Yeah well the Dog ate it! Excuses to the RTDA

Ok so if this was a Monday Morning about five years ago and I was supposed to hand in or produce some work that I was meant to have done for University and I wanted to stretch my deadline I would have come up with some excuse. I think my main excuse during my college and University years was 'My Printer is playing up again/My computer crashed and wiped the work' which was true due to the strange models of printers and pc's my Dad would purchase. Today I have no excuse really for why chapter two of 'Approach to Theatre' is not completed, I started doing it but didn't finish it. I read the introduction to King Lear and a whole load of information on its historical background, context and source. I even read about where the text originates from and how the great Tragedians throughout history modified the script to solidify their performances but not a stanza of Shakespeare's verse has passed my eyes yet. This is because I was busy this weekend. Busy doing what I hear you cry? Well here is what I was busy doing.


As I mentioned on Saturday we went into the manic and heaving town centre where we added several tomes to my collection of theatre books. However two other things were picked up during this trip to the shops. One was a video game called 'Heavy Rain' and the other was a dvd boxset of that 90s Fantasy television series 'Xena'. Saturday afternoon was then spent watching a couple of episodes of Xena and then copious amounts of Heavy Rain. Now this may seem like a complete waste of time however there were lessons to be learned and I found both very helpful.

Xena the Warrior Princess is about a former Warlord named Xena who is trying to right the wrongs of all the slaughter, chaos and general misery she has rained down on the Ancient World. Along the way she meets friends such as Gabriel who joins her in her roam around Thrace and Greece (I am only up to episode four) doing good deeds and kicking evil doers behinds. Now you may ask what on earth I could possibly learn from such a fantastical piece of television but there are real lessons to be learned from material such as this. One is conviction, the actors in this show give great conviction to their lines and Lucy Lawless (Xena) plays it very straight and honest. There is a certain campness to the whole show, I love it, which would probably make most theatre goers and people who worship the method and serious acting cry for the blood of the producers actors and anyone else involved but the truth is that Xena is well acted and it is a great example of entertaining television. If as a drama student I need to remember anything its that ultimately being an actor is about being able to entertain people and Xena entertained me. Also the way it is costumed and designed is very theatrical and that instantly gives it credit to help me with my understanding of design for film, theatre and television.

Now Heavy Rain may seem like a very odd thing to be writing on a theatre blog but this piece of video gaming is amazingly theatrical. It is essentially an interactive film noir in which you control the outcome of the story and characters involved. Set in an American city somewhere in the Northeast this story revolves around a man named Ethan and his relationships which are ruined by two tragic events. Now I loved this game and LibraryGirl and myself were hooked to the screen all evening and all of Sunday nearly too which is all very good I hear you all cry but again what does it have to do with the theatre? Well Heavy Rain wasn't really animated in the conventional way that video games are done, no its characters move because they were motion captured to move that way. Their faces were motion captured in the same way that Tom Hanks was in Polar Express so what you actually are watching as you interact with this epic movie is real actors playing out a real script. What this game has shown me is the subtle nuances within facial features and movements, because of the way it was constructed I was in the game more and I felt as if the fourth wall no longer existed that I was the characters. I just admired the whole game and the acting ability put forward. The voice acting was very good as well, in recent years people have praised games such at GTA IV for the acting involved but having played both these games Heavy Rain is vastly superior. I really need to work on my facial expressions and vocal skills if I want to be a good actor and that is what I learnt from playing this game.

So yes that is why I did not do my work, that is what led to my distraction. Am I sorry? No not at all because I did learn some things and I can go back to Shakespeare now. This week I will be back on track with King Lear being analysed. This time though I won't fix myself to a two day working period. With home schooling and education you have to balance everything within your day to day life and maybe thats the biggest lesson this weekend has taught me. So keep up with me as I continue working hard at the RTDA.

RTDA: Chapter One of Approach to Theatre

Ok so chapter one of this book is really just an introduction to what to expect from the author and the publication. It is very well written because I get a real sense of Frances Mackenzie's voice and a genuine feeling of the type of woman she was. The chapter starts with her trying to answer the question 'What is Theatre?' which I think is a query we should always be making to challenge ourselves to work in different ways. Ms Mackenzie talks about her personal feelings as to what is the draw of the theatre and her personal background in the industry. The words and phrases she uses can sometimes sound quite matter of fact and she seems immovable on some of her beliefs, however when you read about how she worked her way up from producing in the amateur theatre to the professional industry taking all the small jobs along the way to eventually teaching production for the BDL you have to respect her. She rose to a high powered job in the theatre in an era when women as anything else apart from actors were few and far between. After introducing her credentials and feelings on the theatre she gets right into the subject of 'Finding a Producer' and starts talking about the problems involved in amateur theatre with regards to the producer role. I found this part to be very true to my personal experience within amdram and its interesting to see that even fifty years ago this was a genuine problem. Moving onto 'Training a Producer' she talks about how you can train a producer but the best ones are people with genuine underlying talent and passion. The feeling I get is that she doesn't truly believe one hundred percent that people who just fall into the role can be effective which does make me question her motives in writing this book. However near the end of page 6 you can see why she despairs so much of the people without passion or talent for the role with the cake story. I read this and couldn't believe that someone could be so foolish, but then again I have asked some stupid questions myself. Anyway this is the cake story.

'Some years ago a lady attended a course at BDL. At the end of the course she came to me full of indignation and announced "I am most dissapointed in this course"
"Oh, dear" said I "Why?"
"I came to find out what they use on the stage for cake and I asked the tutor and he said Cake!"
Nothing I could say would convince the lady that she had not been cheated'

Unbelievable isn't it that sometimes people will not accept that sometimes the simplest thing to do when recreating a scene on stage is just to make or use a real thing?

Well Chapter One didn't put me off this book, which is a good thing, and I actually feel that by following this publications course that I will either learn something new or solidify and refresh my memory from before RTDA.

Chapter two quickly follows in which we will be trying to discover what 'theatre' is by analyzing a play and starting that creative ball rolling by bouncing some ideas around. This is going to be a fun project over the weekend I can tell. Check in on Monday to find out how it went.