Curiosity Killed The Cat - Bob's Drama Journal, 6/3/03

DRAMA JOURNAL - AUG 22 2003 Click here to go home
TERM THREE SO FAR DISCETED IN A SEMI-MORBID, BUT HONEST AND HUMOROUS WAY

Ok, I've promised an entry for quite some time now, so here it is, although I am pretty much getting closer to being fully recovered from an absolute motherfucker of a flu, if I may say so, one which has seen my temperature go as high as 39.7 degrees. So I thought: what better way to clear my head from all of those nutcases on The Jerry Springer Show than to write a journal? Anyway, without further ado, I may aswell recap what we've done so far this term.

First lesson after the holidays we come back to find ourselves finishing off the informative workshopping on certain styles of theatre assigned last term. Nothing too thrilling to note here. Moving on...

The following lesson we played a coule of games. on of those games I can't stand, and it's pretty obvious if we have to play it. It's the Key Game, where everyone is sorted into two teams, either side of the stage, and the numbered people from each side square off to get the key in some absurd form, like an animal, or even worse, the Incredible Hulk. Bleh.

After that we got into some serious stuff, in the shape of Micheal Gow's Away. Now, seeing this is my journal and I can be as much of a pompous arrogant prick as I can be honest and humble, I'll try and be honest when I say that the performance Hailey and I put on was pretty good. Hell, I'll cut the bullshit. It was damn good. Well compared to the other above-average performances. I don't know why I think that, maybe because the props I had made me believe the character I was portraying just that little bit more. Then again, was portraying a woman. Who knows? I can say that working with Hailey is easy and we had fun rehearsing is. I don't know what that has to do with anything but maybe working with someone like her boosted my performance.

A few lessons after that, I ended up with Hailey again, this time we were given a situation, and we had to add dialogue. As far as I remember it had something to do with a corpse in the back of the car, but things got out of hand when the scene changed from a car to a ravine and I was forced to use the same dailogue. Didn't seem very realistic, having Hailey (my daughter in the play) asking me what the noise in the car was when she was fifty meters away from me and the car. Magical stuff.

Skipping along past the lessons not worth elaborating on (which includes the week Benney had a Hulk/super hero fetish) to a point where Gemma, who was in my group along with Kylie and Wade was away. Infact I don't think she actually came at all during the course of preparing/performing. We had to perform our Gary/Sue-Ann peice from Gary's House. Wade served as a pretty good director and me and Kylie were cast in the roles of Gary, and Sue-Ann respectively. I must say I had a heap of fun working with this group and I love working with Kylie as she's always up for a laugh, and Wade's just an all-round champ, with something I don't have...the ability to stay serious for more than half a second. Never-the-less, we were scheduled to begin our performance up in the top corner of the theatre - which was our unusual but dramatic and suitable choice - Mr Rogers burst in the door. After realising the comotion he caused, he put his 'drama is about being trees and bummblebees and the rest is bullshit' theory into work and teamed up with yours truly, who had reverted to the role of Sue-Ann. Funny stuff. What wasn't funny was how good Kylie and I were. Bragging again, I know, but I could LITERALLY picture the wall of the theatre as the side of the house I was building on. Maybe it was something I drank, but thats two things now I'm pretty proud of, and I'm sort of starting to hit my proverbial straps, as they say.

After a curriculum day (Friday), the next class (Tuesday) was devoted to helping out the Primary School kids from God knows which school....but the point is that it was a fun, semi-relaxing break from realatively tough character/theatre type/structure stuff. We did get back into that with an exerpt from Morris Gleitzman's Two Weeks With The Queen.

The title, laced with double entendre, reflected one of the two pieces we were given from the book. After several recounts and reformations of groups, we had two pairs doing the Colin/Mum exerpt and two groups doing the Colin/Nurse/Ted/Griff bit as well. I ended up going with Mel and we pulled off quite a performance, which like the last one, had the script literally thrown away. I have to say that I kind of needed that...and I won't say what exactly that means - work that out for yourself, but I will tell you that I wasnt referring talking about ad libbing....

Fast forward past the single-handed dismantling of the credibility and innocence of nursery rhymes, to the small class in the foyer where we reformed our three groups into two (due to absences) and acted out Jack and the Beanstalk. Our group (aka the immature triangle, Nick, Wade and I) had to act it out with a lyrical/rhytmical context, and the other group (Mel, Ashkaan, Gemma and Little Miss Mockery Rachel) had a non-naturalistic element to implement. Oh now I've been waiting to say this, especially after Rachel kept bellowing "hurry up" in what could be aptly described as the most annoying state she's ever been in (don't be fooled, she tops that all the time).
Anyway, don't take this the wrong way. The non-naturalistic group did a fish (yes...fish) version of Jack and his adventures. Oh, and heres the part I wanted to say....it was shit. Pure shit. No sense whatsoever, made all the sweeter by Rachel's egotistical attitude before preparation time came to a halt. Our group on the other hand (with the saying 'the blind leading the blind' in full swing here) did a good job. Our story was laced with other references (obviously Rachel didn't pick them up as she was like "I don't get it" every time Wade, Nick or myself took a breath.) Anyway, although it may not have been obvious, there was double entendre there alright, just like the nursery rhymes themselves. Rachel 0, Les/Bob 1. It feels good to say that, but she'd probably argue that her score is higher that zero.

Since that lesson we've made a few attempts - all unsuccessful - of starting performance of the Mr Melancholy exerpt. We've also watched paint dry. Literally. But, for the past five days, I've been the sickest I have ever been, but I'm feeling much better now. Obviously that means I can't elaborate on what happened on Tuesday, Thursday and today (Friday) as I wasn't there, but I'll be sure to catch up on anything important come Tuesday. Until then, I'll leave you with a line I've heard Jerry Springer say five times this week, after his infamous 'Final Thought', and it goes a little something like this: take care of yourselves and each other. And on that note I'm gonna grab something to eat and possibly watch some more WWE wrestling, so until next time, I bid you farewell.

-Bob

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