Sirenita 1 - Suzuki :P

Random Platypus: Now that my sister is playing her recorder I can't do my super extra massive MATH homework so I'll write on my blog. First I'll like to say that ROBERTINI died...he just POOFed into the air, and now our new teacher is called "DRAMA-TEACHER" becuase he doesn't like to be called robertini. SO from now on everytime you read DT (JAJAJ) ..it means ROberto S.P.


Today, Tuesday 31st, in our drama class we did an awesome exercise, we began by waking up our bodies, first head-neck-face-shoulders-chest-stomach-hips-arms-feet-legs-hands-all body! in the process of the waking up we had to combine movements with any part of the body. I discovered that my movements are more round, sort of a FELINE movements. Then we had to move on stage following a smilar sequence of movements(making a situation), but working in different levels. As you may know my imagination has no limits, and for this case the character that I created was a ver akward-articulated-man called BOB. Bob walked with his column and back arched back, shoulders up, head to the front and with big steps leading the movement. In the sequence, BOB was hungry, then he/it smelled a "strange oudor" that came from the other corner of the stage. He tried to hunt it, and when it reached the object, it dissapeared. When I managed to do the routine several times, the DT remind us to take in count some sound, not words....but the HUMPH that are like...like.. "baby words"...or that help us to continue and extend our movements.

Reflections:
1) I alwasy forget about my breathing!!! although for BOB the breathing came in naturally, it was not enough for my taste. Bob's breathing was fast and every time he jumped/ runned ...he took a very deeep breath....however..when doing the slow movements (speacially in level A) my breathing turns back to Diego's way of breathing.
2)My center of energy! the DT always tell us that our center of energy is the clue for everything. With this speciall exercise I realized that, in fact, it was! every time BOB bended, jumped, slided, walked, He first (+ breathing) contracted his abdomen! which was sort of an impulse for my actions.
3) Levels, working the same sequence but doing it at diferent levels made me realize that the situation changes completely. E.g: When I was almost standing up my perspective and the direction of my eyes...were concentrated on the floor! I analized things from TOP to the BOTTOM. However, near the floor, it was the other way around...my perspective of the things was ...above me. I examined things starting at the lowest part and going up.
4) Awesomness? ...JAJAJ if that word exist .... I don't know why, but..this was the first time I really got into a character that deep!. Everytime BOB was a feline my sense changed...my nose and ears were more useful than my eyes or hands. When i heard something...my ears were the ones who took the lead of the movement. However, in some parts of the sequence...BOB turned into a snakish man, that moved sliding. In those parts...my eyes..seemed differents. It's just TV, but in Animal Planet, everytime they emulate the eyes of a snake they make it sort of distort, as if you were traveling at the speed of light! and it's not a joke...I really felt that my way of looking changed. I saw everyhting as THIS picture.

Overall! I think this was a very cooooool exercise from which I learned alot, and i think is the best exercise (or at least the one that has helped me the most) as a warm up. I'm totally looking forward to do this over and over again! However, the next time I'll try to lead, gradually..., the exercise into a more "ASTOLFIC" BOB, but still going back to the BASIC BOB, if you know what I mean. How would Astolfo feal in the situation of BOB? and How would it move in the levels closest to the floor!?

American Dream - SwitchFoot

AAAAAAH! long time no see! soo many good things had happened so far! As i said in my last blog, we were practicing on which ways to use our column, energy source and breathing. So, one class, Roberto decided NOT to do theory (how wierd right?) and we did this cool exercise to train our imagination, breathing and energy. We had to lie on the floor, and relax....feel the parts of our body touching /not touching the stage. Feel the air comming in and out our body, lungs (breathing) slowly. Then we imagined a ball inside us, by our stomach (our source of energy), my ball was black whith star dust all around it. It looked like sort of galaxy. Anyway, we had to think about it and then we turned into the ball...the ball was the one who set our soul alives. It woke up our body parts and slowly we had to stood up. (This exercise was the most amazing thing we've ever done in drama, it was sooooo cool and wow ..that we decided to use it later on in our play rehearsals). After that we had to walk with out eyes closed, HOW EVER the tricky part was, that the floor was not the floor , it was the side of a building. My building was a windowish, bluish, manhataan builgin. By this we realized that we DO need our center of energy even to walk, because we moved first our "bellys"than our upper part of our body. We also did a little bit of spider man gaming :P and with that we felt a little bit...not much.. secure.

Another important thing that happened is that we were given our ROLES! in the play!!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! I'm Astolfo, btw....he is said to be "the bad one" of the play, he is a moskovian DUQUE :P also I'm encharged of the scenary of the play (with my CAMARADA (L) Sebastian, he is doing props)Also, Valentina, felipe, Rodrigo and Me, we were suposed to lead 20 minutes of a Drama rehearsal, but it went SOOOOOO BAD! we had this main idea that everyone understood, however, we lost communication between us, and Felipe tried to save the situation sort of improvising.....howoever we lost the intention completely. We had groups of people doing nothing, some where laughin...others doing work! However, after the ROBERTO's FAMOUS SHOUT :P....we pulled it together and we made a decent recovery.

Drama Class: we are working on our collumns and we are in the process of this very extreme SUPREME!!! coreography...we are doing fine, we now listen to each other and try to understand the points of view and ideas of the members of our class because everyone has excellent ideas. We started by doing pairs and making 4 movements that had to do with column...then we combined them into a long sequence...we still are in the process of perfection!! but sooon you'll know what happened. Also, the PLIP PLOP game!I0'm not a FAN of this game..we just have to do actions and movements with our column and/or a sound. It's hard because you run out of posutres /sounds!!!! it sucks...however....its good to practice with that we expand our BOOK OF MOVEMENTS POSSIBILITES. We also learned how the mental diagrams are impornatat to understaand or learn a topic.!


Saturday Rehearsal: It went great! even though we didn't do it on purpose, our ensayo had a structure. Valentina opened with the energy ball exercise, rodrigo with the PLiP PLOP game (the column) and Claudia made the Voice exercise (using our diaphragm). Then came..ME!!!! I made this cool exercise with music and changes in the actors environment. Sandrita then finished with some situations to be acted in groups. Later on, Roberto gave personal feed back. he said my idea was great and he liked it. I did ok....the only thing i missed was the trnastion between one song and the other one.The actors sort of lose the concentration waiting for a new song. He recommended toas ask for a still picture to keep the actors with energy. If I fix that mistake, I could re-do my exercise. :) Roberto Congratulated us for a wonderful, most beautiful and fantastic (not really..he said GOOD)...rehearsal.

Plays!!: My PLAY life was feeded last week with 2 plays. The first one was "la santa comedia" in the Satchmo theatre...and teh other one was "el ultimo ensayo" by yuyachkani. La santa comedia ..was a play which didn't follow a story line..its main intention was to entertain the audience by jokes, interacting with them (they picked my dad to go on stage T.T) and funny actiones. On the other hand, El ultimo ensayo was more of a "PLAY" even though it was not a conventional play....I saw it more of a formal one. Watching both plays (speacially in yuyachkani) I realized that even though you carachter is not important in that scene but you are on stage YOU HAVE TO STAY AS YOUR CHARACTER!!! and the voice is also very important! i could hear 20 minutes before the play started , the voices of the actores /actrices warming up! it was cool! because i though that only choirs did that.


To conclude, I will like to know how this will help to develop my character in the play ..."ASTOLFO".. how is his column going to be (straight? curved? humped? is he going to walk normal ...or was he damaged in was in one leg?)...how is he going to speak? (low? high? slow? fast? with respect?) how does he interact and responds to the changes in the play? (sarcastically? he cares? he doesn't care?!)..I hope with time I will found all about it!.

SHUT UP and drive - Rihanna

So basically, I stopped writing because...well I'll let you know in a minute. This is what happened so far:
- Sabrinator se fueeeee!!!!!!! (yup, she changed to geography...and left us as an ODD class (7 peeps).
- Roberto ask me to write less (that's the why I didn't write a word for a long time) just to write what is most important
-My T-shirt broke as well as my pants the other day ...(the random platypus of the day).

So! ... Today, (17th) was the first Play stay-after-class thingy, and the worst thing is that we are not getting any CAS points for the play. Anyway, the past classes, they were more of a theorical classes...and very interesting .Roberto told us about the Culture (the way in which a comunity or group of people think and live), then we talked about how the actors train. (body + imagination). about the differences between warm up, training, rehearsal and performance.We also talked about the principles (opposition, simplification and desequilibrium Precarious) and also about the importance of breathing, the center of energy and the column in the movement and acting. And all of what we learned in class, today afternoon , we put it into practice. We played the HA HONDOM what ever game as a warm up! to warm our voice and to start up our energy. I realized (while writing this) that ...all the breathing, center of energy and column...we also did it! in the game "GROUPS OF!... with only ...". So!..I think Drama is turning into a more fun, interactive and great course!! For the play of the year, do the characters defer to much from each other in the aspect of breathing, center of energy and column?

Decode - Paramore

Bonjour a tous! today, (Tuesday 10th) we continued the THEME of SIGNS. So as I said before, signs are something that represents something else for someone. In a play, we need to take care about the material signs that are shown to the public on stage. We use a code to interpret the meaning of a sign. A text is a group of signs. So we interpret a sign, but understand a text. We use a convention to understand the sense of a text and so, the conventions are fixed. In fact, the ultimate sense of a text is percieved by the audience or reciever. As artist or actors, our job is to give different possibilites for the audience/ reader to give a sense to a text presented. Finally, we looked at the three types of signs. The first one is called Iconic (icons) which are similar or resembles the "something"; then we have the Symbolic (symbols), they have an arbitrary relation with the "something"; and finally the indexal (index) which suggest the idea of a something (for example a bad-smell suggest that the "something" is dirty...felipe! bañate oe!(you will get that later))

When we finished the sign stuff, we moved on to .. dun dun dun... THE HOMEWORK. Remember that the last class we presented our objects? well now... we have to present ourselves to the class (for the 4th time I KNOW!) so we had the last 20 minutes of our class to plan it. At the end, we all shared with everyone what were our difficulties of this exercise and how do we felt about it. As a result, we all agreed that it was difficul to link all the object in order to present the person that you are now. In my case, I think today ....Diego = Childish so .. my theatrical performance (the fancy name given when people attend or there is an audience present) will be ******** I cannot tell you!!! you'll have to read thursday's post to know :P sorry

Ah! I almost forgot! there are 2 things that were f******g awesome! the first one is the QUOTE oF THE DAY AWARD, and today it goes to miss Sandra Morales- Macediales! and she said "robertito, sabias que (felipe) se va a bañar en el colegio porque no tiene agua en su casa?" out of nowhere, I know...but is was funny, and he knows we love him! evern robertini laughed, and the other thing is *WARNING* that felipe farted :P loud ... and as you may know... when someone farts... I laugh ..until I cry... so It was funny!!! I hope you learned about signs and texts today!!! Can we manage to master the SIGNS before the school play of this year?

House of the Rising Sun - Muse

***** THE RANDOM PLATYPUS *****
Today's random platypus goes to Anna Vieira (or Andrade...I'm not sure anymore) who has been admitted to University of Toronto !!! this is what happened: "this morning...i was doing notting so i was like..wat the heell let me check my status ,even though i know nothing weill appear and then out of nowhere it appears ADMITTED and i was like YAY" can't you feel her excitement? another YAY for Anna!!! CONGRATZ! and remember the U SAY pact! :P

****** THE RANDOM PLATYPUS *****

Today, (monday 9th) we talked about our Drama Trip to Paucartambo! :O!!!!!! can't wait!!! Also we shared our favourite: objects, smell, pictures, chlothes and songs to the class. It was pretty cool...however we found out that we all chose an object because the thing or a something it reminded us, for example, Sebastian an his song "somewhere over the rainbow" reminded him of his dad, sandra and her stuff dog reminded her of her grandfather! At the end ..roberto started talking about the Signs. What are signs? they are something (sign) that represents something else (object) for someone (subject). Every thing can be a sign and it depends on a social convention. The language for example, is a sign. And ... as usual, this related to theatre because: in the stage, if you want people (audience) to understand the message you want them to get, we need a sort of signs, and in an actor case its ACTIONS that are the signs. We need to understand the value of sings, that they sometimes are further than material, however in the ART department they have to be concrete to be understood, (this is where my post title make sense) if we want to let people understand a "SUN RISING" we can't just simply raise our arms and pretend that they got it. The things need to appeal to senses!!! senses are very important ...people!!!! Tomorrow I have to perform! and present myself!!!!!!!!! I'm planning what to do! I hope I don't mess up !!! wish me good luck! and good bye! will the signs help me in the future?!

Losing my religion - R.E.M

***** The Random Platypus *****

Oli everyone! so today's Random Platypus is dedicated to a very special person, and you may wonder..why to mention her in this blog,...well what you didn't know is that actually, we were not suposed to be eight students but nine in our drama class. Actually we ARE 9, even though..our 9th one is miles apart.She is Cecilia Gonzalez, (an exnewtonian) who has been in the DC (drama club) as long as everyone else. She started her acting career with the school play OLIVER! however she also made an excellent performance in el rabdomante, over the wall, macbeth on the loose, the duck variations, las troyanas and kenneth's first play.Ceci (sexylia, gonshalesh etc..) is now living in Chile, but she will be a member of our drama class for ever

***** The Random Platypus *****
In todays class (6th) we started by talking and discussing our Homework. We had to read THE HOLY THEATRE and we had to think about 2 questions. My questions were: What is so bad about silence? and Is Religion an act, just pretending? or people take it seriously? We never actually answered my second question , so I think is a good theme to talk about. When I looked up for RELIGION DEFINITION on the internet, the following came up: The English word "religion" is derived from the Middle English "religioun" which came from the Old French "religion." It may have been originally derived from the Latin word "religo" which means "good faith," "ritual," and other similar meanings. Or it may have come from the Latin "religãre" which means "to tie fast." Which is mainly ...a good definition, however I also found out the struggle for the perfect definition! I found ESSAYS of about 40000 words about it. For me, religion is not an act, is trully believing in something you believe (duh) but ...without hessitating OJO! that i'm not only talking about the catholic religion, i'm talking for any religion in general (even the personal ones)and for that thing you believe in, some rituals might be part of it or are needed to reach (TIE FAST) and get to the point you want to reach. Nowadays, society forgets the true spiritual rituals and their true meaning, so they turn them into a rutine more than an emotional ritual. Just acts they do for no reason at all, and sometimes they don't even do it.

Moving on, another very important question we left for a personal development was what happens when actors act ,are they in total control of their body or they are possessed by the character they are pretending to be. By reading several web pages such as http://www.epicplayers.com/acting I realized that characters should be found and not made, each character has a goal in life (as people do) and so, in my opinion i think in order to act as another person is better to have total control of your body and mind in order the create the best possible "COPY" of a character. Roberto also mentioned something about actors are possessed by their character, and for a matter of fact... it reminded me of Heath Ledger, he looked possessed by the Joker sooo bad that he convinced everyone that he WAS the joker (winning an Oscar :D). So maybe ... the two extremes are good, However finding a middle point will be interesting. Roberto suggested the following readings "The Empty Space" and "The Open Door" by Peter Brook, and Equus. I looking forward to maybe read about them.

The last thing I would like to say is ... about the QUOTE of the DAY!... I give the QUOTE of THe DAY award to Miss Valentina Vela, she said "CASI... NO ES SUFICIENTE, FELIPE" and maaaan that hit me like a rock. all of the CASI things i made came inmediately to my mind, and made me think about all the things I couldve done better, but didn't just "because". SO... I promise I'll do my very best from now one. .... I don't know with what question to end today! so let's preted I did... and ..uhm keep reading peeps! see ya soon!

A little less conversation - Elvis vs. jxl

***** THE RANDOM PLATYPUS *****

Buenas Tardes! so this is the deal, "THE RANDOM PLATYPUS" is the new section of this blog which ...is completely random. It is actually a part of my blog where I will be telling you short stuff, not necessarily about drama class or maybe explain something odd! for example, Today's Random Platypus has the intention to explain why my SO RARE POST TITLES. Well actually, I decided that the titles are going to be songs that are linked to what have happened or just the song I listen to, when i'm posting!

***** THE RANDOM PLATYPUS *****

Today (thursday 5th), robertini was begging for a little less conversation!!! we talk too much hehe. We started today's class by saying our Birthdays!!! (to know each other more) then... we were asked to re-order the class as we wanted. So we, the "EXTREME MAKE OVER-Drama EDITION" team started thinking, and we concluded that the main idea was "let's make it a sort of amphitheatre" but then we started changing some little details. At the end, we made a sort of Cheap Stage, with a backstage (but the doors were not able to be open), a stage with some props (really extra chairs) and audience seats (in a rectangular shape). It was a mess. When we were asked to explain what we've done... we just started to make some random excuses for the position of the things. The good thing about this exercise, is that we learned how to work as a team, listen to each other, and try to understand different points of view, which might become in handy in the future, at work or even at school projects. We, later on...found out our mistakes (light, distraction, eyecatching? secure?). Robertini said that for something to work we need to think of the action we are doing, how are we doing it and why! sometimes the reason comes after we made a move.

Our last activity of the day was, using only 4 chairs, 2 cubes and 1 bench ...to make a sculpture. We named our's "TEA TIME FUNERAL" and I think robertini liked it!! ..It was awesome! with this, we learned that each thing has its purpose of being there, and also that in a stage, boxes are boxes but can be used as many things. E.g: our cubes were supposed to represent a table and a coffin, and just by saying the name of our masterpiece :P valentina said it was a coffin (but actually...they were cubes). And that's about it! I wonder..how fun will it be to make a sculpture with people (not with chairs)???

It's a new sensation - INXS

Hellou People!

While listening to "American Dream-Switchfoot" I'm going to tell you what has happened so far. So this Monday (the 2nd) we had our first Drama Class of the year. While walking to the room, passing the gigantic palmtrees and the art department, I felt so excited! It has been around 4 years since my last drama class and it felt nostalgic x 100. I felt like if i had been in a looooong vacation! and finally could return home. "SHOES OFF PLEASE, SHOES AND SOCKS" uuuuurrrggghhh!! I missed that sooo much! In our class we are only 8 students, 4 boys and 4 girls! (Vale, Felipe (a.k.a. Elfo), Sebastian, Sandra (or Sandri), Rodrigo, Claudia, Sabrina and me). we are very close together, and for close i mean CLOOOOOSE, soo close that sometimes our teacher (ROBERTO! (L))gets mad because we just can’t shut up. Robertini started to talk about out THEATRE ARTS IB syllabus, and GEEEEZ is tedious! (research, essays of 2500 words, independent project, performances and other stuff) He also mentioned that the play for this year is going to be "LA VIDA ES SUEÑO" by Pedro Calderon de la Barca (June 18,19 &20! 7:00 pm! come and watch it!!) so.. that's about it, our first day.

On Tuesday (3rd) we had our second class of the year! and since the first one we just talked, we had the chance to know each other a little bit more with a game that i like to call "4 facts, 2 people, 1 lie" in our second class. My partner was Sandri! so we had to present each other saying 3 facts which nobody knew about, and one lie...we screwed it up! she said i had green contact lenses..(which obviously don't) ..I have light brown eyes...so the lie was spotted easily. HAHAHAHAH it was f****ng funny anyway! we had a blast! What we were all waiting for is to know about Sabrina, because she is a new kiddo at school, she is cool tho... Enough of fun! because Robertini decided to give us some homework! we had to read some sheets and write questions! ..not that bad. Will homeworks will be as easy all the year?!

Welcome to the Jungle - Guns n' Roses

BIENVENUE!!! BIENVENIDOS!! MARHABAN! HUAN YIN! BENVENUTI! and WELCOME to my cyber diary.

This is a psychedelic point of view of my IB THEATRE ARTS course, where you will find out how I struggle with this colorful, emotional but extraordinary world otherwise known as Drama Class. I’ll post in this blog: homework assignments, researches, updates about theatre at school and in Lima, how I feel about this class and what did I learned each time!

BTW: feel free to comment 24/7