11/23: Puppet Olympics
As the culmination of our intro to puppetry, our intrepid mannequins performed an acrobatic routine. The original requirement was jumping jacks, a cartwheel, a sprint, and a bow. Our second puppet had the handicap of being short one puppeteer, but still managed a pretty strong showing. And now a reflection opportunity. Looking at the movement ...
Journal Inspiration
A wonderful talk by Daniel Weil about how he uses sketchbooks to develop several projects simultaneously. This is a great model for some parts of the DP Theatre journal.
9/30: Devising Underway
Talking in circles for a week seems to have finally paid off! I am increasingly impressed with the way the conversation has developed in the last few days. Once the group began to settle on the idea of a student coming to understand a teacher’s Sisyphean routine, things became much more concrete. Initially, the group ...
Commedia masks
Today we broke out the masks. We began with a sorting exercise. With all the masks piled at one end of the room, the students began to divide them up by physical characteristics. By the end of the process, there were a lot of masks in the wrong place, a Pantalone in with the Zanni, ...
Mini-TPPP Example
Running a little late with this IB Daily, but after our clean-up session, I set this unit’s mini-TPPP. After marking this year’s full TPPP’s and reading the Subject Report from last year’s exams, I have decided to try and push more focus onto the presentation images. In order to do that—and hopefully simplify the recording ...
Show day
Today we had dress rehearsals for this afternoon’s productions, and although we ran a little into the passing period, everything worked fairly smoothly. Given that we had a lot of overlap in the group choices—two basing their work on Stella Adler, and two groups performing the same scene, I was pleased with the amount of ...
The concept of concepts
Productions are coming up tomorrow afternoon, and sets came together today. Lighting also got underway—though I got a little carried away in the light racks (sorry, Mr. Mosser). A slight miscommunication led to a door nailed into the floor a little earlier than I expected, but on the whole it’s looking like show time. Tomorrow, ...