'
Introduction:
Our melodramatic play was about a damsel called Aurora (then we changed the name to Jessica) and her love washing up on an island as the resultant of the wreck of a cruise ship. The evil villain (Vicious Victoria) was watching them and wanted to get the damsel's gold and jewels in order to help build an island of gold, even though she only has a small pile on the floor! Her hero Gerald comes to the rescue with the help of a bracelet purposely dropped by Jessica as a clue to finding her. We asked Yousef to assist us with the music as he had been absent and was not able to participate in the play. Each character had a different theme of music which played when it was their turn on stage, for example when Jessica the damsel spoke, a relaxing song with birds in the background would play, and when the villain came on, evil, thunderous music would be played.
Sadly, Sabine had left school early so we had to substitute her role as a damsel with the help of Bhavya, who was set to play the villain's henchman. Bhavya had only twenty minutes to learn the script and actions previously played by Sabine, and regarding the time he had, I reckon he acted very well and helped save the play. Sabine had been given the responsibility of bringing a ring, but since she was absent, we had to borrow a bracelet from the costume cupboard instead of a ring.
I find the ending of our play to be very creative. No other group had done the same. We all took turns bowing in the role of our individual characters, then bowed as one in unison. This was also helpful as it signified the end of the play. I thought it was very original. When bowing, Alissa went first and done a stuck up evil bow. Bhavya and added a comedic twist by making his wig purposely fly off! And I went up on stage and done a cheesy wink and smile then bowed flexing and showing off my "muscles."
What was the most difficult part of this task and how did you overcome it? The most difficult challenge that we faced was being put under pressure due to Sabine leaving school early. We had only twenty minutes to improvise with the script and teach the chosen Bhavya the lines and actions played by Sabine, and we also had to teach Yousef the change of music as there was no henchman as originally planned. We decided to plan out how we would manage our time, so we decided that it would be more appropriate for us to change the script later on at home or after we had completed our performance. Miss Ruiz told us that it would be suitable to remove the role of the villain's henchman and swap Bhavya to the role of Sabine. We then acted out our play with Yousef practicing switching the music until Bhavya was confident that eh had learned the lines and placement on stage.
What exactly was your group trying to communicate with your play? The story starts off with Alissa playing as Vicious Victoria the villain hiding in her dungeon spying on a hero and damsel who washed up on her "Island of Gold." She captures the damsel in an attempt to steal her jewelry but is found indignant when the hero saves the day and knocks her out, (she still remains alive). The moral of our play is to never do evil and steal from others as there will be awful consequences and someone will find out. I think we successfully played the storyline we were trying to communicate as we articulated our voices in order to project and speak loudly so others could hear the message that we had delivered and our voices had clarity so the audience could understand our lines and successfully follow the story. Also, we stuck to our characters' given personalities. The damsel had a breathy, melodic voice, and with Bhavya being a male, done well as it was difficult for his voice to produce such stereotypically "feminine" tone of pitch. Alissa had to speak with a villainous voice which was comprised of indignant and resonant tones. She projected her voice loudly so she could be heard over the music, and extended the end of her words to appear more immoral and wrongful. Bhavya produced facial expressions of sombre by creasing his eyes as if he were tearing up, an expression of despair by lifting his eyebrows and making "puppy-dog eyes" looking innocent. Alissa looked smug when she admired her "island of gold", but soon realised that there was not enough to fill an island!
My acting: Overall, I think my acting contained an intended heroic attitude. My facial expression did not contain much and was quite bland, but I did always lift my chin up and try to face the audience as much as possible so they would not just see my back. I spoke with a loud, clear, reassuring and brave tone to exaggerate my role as a hero.
What was most successful about your performance? I believe that the most successful part of our performance was the build up and plot. Alissa's acting and lines to say really made the story start clear and it was obvious what villainous plot was to lie ahead. At the scene of the plot, I made it very obvious that Bhavya the damsel was in danger by saying the lines: "SHE MUST BE IN DANGER." Also, the ending when we all bowed (described in the introduction) was a pleasurable creative and original touch.
What sounds did you use and why? To make our story even more melodramatic, we decided to set a melodramatic piece of music to represent each character. The music matched their personality and descriptions as a melodramatic character. Since damsels are associated with flowers, birds and other melodic animals and nature, we decided to give the damsel the theme song of nature with birds in the background. The piece itself was called NATURE. Villains are obviously soulless, immoral, sinful and dishonorable, we decided to set a theme song with a thunderous background. It has suspense and sudden hits incorporated within. When one is asked to imagine a hero, they immediately associate it with superman and that is why we chose the prominent superman theme tune. One thing we could have improved on was adding sound effects and a recording or card instead of me saying: 'MEANWHILE."
What role did each person in your group take on and why? Firstly, we were drafting and discussing our qualities, what were our strengths and weaknesses. Alissa was very strong in acting so we decided to give her the part with the most lines and features in scenes to be the villain. Her ability to adapt her voice made our villain sound unique and feminine, yet still extraordinarily evil! Bhavya has a bubbly personality, so we planned for him to be the henchman but we had to switch him to the damsel when sabine left as the hero and villain were two important characters and we could not double role. Sabine had originally intended to be the damsel has she has a naturally high pitched and sweet voice and could take on the role with ease, but to our misfortune, she had to leave school early. I chose to be the hero as I could put on a heroic accent and speak with a loud and clear voice. Also, I memorize lines well so I was given a part with many lines to speak.
What could you have done better? As informed by Miss Ruiz, other groups had met up after school during break and lunch to rehearse their play. Our group only used class time. We failed to rehearse with props and costumes, therefore resulted with me forgetting to wear the superhero cape before making a heroic entrance on stage. Bhavya could have shown his face more and it would have been excellent if all group members could participate, but overall, I think that our performance was greatly successful.
What do you feel you have learned from completing this task?
During this task as well as overall in the unit, I have improved on and learned many skills and new information.
-Melodramatic acting skills: I have learned techniques to exaggerate and project my voice so my character will be melodramatic and my voice will be heard. I need to use air and speak it out to make my voice as loud as possible in a speaking tone and not shouting!
-Melodramatic stock characters: I have got the chance to learn about the traits and personalities of melodramatic stock characters, as well as their style of acting.
-Acting techniques and tips on what to do when a play has no budget
-How to successfully analyse my strengths and weaknesses as well as write a detailed reflection on my work!
Could you use your skills in any other subject area?
I believe the skills develoepd on in drama will be helpful in any subject where I am required to do public speaking, presenting or debating. My confidence has sky-rocketed and I have developed a feeling of more comfort and confidence within myself. Subjects such as music and english will require me to use my skills to perform to the best of my ability.
I find the ending of our play to be very creative. No other group had done the same. We all took turns bowing in the role of our individual characters, then bowed as one in unison. This was also helpful as it signified the end of the play. I thought it was very original. When bowing, Alissa went first and done a stuck up evil bow. Bhavya and added a comedic twist by making his wig purposely fly off! And I went up on stage and done a cheesy wink and smile then bowed flexing and showing off my "muscles."
What was the most difficult part of this task and how did you overcome it? The most difficult challenge that we faced was being put under pressure due to Sabine leaving school early. We had only twenty minutes to improvise with the script and teach the chosen Bhavya the lines and actions played by Sabine, and we also had to teach Yousef the change of music as there was no henchman as originally planned. We decided to plan out how we would manage our time, so we decided that it would be more appropriate for us to change the script later on at home or after we had completed our performance. Miss Ruiz told us that it would be suitable to remove the role of the villain's henchman and swap Bhavya to the role of Sabine. We then acted out our play with Yousef practicing switching the music until Bhavya was confident that eh had learned the lines and placement on stage.
What exactly was your group trying to communicate with your play? The story starts off with Alissa playing as Vicious Victoria the villain hiding in her dungeon spying on a hero and damsel who washed up on her "Island of Gold." She captures the damsel in an attempt to steal her jewelry but is found indignant when the hero saves the day and knocks her out, (she still remains alive). The moral of our play is to never do evil and steal from others as there will be awful consequences and someone will find out. I think we successfully played the storyline we were trying to communicate as we articulated our voices in order to project and speak loudly so others could hear the message that we had delivered and our voices had clarity so the audience could understand our lines and successfully follow the story. Also, we stuck to our characters' given personalities. The damsel had a breathy, melodic voice, and with Bhavya being a male, done well as it was difficult for his voice to produce such stereotypically "feminine" tone of pitch. Alissa had to speak with a villainous voice which was comprised of indignant and resonant tones. She projected her voice loudly so she could be heard over the music, and extended the end of her words to appear more immoral and wrongful. Bhavya produced facial expressions of sombre by creasing his eyes as if he were tearing up, an expression of despair by lifting his eyebrows and making "puppy-dog eyes" looking innocent. Alissa looked smug when she admired her "island of gold", but soon realised that there was not enough to fill an island!
My acting: Overall, I think my acting contained an intended heroic attitude. My facial expression did not contain much and was quite bland, but I did always lift my chin up and try to face the audience as much as possible so they would not just see my back. I spoke with a loud, clear, reassuring and brave tone to exaggerate my role as a hero.
What was most successful about your performance? I believe that the most successful part of our performance was the build up and plot. Alissa's acting and lines to say really made the story start clear and it was obvious what villainous plot was to lie ahead. At the scene of the plot, I made it very obvious that Bhavya the damsel was in danger by saying the lines: "SHE MUST BE IN DANGER." Also, the ending when we all bowed (described in the introduction) was a pleasurable creative and original touch.
What sounds did you use and why? To make our story even more melodramatic, we decided to set a melodramatic piece of music to represent each character. The music matched their personality and descriptions as a melodramatic character. Since damsels are associated with flowers, birds and other melodic animals and nature, we decided to give the damsel the theme song of nature with birds in the background. The piece itself was called NATURE. Villains are obviously soulless, immoral, sinful and dishonorable, we decided to set a theme song with a thunderous background. It has suspense and sudden hits incorporated within. When one is asked to imagine a hero, they immediately associate it with superman and that is why we chose the prominent superman theme tune. One thing we could have improved on was adding sound effects and a recording or card instead of me saying: 'MEANWHILE."
What role did each person in your group take on and why? Firstly, we were drafting and discussing our qualities, what were our strengths and weaknesses. Alissa was very strong in acting so we decided to give her the part with the most lines and features in scenes to be the villain. Her ability to adapt her voice made our villain sound unique and feminine, yet still extraordinarily evil! Bhavya has a bubbly personality, so we planned for him to be the henchman but we had to switch him to the damsel when sabine left as the hero and villain were two important characters and we could not double role. Sabine had originally intended to be the damsel has she has a naturally high pitched and sweet voice and could take on the role with ease, but to our misfortune, she had to leave school early. I chose to be the hero as I could put on a heroic accent and speak with a loud and clear voice. Also, I memorize lines well so I was given a part with many lines to speak.
What could you have done better? As informed by Miss Ruiz, other groups had met up after school during break and lunch to rehearse their play. Our group only used class time. We failed to rehearse with props and costumes, therefore resulted with me forgetting to wear the superhero cape before making a heroic entrance on stage. Bhavya could have shown his face more and it would have been excellent if all group members could participate, but overall, I think that our performance was greatly successful.
What do you feel you have learned from completing this task?
During this task as well as overall in the unit, I have improved on and learned many skills and new information.
-Melodramatic acting skills: I have learned techniques to exaggerate and project my voice so my character will be melodramatic and my voice will be heard. I need to use air and speak it out to make my voice as loud as possible in a speaking tone and not shouting!
-Melodramatic stock characters: I have got the chance to learn about the traits and personalities of melodramatic stock characters, as well as their style of acting.
-Acting techniques and tips on what to do when a play has no budget
-How to successfully analyse my strengths and weaknesses as well as write a detailed reflection on my work!
Could you use your skills in any other subject area?
I believe the skills develoepd on in drama will be helpful in any subject where I am required to do public speaking, presenting or debating. My confidence has sky-rocketed and I have developed a feeling of more comfort and confidence within myself. Subjects such as music and english will require me to use my skills to perform to the best of my ability.
Props:
-Villain cape
-Damsel wig and dress
-Fake gold
-Bracelet
-Rope
-Phone/camera
Original script (unedited after Sabine's unexpected absence:)
Jasmine,
ReplyDeleteThis is a very thorough reflection. However, you DID go over the 3-4 minute time limit. If this was an IB portfolio task, they wouldn't have listened past the time alotted.
If you would've said exactly HOW "Subjects such as music and english will require me to use my skills to perform to the best of my ability.", that would've gotten you the 8
Criterion D: 7