Theatre Thread

[Erin]

Oh, and In The Blood is a really great play if you like plays that absolutely rip your guts out. How I Learned to Drive is good for that, too.

 

[Nave 'Torment']

Right now I'm still planning to take a class next semester on theatre, it's just that some of the theatrical tradition here in the South-East Asian continent differs so much from the Western tradition that we're familiar with, and by differ I mean it has it's own rich history attached to it. What's unfortunate for me is my total lack of orientation with that tradition or culture. So yeah, I'm trying to learn as much as I can about it before I commit to an entire semester studying it for credit.

On a side note, the plays I've been in were mostly original stuff that we came up with and performed, like I said, school stuff. Been involved in two productions with an actual audience, and they were Shakespeare's The Tempest (I played Prospero, still love that play!) and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Aside from that, there have always been class-read outs and in-class performances that weren't as big or anything, but immensely fun! In High School I used to enjoy characters who were curious and always got into trouble for it Or the dark brooding type.

Right now I'm working with our school's drama club to bring the Greek play Antigone on stage, only we're hoping to make it as close as possible to the way Sopcholes originally had it performed, masks and all. Excited about that (though not much at the suggestion from my peers to translate it into Bengali, it get's confusing really fast).

But my primary interest has always been to write and direct, so I get the most out of working off the stage instead of on it.

Hey, any suggestions on how to be more physically active on-stage? Like expressing with my body and all that?

 

[Nave 'Torment']

Hats off to Erin that's great stuff right there! And yes, Beatrice from Much Ado has got to be one of my favourite characters, though of course, not to play (unless we were in the Elizabethan Age, I guess it'd be okay then :P).

Peter Pan can be nothing short of magical in every sense of the word.

 

[Erin]

Hey, any suggestions on how to be more physically active on-stage? Like expressing with my body and all that?

Practice in front of a mirror. No joke.

 

[Nave 'Torment']

Really? :\ Ohkay. Thanks.

 

[Bnightwing]

Hey, any suggestions on how to be more physically active on-stage? Like expressing with my body and all that?

Be active whether you're the main part or not. Just remain in character and get a good solid GOTE. (character analyses) and run your lines till you are sick of hearing them.

 

[tzarinna]

My interest in the theater started in Junior High when I was the stage manager for the production of "The Hobbit". My only on stage performance, if you can call it that, was in my High School's production of "Oliver". I was just part of the company. Everything else I've done in HS and beyond has been backstage.

I'd like to get involved in a little community theater, but I have zero down time.

 

[Nell2ThaIzzay]

I'm a theatre major at Middle Tennessee State.

I don't have any history with theatre - I didn't do any theatre in high school, and I never studied much theatre, but I fell in love with it when I took a random acting class in Jr. College. When I decided to go back to school, I decided I wanted to study theatre.

I haven't been in a lot of work yet - I've been in a few small time school and community performances. I'm in my first main stage show in school this semester. I absolutely love it though.

 

[Bnightwing]

Can anyone help me with a new york accent?

 

[Erin]

What kind of help do you need? There is a book called Stage Dialects by Jerry Blunt that covers the IPA (international phonetic alphabet) and takes you through the basics of learning to listen to a dialect, dissect it, and reproduce it on stage.

Or you could just watch a movie with a lot of New York accents in it and repeat every line until you can't stand it anymore and everyone else in your house wants to kill you a little.

Both can be very effective techniques.

 

[Bnightwing]

I just need help using it without a given line. Like Improv for New York Accent.

 

[SpideyVille]

For some reason, whenever I think of a NY accent, I think of some stereotypical Italian guy talking. Like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, or Joey from Friends.

 

[Bnightwing]

Yeah. When I do a New York Accent, my hand wants to go up for an odd reason. and I haven't seen you in a dog's age, SpideyVille.

 

[tzarinna]

I only work at the theater one day a week, that will change as of this week. Yesterday I walked the red carpet completely oblivious that there was a big awards show. I don't know why no one wanted to take my picture, lmao.

 

[Bnightwing]

I only work at the theater one day a week, that will change as of this week. Yesterday I walked the red carpet completely oblivious that there was a big awards show. I don't know why no one wanted to take my picture, lmao.

Um. What?

 

[SpideyVille]

So I have a scene to do for class. It's fairly simple since I play a guy who is standing on a ledge outside a tall building while some girl starts talking to me. I really like the scene because it has both comedy and drama mixed in together, but one thing I've been struggling with is my partner. She is obviously a little shy and doesn't commit completely to a scene, and I feel like it might hurt my performance since I'm basically responding to her character's questions and reactions to my character. We haven't performed as much as other have in front of the class and I'm kinda of worried about what will happen when we have to do it in front of a larger audience in a few weeks.

Yeah. When I do a New York Accent, my hand wants to go up for an odd reason. and I haven't seen you in a dog's age, SpideyVille.

Yeah I took a break from here for almost a year because coming back to post regularly. It's funny how many people I haven't seen around since then.

 

[Erin]

So I have a scene to do for class. It's fairly simple since I play a guy who is standing on a ledge outside a tall building while some girl starts talking to me. I really like the scene because it has both comedy and drama mixed in together, but one thing I've been struggling with is my partner. She is obviously a little shy and doesn't commit completely to a scene, and I feel like it might hurt my performance since I'm basically responding to her character's questions and reactions to my character. We haven't performed as much as other have in front of the class and I'm kinda of worried about what will happen when we have to do it in front of a larger audience in a few weeks.


Yeah I took a break from here for almost a year because coming back to post regularly. It's funny how many people I haven't seen around since then.

Why is she taking the class? Does she have an actual interest in acting or is she just taking it to fill a requirement?

I ask because her reason for taking the class could seriously affect her desire to put forth any effort. If she really does want to act and is just shy, it would help her to keep in mind that it's just a class. Everyone is in the same boat she is, and she's there to learn and to grow. She should have fun in the scene and not worry about reviews.

If she's just there to fill some requirements, it may be tougher to get her to come out of her shell. Maybe if you tell her that her performance affects you as well? Not sure what to do there, but I can tell you I was in that situation more than once in uni.

 

[SpideyVille]

Why is she taking the class? Does she have an actual interest in acting or is she just taking it to fill a requirement?

I ask because her reason for taking the class could seriously affect her desire to put forth any effort. If she really does want to act and is just shy, it would help her to keep in mind that it's just a class. Everyone is in the same boat she is, and she's there to learn and to grow. She should have fun in the scene and not worry about reviews.

If she's just there to fill some requirements, it may be tougher to get her to come out of her shell. Maybe if you tell her that her performance affects you as well? Not sure what to do there, but I can tell you I was in that situation more than once in uni.

I can't remember why she said she was in the class in the beginning of the semester, but I spoke to her after our last class and she said she just wanted the semester to end already because she was too stressed. She didn't show up for a class last week because she made a doctor's appointment during our class time (even though the professor kept making the point of not missing class while we rehearsed our scenes) and there have been a couple of times where she would say she wasn't feeling good and didn't want to go up. Even in our last class, the professor made us go up and she stopped halfway to say she didn't feel well, which I feel like was more of an excuse because she didn't know her lines completely.

Personally, I don't mind the grading part of it, but I really want to do a good performance because we will most likely be doing this scene in front of a larger audience in a few weeks. We already had to change our scene because we both weren't into it, but this scene is so much better, but I feel like we haven't really been able to get far into it when we perform it for our class because there's something flat about it, particularly with her energy level since I'm supposed to feed off of her character.

But I told her, this is my last semester and I want it to end to, but I also want to have fun. I don't want to look back in a month and realize I wasted time.

 

[Erin]

I can't remember why she said she was in the class in the beginning of the semester, but I spoke to her after our last class and she said she just wanted the semester to end already because she was too stressed. She didn't show up for a class last week because she made a doctor's appointment during our class time (even though the professor kept making the point of not missing class while we rehearsed our scenes) and there have been a couple of times where she would say she wasn't feeling good and didn't want to go up. Even in our last class, the professor made us go up and she stopped halfway to say she didn't feel well, which I feel like was more of an excuse because she didn't know her lines completely.

Personally, I don't mind the grading part of it, but I really want to do a good performance because we will most likely be doing this scene in front of a larger audience in a few weeks. We already had to change our scene because we both weren't into it, but this scene is so much better, but I feel like we haven't really been able to get far into it when we perform it for our class because there's something flat about it, particularly with her energy level since I'm supposed to feed off of her character.

But I told her, this is my last semester and I want it to end to, but I also want to have fun. I don't want to look back in a month and realize I wasted time.

Well, if she won't suck it up and put her all into it, there's no reason that you can't. True, it makes it a lot harder if she's not into the scene, but god knows actors have to carry entire scenes by themselves all the time. I guess I'd just say stick with it, give it your 115% and hopefully she'll pick up on your energy and start towing the line.

And if you're really so concerned about it, you could always have a sit-down with the professor and get his/her take on the situation and his/her advice. Even just putting the situation on the professor's radar can help sometimes.

 

[SpideyVille]

Well, if she won't suck it up and put her all into it, there's no reason that you can't. True, it makes it a lot harder if she's not into the scene, but god knows actors have to carry entire scenes by themselves all the time. I guess I'd just say stick with it, give it your 115% and hopefully she'll pick up on your energy and start towing the line.

And if you're really so concerned about it, you could always have a sit-down with the professor and get his/her take on the situation and his/her advice. Even just putting the situation on the professor's radar can help sometimes.

Well we have a show coming up in a couple of weeks and our professor gave everyone their own monologue to perform on that day. But we will still have to perform our scenes in front of the class and the three best ones will be performed at the show. So because of that, the professor has decided to stay for extra rehearsal time and my scene is one of the first ones she wants to work with.

Me and my partner were practicing yesterday and she seems to have put more energy and emotion into it, which is good. But now she says she really likes her monologue and wants to perform that instead. My professor said I did a great job with my first read through of mine, so I'm not worried about how that will turn out for me, but I would really love to do the scene as well, if not instead. I want to see if she'll let me do both, but in order for that to happen, we have to prove that our scene is worth performing so I want to make it seem really great when we do it in front of the class. My scene is a bit more comedic, while my monologue is dramatic, so I think it would be fun to perform two different pieces with completely opposite ranges of emotion.

I've also volunteered to do some script-readings of some of the plays that are being written by the play-writing class. I guess since this is my last semester, I really want to feel like I was involved in a lot of different performances.

 

[Silvermoth]

I'm not part of the theatre but I do love it. The last show I went to see was Phantom of the Opera: Love never dies.

 

[Godzilla2000]

I'm not involved in the theater but I would love to see a good play, musical or opera sometime. The last time I saw a play i was in High school and it was a class trip. We went to go see a play called Wait Until Dark. It's about a blind woman who's being stalked by some burglars and how she deals with their invasion of her home. It was made into a pretty good movie with Audry Hepburn in it.

 

[SpideyVille]

So everyone in my acting class will be performing our group scenes next Thursday. It's still been hard with my partner because she's really shy and isn't looking forward to it, but when we did our scenes so that the class could vote which should be in the show, our scene was highly favored. So I'm hoping she's more comfortable and confidence because we still have a bunch of kinks to work out.

But I also convinced my professor to let me do my monologue for the show since I figured its my last semester and I really want to have fun. We were doing some rehearsals today and she was so impressed that she convinced me to try out for a play that was holding auditions tonight. So I did and since she put in a good word for me, I think I have a better chance of having some kind of involvement and I'm actually really excited.

My only regret is not doing this sooner. I would've loved to be a theater major.

 

[SpideyVille]

So I was cast as Todd in "Don Juan in Chicago". It feels so weird because I really wasn't expecting to be cast.