The Followspot

Friday, July 18, 2008

I made a few decisions to my performance after much consideration. Below are my thought processes and decisions.

Firstly, I have chosen the song Liberali Fatali as my soundtrack for my character's insanity.
the song is sang in latin and by sopranos. The beginning of the song feels like something is speaking meekly, developing into someone screaming. The song then builds up to a fast paced momentum and strong and hard beats denote changes in the verses. The pace and the intensity of the music builds up to a climax and suddenly falls... only to rise again more rapidly and faster.
I choose this song because in the beginning, the works said meekly progressing to screaming show the words of the essay coming out stronger and stronger to haunt my character. Then the buildup of music can denote his insanity getting stronger and more intense, the beats can show his wrecking things in his room, a strong and striking visual and audio presentation. His madness can be building higher and higher until the climax of the song, where he can fall to the ground. During the slow interval, he can slowly tilt his head towards the ladder and notice the plate. The stronger, more rapid beats can show and amplify his movement up the ladder towards the plate. the entire song can stop with a line cue saying STOP, showing that he's had enough of his insanity. Thus, the song works very well with what i want to show on stage and helps me to choreograph my movement.

Secondly, I have decided to do away with the dumbbell and change my character to a junk food addict. firstly, in our last meeting, Mrs Kamal talked about how people did eat junk food when they are stressed and how other people worked out immensely. she told me to try both out and maybe combine the two to form one new kind of action a person does in immense stress. I've gone through the thought processes for both kinds of behaviors and realized that it is quite difficult to combine the two as they are entirely contradicting; one to gain weight and one to lose weight. And also, based on emotional memory, i can relate to the junk food binging behavior more than the crazily working out one. Hence it would be easier for me to get into role if my character is solely a junk food lover, more than a workaholic.

Lastly, I decided that I should in a sense "destroy" my front set. I would, in my insanity, throw newspapers down from the cubes and throw my papers and pens all over the floor, overturning the tables as the intensity of the madness increases. this will be symbolic of his dislike for the current time (in the previous post i mentioned about the stage being divided to show his past and present). the back set will not be destroyed but the front set will be, showing how much he misses his perfect past but hates his life after his dreams were destroyed. Moreover, in the messy front stage, the plate will be smashed. This will allow padding naturally and serves a symbolic purpose as well. The last item to add to the mess is the plate. The plate is a symbolic representation of the character and shows that living on top and amongst all the messed up and ruined life is the character himself. This adds another layer of meaning to the drama and makes it aesthatically pleasing as well.

These are currently the decisions i've made. definitely i made more decisions subconsciously. Will note them down when i find the time.

The actor froze at 9:46 AM