Collaborative project
Work in progress
In this last week, our group has looked at different suggested agreements for the devising process. Such agreements usually relate to how we are going to communicate with each other productively and professionally while also trying not to hurt anyone's feelings. We also wanted to create specific agreements that would help us in the devising process regarding how we choose to develop material and how we want to share our ideas. We developed a list of five agreements which include:
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I was able to find an article about the devising theatre company The Krane's most recent piece titled Underground. What's rather fascinating is that the piece itself isn't describing the piece itself, but rather the process. Vanessa Garcia who's a member of The Krane describes that the devising process itself for the entirety of the team is like "living in a kind of metaphoric underground bunker of ideas wherein what we are doing, in essence, is building a ladder to the surface of the contemporary stage." What's at the top of the ladder is meant to be the end result of their devising process leading the company to the audience.
Vanessa describes how their devising process occurs similarly to how most would, starting with lots of different improvisations and collaborations that somehow forms into a script of sorts that gets changed and developed after each devising session. Vanessa explains that the starting point for the piece was the questions "What does it mean to make art in the twenty-first century? Where does art incubate today? Is there an 'underground' anymore, or is it—for good or bad—all “surface?” What is surface? What is underground?" along with the novel A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan. Vanessa explains how a majority of the ideas the the piece is based off of and along with how the relate the surface to the ground comes from the second of the chapter. This chapter defines many different forms of surfaces whether it's the surface of a painting, the surface of a sculpture, the surface of the ground, or the surface of a story or idea. The 'underground' is that next level under the surface that allows for more depth both physically and mentally.Vanessa explains how one of the hardest things to do that one of the character's from the novel is capable of is the ability to go beyond the surface to the underground but is also capable of releasing himself and coming back to the surface. Vanessa believes that that the devising they are doing isn't to ultimately create an end result but rather to study the process in doing so. Vanessa describes the process as "a form that incubates and lives most of its life underground—often the process of creation extending for much longer periods of time than the life of the performance. It lives underground and then surfaces, and, as it surfaces, it reinstates the underground." I'm a young girl who has constantly had a hard time figuring out who she is and where she belongs. I never faced any extreme form of bullying and come from middle-class family with siblings that I never fought with. I remember always thinking that my friends lives were always much more exciting. I'm the baby of the family and in my single digit years I always followed my older siblings in whatever they were doing at the time and for a long time I didn't really have any of my own opinions.
For most of my youth, I was raised in the rather competitive north-east. It always seemed liked everyone blended together and there was no individuality. I moved to the pacific north west before my eighth grade year and it seemed like everything slowed down a whole lot. I was no longer clumped together with everyone else and stood as my own person. I was fortunate enough to be put into private school for my education. I'm grateful for the small class sizes because as I got older, I learned to speak my mind in class and was even praised for it. I've grown up in a time where technology was also readily accessible and never had to question it. When I started developing my own taste in music that wasn't whatever my sisters were listening to, I learned to appreciate small artists and their passion for what they do and is something I've always wanted to replicate in my own life, whether it's with music, theatre, or even something that's not in the arts. I was raised as a Quaker in my primary years, which encompassed the belief that there is one light and that light exists within everyone. I always appreciated it as my first religion because it was never forced and was open to questioning. It allowed for me to develop my own personal beliefs and spirituality. I've participated in many after school plays before. They typically follow a similar format in how we go about creating that piece of theatre. Usually the director has a specific vision that they start out with and as the rehearsal process goes along, that vision might change based on how the actors are working. The starting pint is the script usually and we always read through the script initially and describe our reactions to the play itself. We then, as a cast, try to come up with a purpose statement that usually starts with "The reason we are doing this play..." mainly because it helps convey our overall message to the audience, but it also aids the cast itself, whether it's the actors or the tech crew, trying to find some semblance of focus and meaning. One of the exercises that's not uncommon for us to use to help us actors establish our characters is call 'hot-seat'. This exercise consists of each actor being interviewed about themselves as their character, to help them develop and become that character even more.
What's also fascinating to me is how I've been able to identify the different artistic approaches that I've taken when it comes to the lab I executed for my Biology IA. I based my experiment off of one that I had researched from a long time ago and had an initial test run that ultimately failed. I had to try manipulating different elements and variables in the environment that my experiment took place in. I put a strenuous amount of effort into that project using up all of my class time and coming everyday during my study hall to either check and record my results or to completely restart the experiment. I had to look at other research that scientists had done on the different ideas I was experimenting with to understand not only what normally happens in these instances, but understand what happens when those different variables are changed. Even though I ultimately was incapable of proving my hypothesis, I still showed a tremendous amount of effort and passion in what I was trying to prove and what I was trying to study and observe. |
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