TAPS - Day 2

060209

TODAY IS STAGE COMBAT DAY. YESSSSS! i've always wanted to know the answers to all that fake stage acting. AND NOW I KNOW. ahhahaha. plus! Mr.Moss is teaching, and he's an awesome teacher :)

so anyway, we start off by doing a trust game. one thing i learnt in drama OVERALL is, the trust between the actors have to be there, you have to learn lines so fluently that you know each others and they know yours. So yea, ESPECIALLY in stage combat, trust is number 1. This activity we have a person leaning back, putting all weight on the person supporting him/her behind. So the person supporting can drop or push the person as they please. catch - as the person who is BEING supported, you have to trust your partner COMPLETELY for this to work well. i worked with Felicia.....and apparently she doesn't trust me :( oh well. just don't fight with her on stage. HEE HEE.

Now there are rules to stage combat
1. WE DO IT FOR THE AUDIENCE TO SEE. - its all fake, and made dramatic for THEM
2. If anyone gets hurt, and its because of you. IT IS YOUR FAULT.
3. Never fall on your head, shoulders, neck, elbows, knees and butt.

the butt has a teeny bone called the tail bone, and haha. the way Mr.Moss put it was so funny! "you should take to you butt bone, and if people ask you what you're doing, just say - oh just talkin to my butt bone" he is one funny teacher. :D

The 3 stages in stage combat
1. Projection
2. Knap
3. Reaction

Projection is how you prepare for the combat to occur, ie. hand positions, energy in hand...etc. knap is the sound made, and reaction is.....reaction. DUH. like flinging your head and hair after a blow, wincing in pain, shouting, screaming.....bla bla bla.....lol. so we work on all of those and.

4 types of combat we learnt
1. smack
2. punch
3. hair pulling
4. throwing

3 ways to produce a knap in smacking is, the victim placing his hand in front of the face, the smackER hit the hand (not the face) makes the sound and the victim does a realistic reaction. DONE. 2nd method still lies on the victim. but this time, there is no contact between the 2 actors. Smacker swings, victim slap his own hand at the right time, make the sound and clutches cheek (or place of injury) as if it hurts. Last one, the smackER makes the sound by slapping his own leg or something. cool. punching is about the same, just that its not skin on skin contact, but skin on cloth, to make the sound more......punch-like. :P

Mr.Moss also asks us to carry out the action in slow motion before goin into all the smacking, knapping and reaction-ing. really make contact with the victim's head, so that the victim will know how exactly the body reacts to an impact and for the smacker, the same. Hands on is very important. Later, Mr. Moss also says that different kinds of smacking will produce different kinds of reactions. slapping with ur backhand, slapping with an upward motion, direction of slapping. LOL some ppl just react in the wrong direction. this is all just to make it more realistic.

So anyway, Mr. Moss asks us to get into pairs to work on a scene that ends with a slap based on prejudice. I work with Vardaan and we're both like.....prejudice? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? so we get definitions from people around us. so we sit down and start working on our storyline. TADAA. Mr. Moss comes in and suddenly bursts out saying he's so proud of us. apparently some ppl don't work out y the slapping occurs but just goes into it? wow. we're so good :) hahahha. so anwyay, i think we overhear ppl talking about speaking in chinese, so Vardaan goes, ok, i assume u're chinese and doesn't know how to speak english, you curse and swear at me and you slap me, walk away and i tap u shoulder thn i slap u. ahhh....a little boring storyline. but i got nothing in my head. so. here we go~ we did it anddd...Mr. Moss was actually impressed :):):):) oh wait, but Ed's and Kenzie's one was good too. sooooo goood. i was convinced and SO impressed
Mr.Moss : there was absolutely nothing i would change from that scene. BRAVO
alright!
Davina and amrit went too, and i gotta say Amrit is a good actor, he does accents and is REALLY REALLY convincing. sadly, the plot wasn't so interesting and.......yea, the slap was ok tho. :)
We all get to have a say in all that, profess our opinions because Mr. Moss asked us to look at it from either an actor or director's point of view. Opinions in the form of Wow's and What if's. AWESOME

now to punching. requirement:have a scene with 4 punches. not all from the same person. I pair up with Kenzie! hahaha. Vardaan's and Felicia's bit was so funny because not only was it an absurd storyline but...the way Vardaan acts. YEA. comedy is definitely his thing. they are in a super market and naturally, the woman reaches for that LAST CAN of beans. He runs up saying : miss miss, can i please have that last one? i'm having a dinner party and i desperately need it. no hope man. ladies don't give up easily. and out of the blue, he punches her (HAHAHAHA. this part was so funny) and says sorry. like he can't control his limbs. hehe. they struggle, he knocks her out andddd.....he takes the can of beans from her trolley Man:thank you. LOL. he has one heck of a library full of comedian ideas. Lisa and hmm....ryan was it? went also. they acted as if they were playing a vid game, entered into virtual realiy and PLAYED the vid game. it was like street fighter era all over again! awesome! hahahah. THE LAST PUNCH WAS THE BEST! everyone saw it and knew it. wheeeee. a room full of actors. :D

WHOA. the next thing Mr. Moss does is just so coooool. he grabs May-Li by the hair, and pulls her out the door dragging her on her butt. WOW. it looked really really real ok. but turns out, its fake! damn! so he's pulling her hair, but she's got her hands around his hand that is pulling her hair and so he's actually pulling her along by the arms. WHAT THE- i should have caught that. but anyway, now i know the secrets ;D shit n i just revealed it to u. argh.

last for stage combat, THROWING. ok. i didn't dare try this one cause of my knee.....but i so wanted to try iitttt!!! he says its easy, and the people watching? WOW. its looks unbelievable from that POV. he says its just a front roll! what on earth is a front roll?! HAHAH. people do it, andddd.....some do it quite funnily. HEE HEE. won't mention who :P

= LUNCH TIME =
went to 7 11 to get grub with felicia and vardaan. ahh....relaxing 2 hours. NICE. but power got cut off and we walked from 8th floor to 17th floor. WA LIEUW.

After coming back, its so obvious that people are tired out and abit bored it gather? so Jo does this amazingly calming exercise. She makes us shut up, not talk and lie down on the floor, tensing muscles, releasing them, basically just loosening it all up so we can get waarmed up. then when she asks us to sit up. GROAN. hahaha. u can FEEL the reluctancy even before you open your eyes. and yea, i think some ppl went to sleep. like DAVINA. hahahha. *pokes* so next we get partners again, people we don't work much with and.....play a dancing game. with eyes closed, one person stands behind the other and the one infront shuts his eyes. the behind person touches a part of the body eg. finger and the finger has to do all the dancing. remember, this is with eyes closed soo......embarassment was much avoided. :D lucky the music was cool. hehe. Next we were asked to choose a body part, SHOW OFF the body part or yes, make it obvious that you even HAVE that part of your body. Next hide it and then use that part of the body to lead in your walk. HAHA. Vardaan's was a jawline and he was sticking it out the whole time! this i think was a small intro into my character in Comedia, the lovers, where they walk with their hearts leading them :)

Hidden around the room was tons of info on the characters that we got (mine=The Lovers) and I found it, did notes and stuff. wait, i'll write it here too.

Lovers - Male//Female
socially high
stance - trying to float, on tip toes like ballet
peacock/swan-like
instable, walking with heart leading
VAIN - use of handkerchief/flower/mirror
use courtly words
soft, musical tone
self absorbed
love the thought of being in love
requires a servant or third party to be present
occasionally flirts with audience
plays to audience for sympathy
underneath they lack confidence
they live in their own world but come together after learning about love which show the potential for human happiness

next we line up in two rows, making a space in the middle like a runway ramp and we're supposed to use the information we used from the notes we have (research) to interpret our role according to our knowledge on it. some do it REALLY funnily. but this was normal. NEXT we work in pairs again to act out a scene IN CHARACTER according to these papers Jo hands to us. they have stupid stuff like milk a cow, drive a car, amputate a leg.....and so on. I have Tilly as a partner and we get the amputate leg thing.OH OH OH. and this is only an act for one of us. The other directs, luccccky for me. Tilly choose to act. And I direct. this is the first time i'm doing this and....gosh. it feels great! i get Tilly to be dreaming of hunger first, eating food, relishing it when suddenly someone snatches it away! u sit up, thinking its just reachable and i can get it but aiya, its just a dream. I look down, dejected, whenn....i see....my leg....ah? my leg. juicy leg that is plump and fat. i chew chew chew and eat, try to cut it, but decide to nibble it off anyway, Tilly does an awesome thing by chewing until the falls backwards and tadaa! i just directed a scene. AWESOME. LOL. once again, Vardaan's one was HUMONGOUSLY funny, he was the doctor, pompous and proud, hanging a painting that means NOTHING, gosh, this was really really funny and he picked on me! LOL. about my glasses. damn i was shocked but it was all in good fun. another funny one was Phil conducting a band, talking about a TOTALLY different stuff like a shoe with the name Wellesly on it, how the shoe IS the baton, and how the smell of the shoe defines the quality of a "baton". phil is really really funny. i must say. then there was tiffany, and her milking cow HAHHAHAHHAHAH. hilarious!

=half hour break=
AHHHHH....we need these....it gets tiring doing all work and no play :P

WE START WITH THIS REALLY AWESOME GAME. where we all are sitting on chairs and there is one chair empty. we call it the "US versus YOU" game. hahaha. i will definitely remember this one! will use it to make everyone ENERGIZED! then we arrange ourselves into one single row, and arrange again in alphabetical order according to our first names. then, EXAGGERATION. haha. like that one. first one starts with a smile ends with roling on the floor. u should get what i mean.

then we work on comedy stimulus. OH SHIT. we really honestly DON'T KNOW. i pair with merrie and we are so blur. >_< shyte. i thought we didn't have to actually DO it. so we just left it hanging as it was. nothing. LOL. discussed abit about how to handle the stimulus -adapt-adopt-address- and then the differences on Comedia and Stand-up Comedy.

Comedia :
- has specific characters
- rigid

stand-up comedy
- in a 3rd party stand point
- no character at all
- narrative

i think we also went thru techniques used in stand-up comedy.
- accents
- stereotypes
- opical allusions
- repetition
- role playing.

and there's tons more. i just am not sure. didn't get to see Sherri's performance. but thats all right. God is my priority. :)