The Climbers

mmm… Last night was another funny and weird night. We also had a special guest from mer’s fellow student from the Uni. Her name was Kate. She was very keen and eger to help on hand. She was amazed that we can do very well with acting technques.

We did the King Mida’s scene. This was the most funniest night ever for me. After the break, With Katrina’s a few of 1001 ideas and we went to the action to it, and surely it worked too. What it happened was that i did a comical scene with the stataue scene and they all laughed out so hard they couldn’t stop it. Then i did the expressions, they couldn’t even hold on theirselves. And even i couldn’t stop laughing too.

After that scene, Mandy pop up for the first time and she had an idea for the begining and at the end of the play. The idea was that all of us could be stataues and do the dancing scene with the song of “we are family”. That worked very well and we might put that in the play.

As i did say that i will do some of the vineblogs. I would like to make a few comments about the blogs:

Oh the blogageness

This blog is interesting and funny to me too. When i read the blogs, it strack me out when the creater made a joke about the walrous or the rooster.

http://anadareth.vineblogs.net/

philosophise the world to nothing

Philosophise the world to nothing is an interesting thing about life the world around us. This creater has interesting blogs and a little of comic on the side too.

http://hellooowjo.vineblogs.net/

my lord it’s a blog

This blog is interesting, why? The group has a positive attiude and the creater were very happy with work what they have done.

http://ojish.vineblogs.net/

Andys BlogI would like to make a comment in one of partauclaur post. It has a few questions regards to the performance and it also keep me thinking too.

http://andrea.vineblogs.net/2006/04/05/as-time-ticks-by/

For the kiddies:

http://class6p.vineblogs.net/
http://class6m.vineblogs.net/

And for other vineblogs members:

http://vineblogs.net/all-vineblogs/

mmm … let me see, this week wasn’t good at all, why? There are many negitive things happening at once that it didn’t went well for all of us. As you know what is happening from middle-east, I have felt that the iseralis didn’t care about the foreniers and that isn’t fair for them to escape from the trouble land. As you hear the news, slowly the australians are safely going home or are at home amongs family and friends. I hope all of them are safe home even the last person.

Last night wasn’t good at all. Jo was late and she was stuck on the freeway not even half of centremetre. So, the actors and I were started to make the warm ups till she comes. And we did pitty well without her around. Forturnately, she came with a haf and a paf…. continue the new story.

The story was an inventer called Daedalus and his son Eckerus (Icarus). Who he invented a lambrith (a maze). The story goes like this; Daedalus was arrested with his son and throw them into the maze. Daedalus was lost in the maze with his own inventation. So he asked his son how they can escape the maze. So Daedalus had an idea that they could fly away from the maze.

On the positve side, I would like to welcome Katrina on the post.

Before I go…. Ah!!! Yes… title for the play… I better keep it to myself for the time been and I will let you know til due time.

Lastly, I hope those australians from the trouble land will and are safe and the family from here are waiting or abreast them.

Ciao for now and god give them safe jouray home.

TO ALL UNWANTED BLOGERS!!!!!!

THANK YOU.

 

At the last workshop we had a visit from Larry Boyd who has directed the group for years previously so we were able to show some of our work for this year and talk about some ideas we’ve had for the future. Larry was around at break time when we go over the blog from the previous week. People talked about the blog and how it gave us a public forum or presence.

In this discussion it seemed as though everyone had something to say! Mandy talked about wanting to have more recognition for the group and to do bigger and better things. This provoked much discussion about the motivation for this desire - is it to have fame or is it something else. Katrina said is was important to move in stages and to ‘walk before you run’ so to speak. Alex expressed his opinion on how far peole had already developed and changed and improved.  Larry and I reminded the group of the many achievements already made over the 9 years of the group being around and that these were significant. Jean- Maree and Andrew agreed and added to this argument. Andrew explined that fame was not something everyone wanted necessarily.Mandy agreed and further explained that it was not so much the fame but the recognition and public voice for people with disabilities that she was wanting more of. She explained that People with disabilities are not seen much in the broader community and needed to be represented more. People agreed. We talked about the blog as a chance to have a voice and just wish that people would PLEASE COMMENT so we know that people are reading about the work of Dramability and Fusion Theatre.

There was a lot of other talk about the important contribution of the Deakin students - Paul mentioned this again and a lot of people agreed. Pauline, Cheryl and Andy talked about the qualities of the group and why they like coming to drama.

Phew!! - it was a big discussion and very earnest so I hope I’ve captured it here!

Fusion Theatre Inc.

Tonight a meeting was held after the workshop for participants, family and carers and this meeting was a necessary step towards the incorporation of Fusion Theatre. This is an exciting step. Larry is doing the organising of this and lead the meeting. Many members had excellent questions and comments to make about this process of incorporating Fusion Theatre and what it means for the group. Well done Larry it will be worth the effort!

Most importantly, we performed the version of Pandora’s Box that we’ve been working on for the audience at the meeting as a ‘work in progress’. Well done everyone - it is good to have an audience!

Wednesday 10th May

A quick warm-up for the actors involved concentration and movement. We played Walk, stop, clap and jump and then a game we call Eleven (some may know it as Twenty-one but we find Eleven is challenging enough at the moment however we will look forward to getting to 21 later). After some breathing and posture work in preparation for vocal exercises. We did a call and respond exercise and an activity I’m calling Emotional Echoes.

This was all in preparation for the main activity tonight  which was for the company to work towards a more resolved performance of the story of Pandora’s Box that we’ve been working on.  As a lead in I played the soundscape of the story that the group resorded last week. Using the ideas we’d come up with two weeks ago we made a performance of the story making sure there were plenty of roles.

Who played what? Pandora - Jean-Maree. Zeus- Andrew. Pandora’s girl friends - Vicki, Pauline, Katrina, Margot, Mandy, Cheryl. Menacing voices and the evils - Vicki, Pauline, Katrina, Margot, Mandy, Paul. Hope - Cheryl. Percussion music and SFX -Alex.

We ran through the performance three times noting possible improvements each time. People want to keep making it better - there were lots of suggestions. The Deakin students are away on teaching practicum for another week so the plan is to have something to show them when they return.

 

A couple of comments for the blog:

Andrew: Drama is a great place to be especially with the great people involved. If you come along to drama you might see a great Nana Mouskouri look alike! Alex will know what I mean!

Katrina: Drama is the best and thanks to mum for dropping me down every week and for helping out. This is an extra special thanks because it is Mother’s Day on Sunday.

Happy Mother’s day to all  the mums.

Jo

Jo Blogs

Some days have passed since the last creative development workshop on 19th April - its all become a bit foggy so here is an impressionistic outline of what we’ve done. Tip for the day: Its always better to blog sooner rather than later!

After a physical warm-up lead by different members of the group ( all members are to take some responsibility for this now) we worked on a vocal warm-up. This included the crazy choir / emotional orchestra vocal activity - some people remembered this from when I worked briefly with the group last year.

Whats this play gonna be anyway?

Mandy asked ‘What’s the play going to be called?’. I explained for good reasons we haven’t got a name or even a fixed idea of what it will be like yet. At this stage it seems our performance will be near the end of the year so there is lots of time and I really don’t want to have to make hard decisions until we’ve had this creative development phase. There are plenty of ideas to try out and lots of performance styles to experiment with. Our three Deakin Drama Education students - Amara, Linley and Brendan were all involved this workshop. They are also joining in the experimental work and having some creative input - we love having them involved.

Deception after Dark

Improvisational work was continued along the lines of the Seven Deadly Sins. We then worked on the Museum after dark idea trying different people in the roles. First we took the idea of deception and shared ideas of what this meant to people - lies, sneaking, dishonesty, trickery and Debbie came up with the brilliant connection with masks remembering the last performance by the group in 2005. We created a sculpture with about six actors based on the deception theme - A sign that said ‘Deception’ was placed by the sculpture. We then tried a couple of different actors in the role of the cleaner who enters the museum to clean the sculpture - needless to say the sculpture was somewhat deceptive and each time the cleaner turned his/her back the sculpture moved and did something sending the cleaner into spiralling confusion and panic. All members of the ensemble contributed ideas to make the scene more effective. Additional characters were added as necessary. There were a couple of really interesting versions and we had lots of laughs. We did a similar thing with ’sloth’.

Who we actually are

In break time I read the blog and noted that Alex had already put up his profile. Everyone wanted to have all actors profiles on the blog. Katrina came with hers completed and she and her mum, June who is also a great assistant to the group, had prepared a profile sheet. We interviewed each other to create actors’ profiles and then had fun taking some photos for the blog. Everyone was able to have a look at their photo and see that they were satisfied with it. Take a look on the sidebar at Actors Profiles - they’ll be up soon! Then you’ll know who we are.

ciao for now - Jo