March 26th

Waking Up

Today, after 2 weeks of doing nothing and progressively forgetting our school lives, our sleeping selves were kindly brought back to reality by a very frank Mr. Mouck who let us know that our Jabberwock performance would be tomorrow. Immediately realizing we needed way more than one more session of practice to perfect the basics of our performance, today's rehearsal was full of frantic and sometimes incomprehensible arguing which resulted... in a wonderful bloom of inspiration and all in all a great plan!!! Overall, we have changed a few things and added some symbolic moments and 'tableauxs' in order to add more in depth meaning (and all that good stuff) to our performance. Since we were still quite unsure to how our performance would start, we decided to use our rather unused setting in a smarter way. Lorenzo and me, two students who have just finished school on a Friday run out of the school (the opening behind the amphitheater) Also, Bukama would narrate form the top of the amphitheater, which would give better and a more transparent attribute to our narrator. Things would then go as planned: Lorenzo would whistle at me, causing his dad to slap him. In order to add more humour to our performance, Lorenzo came up with the brilliant idea of having him get some Coke from a vending machine, but it of course does not work, showing the audience the severity of Lorenzo's bad day. We have also decided to notch up the craziness of Lorenzo's repulsion towards me, so that I scream and as I run away drop my earring. All in all, our rehearsals went well apart from me being unable to stop smiling when Lorenzo gets funny and when Bukama pronounces 'Jabberwock' all scottish. I also realized I needed to make it more obvious that I was dropping my earring and to get more into character, as I need to make bubliness radiate from every angle of me. Tomorrow we shall quickly practice and hopefully do well on this performance.. :S

March 15th

A Start of Improv And An End of Jabberwock

Today's class was kickstarted with a quick improv activity. We were to just throw ourselves in and improv a scene, in order to develop our setting conveying skills. When Andrew threw himself into the ring, I saw an opportunity to modify Andrew's apparent decision to be jumping out of a car into the near death of my child. This would allow the opportunity for more people to join the improv, all the way to Tau and Moki as the cops. Though I was hesitant at first, I realized that the best way to improv is to come in with a predefined idea, especially about the setting, and then everything is fine. If all goes wrong, it is easy to come back to a piece of your original idea or to develop on someone else's idea. After this short session, we spent the rest of the class preparing our plays. We drastically changed everything as something had to be done about Moki's (the father's) weird  motives and our literal setting. With the help of Mr. Mouck, we decided to change the setting to a school, and make all of us students apart form Moki the father and Omar the vorpal sword. Moki would be picking up his son, and catch him whistling at a girl. This is when he would scold him, (and we aren't sure about his part yet) but he would somehow have to confront the girl again. Sine we then realized that the vorpal sword could not kill the girl (as she would just be awkwardly lying there) we decided Lorenzo would scare her off, persuaded by the new conscience. Mr. Mouck then said we could not use props, so we improvised and picked me dropping my earring (imaginary earring) as a substitute to the flower dropping. I remember feeling good after that rehearsal, as things were finally starting to make sense and our play was actually developing. Despite the fact that Sarah will not be performing with us, we have worked out how things will be, and our play is almost ready. Now, time for finishing touches... 

March 13th

Second Real Jabberwock Rehearsal

The second step into an awesome performance (I sure hope!), today went really well. I think our group's communication is effective: no fighting, confusion or hesitation so far! After realizing our characters were very flat, we came up with the awesome idea of a flower that the main jubjub bird (the girl lorenzo will be attracted to) will carry. She will drop it once the vorpal sword (the father's conscience of not falling in love that is passed on to lorenzo) destroys the jubjub bird. Lorenzo will then pick up the flower, a symbol of loving the girl even though he isn't allowed to, and pretend he has 'killed' the jubjub bird to his father, quickly hiding the flower. Though we are still confused as to why Moki refuses the idea of love, the past of our father is slowly being formed: the early death of his wife. We also feel that we do not use our setting effectively, and that we are way too literal so far, and must reinterpret what we actually want our surroundings to be (forest doesn't make sense!) We went through the play a few times and apart form me being unable to contain myself during funny scenes, everything went quite smooth. I will try to imagine that I AM really a jubjub bird in a .. mysterious forest ... (we really need to work on our setting) in order to forget about the audience. All minor and hopefully major issues shalt be fixed next class!

March 12th

WORKING ON BLOGS! :D

March 8th

First Rehearsal

The first real rehearsal of our play, today was a pivotal day in the motive of actually getting something done for our play. Choosing a place for the setting was not too difficult: an interesting hill complete with the  geometric triangle of palm trees (useful for 'Lorenzo's jubjub thinking'), a bench for Moki to 'warn' and a runway for the jubjub entrance! I must confess we did not get very far today, apart from roughly organizing what will happen and were people will be. We did get through our rough idea of the play, complete with Bukama's arm waving at the word mimsy and almost incessant Raushner smiles. I am wondering how I will keep my composure during Omar's extravagant process of killing me, though I did improve by the end of our rehearsal. We are still unsure about a lot of the deets, but so far, we have straightened out the basics.

Creating a Time

Before the rehearsal, we played a short warm up game. Its main concept was to create a feeling of 'time', through a simple acting scene. I realized this could be demonstrated in a number of ways: a time period, a time of the day, a season.. Me and Tau ended up opting for the time period, as cavemen. With 'Ooga oogas', the discovery of fire and plain stupidity (worshipping the fire god then suiciding in the fire), we demonstrated a most probably modified version of our earlier days. I remember feeling as if our interpretation of this time was too stupid and primitive, and almost took back on the exaggeration, but remembered theatre has to be LARGER THAN LIFE! This activity was probably geared towards adding a sense of depth to setting rather than just a place, in order to add that depth to our plays!