Theatre journal: Second year production

16 January 2010:

Today, 2 weeks to the show, we had the first rehearsal with all the first and second year and we ran through the whole first act. It was quick, everybody were on time and we finished by time. The first act is around 53 min. After the rehearsal we discuss about what we still have to do and Libby gave some notes to the actors.

I’m having a lot of ideas:
- Built a real fence instead of using the picture.
- Using black umbrella to emphasize the funeral.
- …

24 January 2010:

In this last week I have been finding chairs for the play and painting them with the colors of the LGBT flag. Libby helped me to find the chairs, she bought the colors and she put me in the condition to start working. The work is almost done; I just have to repaint some chiars. It wasn’t a difficult job at all, but for some aspects it was really challenging since I had to work with Laura and Belen. I like working with other people, I don’t think there is a problem on this.

Now everything is fine, we are ready for the show.

This week is going to be a very busy week for me also because I have a lot of staff to do with other subjects but I want to do my best for this show. This is our show. What we still have to do? Work on how to build the fence and start working on the lobby set.

This evening we had the cue to cue. It was good. Now that we are also building the light, the sound and the projection, everything seems better, great. It’s going to get better.

All the work of each single member are becoming a huge and amazing work-

26 Jan 2010:

Today we had our first dress rehearsal. We invited Nazim and his advisor group (Avikali and Julie) to come and see us, since they were going to Race Rocks over the weekend. Generally the rehearsal went well; I missed a part because I wasn’t feeling well and I had to leave since I needed to be alone. Furthermore, my presence was not really necessary, so my absence didn’t cause big problems. After the rehearsal they all took a group picture in which I wasn’t because I didn’t know about it and I came back late to listen to Libby’s note. I then took the personal picture, in a second moment, with Mark (who did a great job)! I also listened to Libby’s note since I stayed in the backstage because I wasn’t feeling well.

27 January 2010:

Jack Matthews Day!

Today we had rehearsal too, but we didn’t go through everything. Everybody was really tired at the end of the day and the end of the week was getting closer. Libby decided to work on some weaknesses of the play and who was not involved was free to go. I used this time to work on what to do in the Lobby.

LOBBY:

- First of all, we will turn off the lobby’s light and set some Christmas light (take them from Samuel).

- I also prepare some staff to put on the lobby: general information about Ethnodrama/theatre, Tectonic Theatre Project, The Laramie Project.

- Emily and Amber are going to find a projector so we can project our pictures and bios in a white sheet surrounded by our printed picture, alone and as a group.

- Working on some other aspects, this is basically what we are going to do.

28 January 2010: Today we had our official dress rehearsal! Not a lot of people came, but still we had spectators.

I don’t want to be too dramatic, but it was a disaster! Apparently, there were some last minute changes on the projections and the changes made the preview day on the lights, sounds and projections, were not updated yet. A lot of crews were late on calling them and sending them. In the boot, there was a moment were Emily lost the control of everything since both people were behaving inappropriately and they were people who shouldn’t have been there and were just creating more confusion.

After the rehearsal, as usual, we all stopped and said our comment. It came out that between all of us, tech crew and actors, there was a lake of concentration and unity. Everybody was thinking about doing their own staff, without considering the atmosphere around them. I personally felt this too and it was such a “miracle” that this came out just the day before the final show.

I’m sure it wasn’t something inevitable, but at least it didn’t happen the day of the show! This is one aspect that makes the show so wonderful the day after.

29 January 2010: The lobby is done!

The way that our entire work came together was amazing. I don’t know exactly what made the show so good, but everything was in harmony; everybody were doing greatly their own job and at the same time looking after each other and making sure that the whole thing was working.

The performances were fantastic, all the crews were good, the set and the tech jobs were great. All the comment we gave each to the others in the past days were put in act. People loved it and everybody interpreted the message we were sending in the right way, in the way we wanted them to archive it.

At the end of the play I cried! I cried because I was happy that it went well, I cried because it was done, I cried because the atmosphere that we create between the theatre students was magic. We all wanted something and we all did our best to make it happen, who more who less, we all did something.

That night I realized that it was crucial for all of us to make a good show. The day before everything sucked and there was a lack of morale; if the show would have went bad, the question would have been: why should I waste energy for something that I’m not sure it would be a success?

I’m happy that it went well because now I’m motivated and in order to feel the same sensation I felt that night, I would give the same energy or even more!

WHAT WENT WELL?

As far as I’m concerned, I had to take care of the set and design. Originally me, Belen and Laura were assigned to this job, but Belen focus specifically on the props, were she did a great job, while me and Laura worked together. We couldn’t split our job, working one person on the set and the other on the backstage because there wasn’t a big job that could have been done in the backstage.

Basically what we had to do was to paint with the LGBT flag colors, all the chairs that would have been used in the stage. Once we find all the materials we needed, a place to paint, we started our job. At first I tried to schedule the time we were going to paint the chairs, but since it was difficult to find a common free time to paint, me and Laura just met randomly and tried to get our work done as soon as possible. I really appreciate her help, also because we saved a lot of time by working together and she was pretty flexible on the fact of not scheduling our time. Sometimes I couldn’t find her in order to work together so I just go ahead with the work, but it was true though that in a way or another, whenever we needed to work together she was available.

Painting the chairs wasn’t all that difficult; of course we had some difficulties by calculating wrongly the time we actually needed to paint the chairs and the time necessary for them to dry. We had to paint again the chairs several time but we solved all the problems we had. It was nice because we were independent in our job and personally, I think it was a good aspect.

By the end of the week before the “hell week” almost all the chairs were dry, so we were kind of done with our main job. In my opinion this was a good aspect for the set team and it s something that we can say it went well.

The day of the show, since I really wanted to realize the idea of the lobby, in collaboration with Emily, we arranged the Lobby. At the end of all, almost everybody helped us by finding the best way to arrange it. I really enjoyed it and finally the lobby design was done.

WHAT WAS CHALENGING?

Even if I really like design I think that everything was challenging because it wasn’t something that I have really experienced before.

First of all I think it was kind of a challenge working in a close contact with Laura. I really like her, there is no problem between us, but I’m really used to work alone or at least with people with either very close to me or with similar ideas with me. I like to be independent and sometime I want so much to realize my ideas that I don’t really work on other people ideas. I mean, me and Laura didn’t really diverged in opinions, but sometimes, since she always agree with me, I felt that I was kind of selfish, carry on with my ideas and kind of excluding her. For sure this wasn’t my aim and later, after the whole play, I had a conversation with her, asking about her opinion on the play and our work; she told me that she enjoyed working with me and she didn’t fell ignored.

Working on the lobby set was not really challenging, but even if I was kind of free for the entire “hell week”, I didn’t come out with an idea or start working on it. At least I’m happy because the last day, Saturday afternoon, I find the time and energy to work on it and I personally think we came out with a great job.

WHAT WOULD I DO DIFFERENTLY?

To be honest, I think the set shouldn’t have been split between two people. It’s true that ours was a “poor” stage and it’s nice to work with other people; but, after all, there were moment that I felt kind of useless because I was done with my job very early and even trying to be involved in the best way in the organization of the play, my presence wasn’t necessary.

I’m aware of the fact that every single person role is important and we all have the freedom to say our comments and get involved but when somebody else already have this role, you feel like you shouldn’t interfere.

After all, it was a good and I feel like I archived a lot from this experience

Bio:

Name: Augusta Itua

Country: Italy

What type of experience do you have with theatre (either through your time at Pearson or more)?
What made you choose to be apart of the theatre program here at Pearson?
What do you want people to know about your characters? *for second years* (If you want you can talk about your favorite character if playing numerous roles)
What is your favorite area of theatre (Stage management, acting, costume design…) and why?
What would you like for this play to achieve?
What would you like the audience to know before seeing this play?

I like theatre; since I was a child I really enjoyed going to watch different plays. In this last year I have been doing theatre at school (especially musical) and since I’m at Pearson I’m really enjoy my theatre class and the program.
As far as I’m concerned I chose to be part of the theatre program here at Pearson because of my past experience with theatre (answer n° 1).

I really like different area of theatre; personally I like acting, at the same time I really enjoy generally working on a play, in order to make it better. In this specific case I’m enjoying my role on doing the set even if, since we don’t have so much work to do on the stage, I don’t have a lot of work and I can’t really do something. This is also a reason why in this play I would like to continue my job with the set by working on the lobby.
For sure I would like us all to do a great job and be satisfied of our job. Also the idea of working in collaboration with the second years, I think is something really challenging. It’s would also want the audience to receive the message of the play.
I think that the audience should be introduced to the play in order to get better and easier the message of the play. Since we are going to use symbolism in the play, it would be nice though to introduce our symbols to the audience.

Theatre journal

martedì 8 febbraio 2011

Second year production

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