mom and do the music. I only have about two lines but that's not very important right now. I guess I lack the charismatic voice that is needed to tell the story because I add emotions to sentences that aren't supposed to have that emotion. I don't know. I can't really explain it that well. Anyways, storytelling is quite a lot harder than our school librarian in elementary school had made it seem. (I seem to be discovering that everything drama-related is a lot harder than it looks at first). The balance between dramatizing the story and just speaking it is hard to achieve. Storytelling is an art that takes skill and the ability to keep the audience focused on what you are saying while showing them a bit of what is actually happening. I never thought of it that way before. It used to be that storytelling, for me, was just reciting a story that you had heard from somewhere else before. Storytelling is very strongly connected to the culture of a country or region.

Oedipus: Mask

I didn't know how to scan my mask onto here so I guess I'll just turn it in at the end of the semester, but I needed to blog about something. For my mask, I did the scene where Oedipus stabbed his eyes out because it was the easiest one to interpret. I did my mask like the Phantom of the Opera's, partially because I love that movie and musical but mostly because I thought the Phantom and Oedipus were a bit similiar. The Phantom is tormented by the disfiguration on his face which causes people to judge and prejudice against him while Oedipus is tormented by the fact that he had murdered his father, married his mother, and caused a curse to be placed over his kingdom. My mask is completely black except for the blood dripping from his eyes because black is the color of evil and I guess I think it's evil that he killed his dad and had kids with his mom. I believe that that's a tad bit weird and strange and not right. But maybe that's just me.

Pantomime with Music

This was virtually the same as the first pantomime but it was a bit more complicated because of the music. I originally started by trying to find music that would inspire me into thinking of a storyline for my pantomime, but that didn't work out particularly well. Iris had hiccups during class one day and I thought it was pretty funny so I decided to make that my pantomime. Finding music was a little bit hard because I wanted something that sounded happy and fun but most movie music (which is like some of the only music that doesn't have any words at all) was slower and too tranquil for my pantomime. Eventually, one of my friends found an instrumental of some random song by some random band I've never heard of before that fit really well. However, the beats didn't really go with my movements but I was beyond caring at that point. I still have stagefright performing in front of people so my heartbeat still went into completely-gone-crazy mode when my turn came. This time was a bit better than the first pantomime that we did though, so I'm pretty happy about that. The mood fit my hiccups pantomime even if the beat was off by a lot so I'm very excited. I think this class is helping me overcome my public speaking and selfconsciousness issues bit by bit.

Oedipus: Greek Chorus

The Greeks never cease to amaze me at their level of advancement. They always seem to be a step ahead of everyone else, even many cultures that came a few hundred years after theirs. Even in theatre, they were great. Being in a Greek chorus is a lot harder than it seems like it would be. With the movements, the speeches, and the togetherness, these actors had one of the toughest jobs in the whole play. Although the individual actors had more lines and movements, they didn't need to work around acting as one with a whole mob of other people. I don't think that the Greek chorus was given as much credit as it should receive. Although the tradition began to die out, it was the beginning of Greek theatre. It may not be the most interesting subject in the world (which it's not), but the componenents in it are cool. First, there's music which needed to match with the movements the chorus did. During our performance, it was hard to come up with anything except a simple beat when people were speaking. Either the music (or basically drumming) didn't go along with what was being said or was too distracting. Attempting to find a balance between that was quite difficult. Also, the movements tended to be distracting as well and we would sometimes accidentally run into each other. Eventually, our group just settled for a bit of random posing that couldn't contradict what was being said or required much movement. The people in the original Greek chorus must have had to practice forever on that seeing as how they had almost fifty people sometimes and we only had four but we failed at it. Lastly, the lines were a bit hard to say as well. It was not just because of the langauge either. Talking at the same time as one being was CRAZY. Some words came out all jumbled because separate people said them all at different times or ended up mumbling because we couldn't tell where the other person was. Greek people were way too advanced for that time period and I'm sure that they would fit in great even now.

Oedipus: General

Changing my perspective from reading Oedipus as an English student to a drama student wasn't very hard. That's probably just because I've never been good at English anyways so I can't easily see the things that need to be analyzed and actually mean something else. But it was still pretty exciting. I really like the idea that I can interpret the play MY way and not by what the author had secretly hidden into his writing. The thing about Oedipus and his fate that he wasn't supposed to change and something else were way too like English for me to understand very well. It was a little bit interesting but I think that designing sets are much more fun. Greek theatre is a bit complicated though. And although Socrates's Oedipus was the basis for Aristotle's list about what an ideal play should contain, I didn't think that it was all that great. That might only be because the language was extremely difficult though. I had to reread everything almost three times just to understand SOME of it. Not even all of it. Reading the summary of it really helped though. I love these tragedies where really insanely bad things happen. It wouldn't be that great if it was in real life, but in plays, I think they're some of the best comedies ever (even if they're not meant to be comedies). It's very ironic how his father tries to change his son from killing him and Oedipus leaves his home to be far away from the man he thought was his father but they both still do what they are attempting to stop. Maybe it's just a slightly twisted sense of humor state of mind I'm in right now, but I really love how Oedipus gouges his eyes out. It makes me eyes hurt just thinking about it, but it's very extreme and I can't imagine anyone actually doing that to themselves which makes it almost funny to me.

Pantomime

Pantomime was a completely new experience for me. For some inexplicable reason, I was really nervous going up there. I had worse butterflies than for piano recitals or any other performances. Anyways, pantomime is really hard, the way you need to keep track of all the objects you used, where everything is, and not accidentally walking through something that was supposed to be solid. Mimes make it look so easy the way they can just walk imaginary dogs and trap themselves in a box like it was real. I also finally understood why they wear the clothes they do with the make-up. It just shows how extremely talented they are. They don't incorporate ANYTHING that may tell the audience what they are trying to show but instead they communicate so well through their actions that it seems so obvious. It was pretty cool watching everyone else do their pantomimes, too, because everyone had such different ideas and concepts. I found it extremely difficult to keep track of where my faucet was and I didn't even realize that I just forgot about the towel I was holding. It just disappeared into thin air like I was Luna Lovegood or someone cool like that (I noticed that I make a lot of references to Harry Potter). Not being able to talk when I thought my actions weren't clear enough was hard, too. I felt like no one would understand what I was trying to do. It was pretty awesome how people could tell though.