Its officially the time! Scenes, Scenes, Scenes

Description:

On Monday, we defined the schedule for the daily rehearsal of the different scenes we would present until the final demonstration of the school play. During Wednesday and Thursday’s class, we explored the physicality and personification of our given character starring the play. Finally, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday we had the school play rehearsals where we advanced the progress and development of the prologue, scene 1 and 2. 

Analysis:

Wow, stress in now a constant sensation I feel. During the rehearsals, by focusing on the demon's characterization I learned that I constantly, consistently and daily need to practice my different postures, the mixture of a low and high pitch for the projection of my voice, the pronunciation of the “r” and “s” consonants and others to maintain the essence my character, Indrajit. It true, this is the slight break we are doing to the Kathakali principles, but I learned that although there will be lines, the physicality of our characters will become the main focus of the play. This means that my strength resistance has to improve, has to majorly improve. By portraying, Indrajit, an impulsive daughter who wants to prove her strength to her mom, I noticed that I have to go beyond my comfort zone and my personality because Indrajit is the opposite of me. Theatre is putting yourself in other's shoes although it does not fit you. While exploring my characterization, I learned that evil forces are definitely NOT THE SAME as the demons. Evil forces are consistently at a lower base position while, use demons, need to follow the purulia chhau principles which consist that the basic position forms a square. Simply, without forming the square, you are no longer a demon. This constantly challenges me because throughout the entire play I cannot stand straight, or sit. Instead, i must stick to the square bas position because, or else, I am no longer a demon. This makes me constantly wonder that if I just do a slight or minimal change to my feet posture, would it break the tradition completely. Because the issue is that, it is quite exhausting to be in the same base position for a longtime. 

All acting conventions finally link together to create a worthy Kathakali theatrical environment. As demon, I combined and corporated some kalaripayattu postures for the interpretation of my character. For Indrajit, the twisted movement of the torso and arms are a key movement that defines and differentiates her from the other demons. I used the kalaripayattu elephant posture where it lifts its tusk for the androgynous movement of Indrajit’s arms. In addition, I added leaps from purulia chhau movements to portray the childish phase of Indrajit. Scene 2 is the introduction of the demons, the powerful moment where fury and fear are combined.  The exaggeration of face and body gestures is fundamental for the success of this play because if the presentation of the demons isn’t outraging, the play will lose essence and significance since the rival isn’t presented as powerful and defiable as we wished it to be. I must admit, there are some actresses that get lost in the moments or they do not do the face expressions clear enough since exaggeration is lacking. Okay, perhaps, I understand the reason they do not do it correctly because the fury expression is quite weird, creepy and ugly. Nevertheless, if you do not exhibit it, then how are you going to be a trust worthy demon if you have a plain face expression with no intentions! On top of this, after presenting the scene, it made me feel happy because we caused fear towards the audience, which was our main purpose and aim.

Connections:

By doing the construction of my character, I noticed that my inspiration source was my representation of the witches in Something Wicked. Although the posture was not alike, some similar exaggerated hand gestures fitted, to an extent, to Indrajit’s physicality. Another connection was that in Something Wicked, our triple witch had to emphasize on the r sound, just like Indrajit’s! While the s sound was a predominated sound of the minions or evil forces. However, although these two connections I discovered just linked to last year’s school play. I would like to place my personal perspective on the personification of Indrajit’s character just as I created Laura in my ensemble project “Nothing is what it seems”. However, I will use Mrs. Alicia’s suggestions about the projection of voice, but I will include my own interpretation so that Indrajit has a slight spark of myself. In addition, another connection I made was that when Olenka and I had to act the confrontation between Indrajit and Shurpananka, we had to constantly do exaggerated mad face expressions while bumping our heads against each other. This leaded me to the idea that we seemed like two dogs or bulls actually trying to kill each other.

Reflection:

The satire of being a teacher is actually quite funny. While I was teaching the conventions, I claimed all the effort and strength resistance from each actor even though they could not reach that barrier of trespassing their comfort zone. Now, when I did it, poor creatures. I felt so bad, now I completely understand the suffering they were passing through. It is actually much hard doing it completely in depth like the ones they were doing it in my workshops. This made me reflect on the more pressure you have, the outcome will be better. I placed myself in the same conditions as them, I attempted to maintain in these postures or actually complete to perfection the warm up (specially the one leg sit down which I still can’t do!!!) and simply, nothing is what it seems. You can believe warm up exercises are the easiest part. Well, they actually are; but for a non-Kathakali theatre actor it is difficult because in comparison with real famous Kathakali practicionists, we are not even near of reaching their level of performance because they have practice for several YEARS. In comparison, us, just nearly a month. However, this made me reflect on the idea that a constant practice of the postures and movements must be made, or else, we will not transmit the correct message to the audience, failing completely in maintaining the essence of Kathakali Indian theatre.

By being a demon, it is quite difficult to transmit the audience that we are not anymore evil forces or witches. Establishing the difference is quite hard because, to an extent, the hand gestures are similar, except, the inclusion of mudras marks the difference. The square, the square, the square. The demons must and have to form the square, slide on the floor with the square and live with the square. This is because if there is a slight modification to the parallel movement of your feet, the square is broken and there is no longer a Kathakali essence. This makes me reflect on the idea that what would happen if I just do a minimal movement of my toes, would it break the tradition completely, or just a bit? Moreover, how can I maintain for a long time in the same square basic position if it is seriously, very exhausting? (I mean it, seriously). In terms of the mudras, how can the demons not get distracted with the exaggerated hand gestures and focus more on the mudras? If the finger gestures contribute to the actresses a much better demon physicality whether than the mudras with thousands of meanings?