El Álbum

Yesterday I went to the María Reiche park in Miraflores to see a Colombian play called “El álbum” from the Tecal theatre group. The play was about a family album. One of the girls in the photo was telling us the different stories of her family members in different moments in their life.

The girl who was telling the story had a microphone in her hand while the other characters were in still picture at the back on top of tables. I felt as if I was in a 4 year old party with animation. The actress’ voice gave me this sensation, this could be because she was with a microphone in her hand and she was moving a lot.

The actors had an incredible balance and control of their body. They could stay still for a very long time while doing difficult postures. They also had body paint. They represented one specific colour. For example one of them was blue and all the props and costumes were also blue. This character used to watch blue TV shows and used to eat blue food.

The body paint, the costumes and the props helped a lot to create the illusion of a statue. The costumes were like old and they looked like if they were made of plastic. This three factors and the ability to stay still of the actors helped the audience to think that they were just statues instead of normal people when doing very structured and well organized still pictures.

What I didn´t like of the play is that it was represented in an open space, in a park. I was standing up with a lot of people in front of me and the actors where in the same level as I was. I think I prefer to watch plays in theatres. A proscenium arch is better for me. In here I can sit very comfortably and watch the actors in a higher or maybe lower level than me. It’s my preference.

Cocina y Zona de Servicio

Today, I went to watch a play at Teatro la Plaza Isil called Cocina y Zona de Servicio. The play was about a dinner where everything went wrong. Some old friends join after 10 years for a dinner. The actors didn´t show the actual dinner but they showed the kitchen and the patio were the characters used to fight or to say how bad the dinner was or what was happening at that moment in the living room. The play was about the different comments of a disastrous dinner.

The acting was amazing, it was clear that they had a lot of experience. They knew how to balance the space very well, everything was in equilibrium. The actors sometimes gave the back and that made it more interesting because you had to imagine what the character was feeling.

The lights were simple. When the play begun they used a very dim light from the top and then the characters came out and the lights were brighter. From the change of scene they totally turned off the lights and put some music as a background. The music had been recorded and prepared for the play. They used a wide variety of rhythms and different types of music.

The scenery was very realistic, it was like a real kitchen. It had a fridge, a table with three chairs, some windows, glasses and dishes, etc. everything to make it look as real as possible. My seat was very close to the actors and so I could feel as if I were inside the house watching everything from another room because of the realistic scenery also.

The props that they used were also part of the scenery as well. A good example could be broom. It was in the patio next to the lavatory but suddenly the character picked it up and started to walk with it. The broom was part of the character now. It became like a doll for one of the characters. The actress used the broom to talk with it and to hug it because she was feeling desperate because of the disastrous dinner.

The actors didn´t use microphones. The theatre had a good acoustic and so the microphones weren’t needed.

In general, it was a very good play in terms of set design and acting. I spent a good night at the theatre.

Boeing Boeing

I saw a play called Boeing Boeing in the “Teatro Peruano-Japonés”. It was about a business man who had three different wives which were flight attendants. The business man lived in a big house with his three wives and with the maid. The wives didn´t know about the other two because when one of them was at home the other two were working in different countries all around the world.

I enjoyed a lot the play. The scenery was amazing. They used big scenery to represent the house with big exaggerated picture frames on the walls and a big door. The furniture used was green, yellow, blue and red. The different colours used made a good contrast and attracted the attention of the audience.

The costumes were also very colourful. One of the wives was wearing a red costume; the other one was wearing a yellow costume and the last one was wearing a blue costume. The three different costumes made a lot of contrast with the greenish furniture.

The lighting was very simple. They had a lot of Follow Spot lights and some Profile Spotlights that were lighting all the stage. The intensity of the light varied a little but the lighting in general was the white-yellow light and didn’t change very much.

The actors were very good actors. It was very clear that they worked a lot on their characters because the flight attendants had different nationalities and so it demanded to speak with the country’s accent. One was from Germany, the other one from Colombia and the last one from France.

In conclusion, it was a very good play in terms of acting and of set design. I enjoyed a lot watching this play.

Second rehearsal

Yesterday we had the second rehearsal for our play. It went very well. We started again with ha hondom because it is important for the actors to have a lot of energy and we can get this energy by playing this game. Then felipe did a relaxing exercise that helped each one of them to be conscious of their body parts and what they are capable of doing with them.

After this Diego did another exercise that helped them to build their characters starting from an animal. This exercise was useful because it helped them to explore their body and movements by imagining that they were an animal.

Then, we told them to separate in groups: villains, superheroes and normal people and they had to do a little sketch to show how their characters were and what power did they have. This was a useful exercise because we could see the different actors interpreting for the first time what his/her character is like.

In general, this rehearsal went better, we organised it well and we succeed.

The First Rehearsal

On thursday we had the first rehearsal for the school play. A lot of people went so we needed to had a lot of activities to entertain all of them. We first divided into groups and played a ha-hondom competition. This was to help them to get the energy necessary in order to have a good rehersal. Then we presented each other, to all the people and told them about this year´s play.

They were very interested an excited about superheroes. Each one of them, told us what character they wanted to be in the play, maybe a super heroe or maybe a villain. They also chose a super power for each of the characters.

I think that the rehearsal went well but there were some mistakes that maybe we can fix them for the following rehearsals. When we were playing "match improvisations" we didn´t have anything planned, the themes and number of players, etc came to our mind in that moment and so, we didn´t had good ideas or sometimes we were taking so long.

Overall, I felt it was a good rehearsal and I think the next one will be better.

La ópera de tres centavos

Firstly, there was very good scenery. They used only the necessary material. For example, to represent the jail they only used a structure of wood painted with a grey colour. They used little scenery for some scenes and you could still imagine where they were and you could understand it very well. Another example could be the prostitute house. They used a table some chairs, that was it, nothing else.

Secondly, the lighting was also fine. They played with the lights. On a normal scene the lighting was the same, without a change but when a character started to sing the lights automatically changed and focused on that character. When a character was singing the lighting was only for those characters and all the rest of the stage was dark.

The music was being played at the same time, real, it was not a CD. That´s from the beginning a positive point to the play because a lot of hard work and concentration is needed so that the musicians could understand the characters and so, make different sound effects and musical pieces at the beginning or at the end of each scene. Thus, the sound effects were played always on time without mistakes as well as the musical pieces. The instruments used were a bass guitar, a clarinet, some drums and a keyboard. The music helped by giving the audience the ability to feel the characters’ feelings. For example, when “Máquina baja”, a famous thief, was in jail the music was mysterious and then sad because he was going to be executed in one hour and those was his feelings.

The acting was great. I liked them a lot. It was clear that the actors sat and analyzed the play before acting it to make sure that everybody could understand their roles in it and their intentions and actions. This is a very important step when receiving a play. The audience could identify with any of the characters.

The character that I liked the most was the Maquina Baja´s girlfriend. It was very clear that the actress had a lot of experience, ability and preparation. To represent her character she used oppositions. Her head was in an opposite direction in contrast to the hips. It was amazing all the balance that she had and how she had total control of her body. I also liked her voice, it was very loud and it was like a doll. Her character was very funny because of her face expressions also. When you were watching her you could also see a doll; the creative make up helped a lot the face expressions to look like a doll.

In general, this Colombian play was very interesting and good. It was an example for us, the young actors, who are still learning from other performances. I´m glad to watch plays like this and not just bad performances, where you get bored very easily.

El Jardín de Mónica

We read in class the play and it was wonderful. I liked it a lot because it was very funny and it was very interesting. We all laugh and spent a good time. However, we went the same night to watch the play and it was a total disaster. The performance was totally different of what I´d imagined when we were reading the play.

The scenery was ok. They presented Monica´s garden like they imagined it. On the garden there was a box with bottle taps pasted on a side and brown papers on the other side, representing the garbage. There were a lot of brown bottles surrounding the scenery creating a barrier to indicate the end of the garden. On top of the box there was the representation of a tree, an artificial structure of wires. It was clear that they didn´t want to show the garbage as it is on the streets, they wanted to show it as a whole using brown bottles and brown papers. I was happy with the scenery because everybody has a different ways to imagine and interpret a text.

The music in the end, didn´t helps. The play had a sad ending because the boy was being taken by someone and he was desperate and shouting. When this final scene finished, a happy musical piece was being played. The music broke the effect that the spectators were feeling. It could have been better if there wasn´t music or maybe a sad song.

The lighting was interesting. When the actress was performing as the mum, shouting, a lot of lights started to appear and it gave us a scary atmosphere. However, this effect was constantly repeated. One time was fine but two or more was the same boring stuff. The play had a lot of lighting changes and games. It seems to me like if they were thinking that the play was boring and the only way to entertain the audience was by changing and using different lighting.

The performing was terrible, it was a bad experience. Firstly, the actors need to learn all their lines correctly. When they were performing it was very clear that they didn´t know their lines well. Sometimes they waited a long time to respond to the other person and these little silences gave the audience a boring feeling. They didn´t understand what they were saying.

When an actor receives a text, they must write on it. They need to know why they are saying the lines and for what reason, what is the intention. There was no interaction between the characters because they didn´t understand what they were saying as well as the reason why they are saying them. They were just throwing them up.

I´ve learnt a lot with this play, what an actor should´t do in a performance. I´m a 100% sure that I wouldn´t have been able to understand the play without reading it first. This representation taught me that a good text isn’t always the synonym of a good performance.