Chosen theatrical style: Expressionism Physical Theatre!
Required readings: Any plays of Sarah Kane.
But yes, I've read almost all of them:
- Blasted, Crave, Phaedra's Love, and half of Cleansed.
What I've found in this series of plays are just basically, filled with sadistic sexual harassing scenes and... Her plays revolves around with humans cravings and self-centeredness. It presents countless scenes of torture, sexual harassment's, rapes, masturbation's, etc. Although these plays depicts reality, and portrays the lack of one's emotional, mental, and spiritual growth in the modern age, to fully adapt any of these plays would be very much a disaster. We've decided the on the group's first meeting after completed our first round of required readings, to eliminate Sarah Kane from our referal list.
According to WIKI (the most trusted source by many),
Expressionist theatre is theatre with expressionistic goals in mind. As opposed to having the primary aim of creating theatre to educate (like Brecht), to entertain (like Commedia dell'arte), or to be realistic (like Stanislavski); expressionistic theatre's main aim is to express emotion.Expressionistic theatre is different from realism - actors will behave how most people wouldn't in real life, their physical and vocal qualities exaggerating their emotions; sets designs will be exaggerated to emphasise the tone of the setting, etc.
Inspired by the literal and figurative meaning of "A Doll's House", we aim to present a physical expression that represent a child's life under the control of a totalitarian father with relations to her surroundings.
Our DV is "We're all connected; One person's actions influences another."
Characters influcences one another. A puppet manipulating another. One puppet higher of a higher status than the other. Well, our piece mainly played with the theme of "Chain Reactions", where one element influences the next; one character controls and affect the other characters' movements and reactions. We took this interpretation rather literally and used strings. Tying strings onto each other as we move throughout the space. My only concern is, can it work?! There may be changes, I don't know. I'm not experienced in this field of movements too so I'll most probably just go with the flow and see how things turn out.
The group chose movements and multi-media to fully portray this plot.
Well, according to Ruishan's (the movements choreographer.);
"We decided on a movement and multimedia piece. Wanted to present a physical piece with a child living in a pressurizing environment, trying to find her identity"
Given movements, the next best thing that would go together with it would be the use of multi-media to enhance the movements made. We are venturing into the lights, sounds, and other projections (videos projected using projectors). Currently, we're still at the initial stage of production. I'll continue to work on the multi-media as the movements slowly get fixed; no movements, no idea what spaces' used, no idea what's the set, no idea what to light up / project. The first draft of the videos & soundtracks are posted below. Videos will too, be used to bring out any change in situations, scenes, or changes in characters.
MUSIQUE!
Animes made use of soundtracks to enhance dramatic sequences. Hence, the effects used in a typical anime soundtrack are highly exaggerated; like that of an expressionistic theatre. The instrumentation of a typical anime soundtrack is also really large. Musicians were able to play around with these huge instrumentation to create different effects that an anime would require. From this, I can derive the suspense that I want to create in the play just by sourcing and arranging different anime soundtracks together.
I've made use of leitmotif to ease audiences' problem of identifying characters, symptoms, or a certain recurring situations. In this case, I've arranged the tracks in such a way that every time Sally's bipolar disorder starts, the track, Vampire Knight Guilty - Suna no Oshiro (off-vocal), will be played.
Animes that I've looked into (not in order of frequencies used)
- Vampire Knight, Clannad, D. Gray-man Original, and Tsubasa Chronicles.
This is the completed draft for the multi-media aspect of it for the first scene.
Yeapp!!
Download to listen. =)
Scene 2 to 5 soundtracks.
Scene 2 and 3._0002.wma
Scene 4_0002.wma
Scene 5_0001.wma
This is the completed version of scene 6, draft one.
Okay, so much for the multimedia aspect of it...
My CHARACTER!!
From Group's Blog.
"Friend #1:
Timmy, 9. I’m Jamie’s schoolmate. We met during recess. I spend a lot of time with her. Her father doesn’t seem to like it, and I don’t know why. I’m scared of him. I’m very sad that I don’t get to hang out with her. She hangs out with her other friends now, but it’s not the same. Her daddy will start saying mean thing to me when I see him, then he will take her away to play with Ben. I met Ben before, when Ben was with all of his friends asking help for homework. I don’t like it that Jamie gets to spend more time with Ben. I’m an only child, so I spend a lot of time with her. Sally? She’s the weird girl who laughs and cries simultaneously. I think she’s sick, or crazy. I’ve seen her with Jamie before. I don’t know what bipolar is. Jamie tells me her family tortures her, is that true?"
YES IT IS TRUE AND I INSISTED ON THAT.
Okay that's how my character goes.
But I still doubt that character analysis is that important for a movement piece. Well yes it is. But it doesn't show that much. That's what I thought initially. (But I didn't tell the group, I've to admit.)
Then I recalled my secondary school WUSHU coach mentioned something like "Feel your movement and indulge in it". That's when I changed my perception of it. In order to do it well, we must feel for the character, even when it's a speechless movement piece.
Movements!
I think I'm flexible enough! But the more I stretch, my bone hurts. Especially my kneecap! Maybe it's my bone structure. =( I'll work on the split thing though... It'll be so torturous. D;
p.s:-currently, the soundtracks are under serious editing. Some of the previous anime ideas have been abolished. Why? Their "Happy tune" are just too happy to choreograph. Update again.
