DAI Week One

Week one of the Dell'Arte summer workshop is done and over with. Day three we worked on archetypes with Joan some more. We had the afternoon with Stephanie Thompson of the Core Faculty. We did lots of walking and discovered the 3 different centers of Intellectual, Emotional, and Will. The intellectual leads with the head and focuses on questions and thinking, the emotional feels the world through the chest and moves with the breath, and the will leads with the pelvis and consumes space and objects. Our group decided to change our soundscape to loading groceries in a trunk at a grocery store.

Day four started again with Daily Practice then class with Stephanie. We worked more in the 3 centers then discussed archetypes that live in each center. We talked about the archetypes Pantalone, Dotore, and Capitano from Commedia Dell'Arte. The afternoon class was with Ronlin. We did a lot of work with respiration, opening the body, and different ways of walking. We finished the day with throwing imaginary stones and seeing them land.

Day five, we had the entire morning with Joe and learned a lot about the skeleton and how the body moves. He talked about different modalities such as yoga and ballet and how they all started as one person's understanding of how their body works. The work at Dell'Arte is to work deeper than that understanding and to find the origin of these modalities in order to understand the body in our own way. We had Performance Lab in the afternoon where our groups each presented our soundscapes. My group went first. The presentations varied from concerto-like immersions to what Ronlin called radio plays with distinct narrative structures. Ours was closer to the concerto with lots of layered sounds produced by multiple people. The soundscapes in order were loading groceries in a trunk, brushing teeth, making popcorn, changing a tire, and a malfunctioning computer printer. Ronlin talked about working intuitively rather than analytically, dynamic structures in theatre rather than narrative structures, and sublimation from flesh to spirit.

I ushered for the shows "In-Tents: a Conservation Comedy" noon Saturday. It was a two person clown show geared toward children with lots of physical humor and tons of energy. I spent the afternoon with some friends at the river and got a wicked sunburn then ushered "Comedy of Errors" put on by the Dell'Arte Company. The show incorporated music, masks, farce, lots of doors, and, of course, mistaken identity. I enjoyed it immensely. We had a birthday party for Mick where I learned the sacred game of drink ball and had far too much fun. I went hiking in the Redwood National Forest with some friends Sunday afternoon. Look forward to what I learned through the beginning of this week on Wednesday!

Enjoy the Day,
Brandon Brockshus

Annie

     To say that this show is coming along smoothly would be quite an understatement. Last night we ran through the entire show and stopped when necessary just to get an idea of where we were at exactly in our process. The hour and a half show took 3 hours and 45 minutes and that was including getting wardrobe all set up for most of the characters, and stopping/restarting in most areas. I was very pleased. Tonight we ran through Act one, and surprisingly, the kids had all their lines memorized and the adults were the ones still using their scripts. I got thrown in as a last minute stagehand last practice, as well. I feel a bit like a jack of all trades as I continue to direct, act, and now work backstage when needed! I'd say it's some pretty great experience! :)

CLE Internship part 4

so this week was an install at the new Gilbert high school just north of Ames. it should have only taken a day and a half for this install but do to complications, it took about 2 and a half. (we were only installing 2 scenery tracks)

Day one, first off, it would be nice if the project manager would have told the people on the crew that the main road into (and passing the high school) was completely closed. so everyone was late. it also would have been nice to know that the install was at the new high school that is currently under construction. so I spent about 20 minutes trying to get to the old high school. luckily, I left early anyways. so, once everyone finally got there, we started unloading the box truck. (mostly just tools and 10 pieces of track (each piece is about 20 feet long) ) so after we got all that inside, we ran into our first complication. the 2 scissor lifts we ordered weren't there yet; even worse the job site foreman (the one in charge of the entire building construction) told us that we couldn't drive them on the tile floor, or go around the building because they had the dirt outside the theatre loading dock exactly how they wanted it or some bullshit like that. so we couldn't even get our lifts where we needed them when they got there. so, we had to wait for the other crew that was there (the ones installing the rest of the "Fly system" luckily we still had to lay out points on the ground and cut cables first anyways. so we got the cables cut and nicro crimped. by the time we got that done, (there were 22 of them total) we finally had a usable lift. so we started hanging points. here is where the second complication comes in, everything in this theatre is dead hung. (nothing moves up or down. it stays exactly where it is all the time. (as in if you want to move a curtain you need a lift to get up to it) but apparently that's really common in most high school theatres) we were hanging our points straight on to the structural "I" beams. and our brackets fit on the "I" beams just fine, but when you tighten then down, they would clamp down on the rope wire cables, so we had to figure out a way to fix it. we didn't have what we needed to fix it se we decided to call it an early day and regroup the next day. 6 hours

Day 2: so we got a solution figured out for that last issue, and it worked pretty well. we didn't have any more issues with it. in fact, everything was going great until after lunch! we got all of the points hung, and we even got almost a full scenery track up before lunch! then we got back from lunch. the electrician crew had to steal one of our lifts so they could wire up the electrics, AND apparently some worker had fallen off the roof and broke his leg. (compound fracture with the bone trying to poke through the skin) (we saw the ambulance driving away when we got back) ya, poor bastard, but because of that, OSHA was supposedly called out to the site, so we all had to have hard hats (because it is a construction site any one caught without a hard hat could get themselves, and their company fined, and for every person without a hardhat, OSHA can shut down the entire job sight for "X" amount of days. )so the foreman was going around telling everybody without hard hats to leave the building. (and the asshole wasn't even wearing a hard hat himself) so only 2 people on the crew had hard hats because they always take their personal ones with them to work. so it wasn't a total loss, but the rest of us had to wait outside in the heat and humidity while a company employee went to the nearest hardware store to get us some hard hats. after that we got most of the track installed. 8 hours

Day 3: we still only had one lift, but we cut our crew down and only needed the one anyways. we put up the last section of track on the back one and got it bolted to the wall, the front one was a little more difficult. because they had a ladder going up to the cat walk, we had to figure out how to bolt the end of the track to something sturdy without interfering with the path way. so we cut about 2 feet off of the track and bolted it to  one of the 4x4 steel posts holding up the top landing of the catwalk ladder. (weirdest ladder I have ever seen. here is a pic of it.) except the one in the theatre was black. but that is the weirdest thing to walk up and down..... any way back to work, after we bolted that on, we had to put on the carriers. (the things that move the scenery pieces along the track) and we had to add the pull ropes on them as well. after we got those on, that was pretty much it. we just had to pack up and head out. 5 hours for a total of 72 hours of work.

Willy Wonka Jr. reflection

Working on Willy Wonka Jr. has been a great experience, and one I hadn't counted on having at the beginning of 2013.  What began as signing up for Jim's lighting class (partly after the recommendation of a friend who had taken the class in the past) became my first full experience as a designer for a show.

My primary focus in ISU Theatre has been (and in large part still remains) as an actor.  Being asked to try my hand at lighting design wasn't something I was expecting, even with my taking the lighting class.  And at first, I felt daunted by the prospect.  Am I confident enough in myself to handle this?  Learning that it was at Jim's suggestion that I was asked told me something important, though:  regardless of my confidence, someone else DOES have confidence in me.

Even then, this was something I had never really tried before.  Sitting in on the production meetings really helped me get excited for the project.  Everyone kept bringing such wonderful ideas to the table, it was really fantastic.  Having that source of energy and having Jim as someone I could ask questions to really helped me along.

My board tech, Kaine, showed himself to be quite capable of running the board.  While it's true that virtually all the cues were set to run at the press of a button, he kept focus well and felt comfortable leaving the second weekend of performances in his hands.

Now that it's finished, I'm really pleased with what I accomplished.  I've done something that I hadn't expected to do six months ago, and did it well.  And while I still want to focus on acting, I think I'd like to continue to learn and do more with lighting.

The Drowsy Chaperone Part III

We are off book, we have costumes set (mostly), we have lighting cues, and we have a much relieved bearded man.  The musical is leagues ahead of where it was last week.  Once we started running full Acts it really came together.  Of course there were some stumbles on props as well as entrances and exits, but those are to be expected when running it for the first time.

We still have sound effects and more lighting cues to get down but once that is set and the few un-memorized lines and dance steps (still might be a bit on the dancing) are committed to memory; we’ll have ourselves a show!  ….And then I remembered the orchestra.  Oh dear god, the orchestra.  I have no idea how well this is going to seamlessly slip into what we are doing (as I’ve never been involved in a musical before), but my first instinct is Not Well.

I am confident it will all be worked out before our first show, but with such a huge piece yet to be integrated, I have my reservations. 

Door Shakespeare

Door Shakespeare

June 2nd:

I arrived up in Door County at around ten p.m and met Drew and Mark, they showed me the place where we would be staying for the night and was given a brief layout of the town and our plan of action for the next couple of days. I also brought up prop pieces for Door Shakespeare to use in shows, mostly pieces for Loves Labour's Lost.

June 3rd:

My first official day was spent working with Drew, Mark and Jason; the director of Macbeth, unloading the prop barn and finding pieces that were useful and rearranging the rest of the barn to make  it easier to navigate Through. After that was sorted through, Drew and I began to mulch the space and voms while Michael and Mark worked on leveling the risers for the audience. We then spent our night in the dressing room,

June 4th:

We all took the discarded wood over to a pit area to make a bonfire, and that took a majority of the day while we also were moving trash over to a dump area near the lodge. Jason met back up with us later after a meeting with Amy to inform us that we didn't have the right amount of seats for audience members and we made our way over to space to figure a way to include more seats, after we decided, Michael and Mark worked on risers while Drew and I went around collecting stumps for the space and the rest of the area.

June 5th:

Our last day on the job we were doing touch ups on anything that we missed. Drew and I worked on finding branches for pathways and mulching whatever areas needed extra work. We also finished taking apart the spaces old stage and transported the wood back to the barn and covered the area with extra mulch. We finished up around 2:30.

Working up at Door Shakespeare for these few days was helpful because we got to see things that were used for old shows that didn't even make sense and were disregarded probably after only one use and also the types of places where you could possibly put on shows. It was also eye opening to see how many people in the community knew about Door Shakespeare and how passionate they were about the people who work to bring them this type of theater. Dan, Amy and Jason were a pleasure to work and very easy to get along with and they gave us a lot of feedback about the work we were doing and the type of work they hope to be doing in years to come. This was definitely an experience that has gotten me excited to start doing more work outside of Iowa State and perhaps even starting up projects of my own.

Actor's Gym - Circus Day 2

Yesterday was the second week of Circus class.  We had the same basic set up: warm-up, floor work, one major floor art and one major aerial art.  The Sylvia's (instructor) warm-ups and floor work has been really good for my body.  It's been a while since I've worked my body like this, and I'm happy to get going again.  Especially with gymnastics.  I've always wanted to learn how to do handstands, cartwheels, and rolls properly, but with everything that is "wrong" with my body (scoliosis, odd bone structure in my feet, terrible flexibility) I have never really had the chance to.  Sylvia and Nate are really good at explaining exactly what you're doing wrong, and they are so matter-of-fact about it.  I was able to work a lot more with Sylvia yesterday and she can be scary, but she will fix you.  One of my goals for the end of the class is to be able to do a handstand.  It sounds simple, but my spine is shaped like an "S" rather than being relatively straight and also has a small rotation, kind of like if someone had one hand gripping my spine and twisted it in one direction a little bit.  Without a straight spine my back and my core are weaker that the average person's, and it makes it incredibly difficult to balance, especially while standing on your hands.  Sylvia said handstands will be really good for my back and has been helping me straighten myself up during handstands.  I'm really excited to be close to doing them by myself.

The floor art we worked on yesterday is called the Rolling Globe.

This is a Rolling Globe routine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nB6ZGzH_Sk

Rolling Globe is kind of scary, but I feel like I was getting the hang of it pretty well for my first time.  We got on top of it, walked in a circle on top of it, and then practiced walking the ball forward and backward.  It's kind of exhilarating.  I was more scared watching other people do it than I was doing it myself.  That section was a lot of fun.

We worked on Spanish Web in this class as well.

Here is a Spanish Web routine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INXhaNwTIiE

In Aerial two days ago we did two different routines, a basic hand routine and an 8-loop routine.  The hand routine is just where you hang by one hand and use the other hand to hold the rope to one side of you.  An 8-loop is a loop you make around your foot (shown in the beginning of the video above) so you have a foot and a wrist strapped in.  In Circus yesterday we just did the same hand routine we did in Aerial, except at the end of class we worked on a simple invert where you hold the rope with both hand near your chest and you kick up your legs over your head.  Like this:

This is very hard for people like me with no upper body strength and little core strength.  We ended the day with these.  Chris was able to do 3 and 1/2 in a row.  I was able to do 1/2 in a row.

Until next week.