Chinese Theatre on Stage

From the palaces to the streets, performance is an integral part of the Chinese culture. As it gets closer to summer, here are some of the kinds of performances I know I'll see when I move around the world for seven weeks.

I'll start with the infamous Peking Opera. One of the most well-known types of theatre in China, it grew out of the eighteenth century when it was popular among the members of the Qing Dynasty. It consists of extravagant costumes and masks which portray both human beings and animals. There is opera style singing as well as very slow and mechanic dancing. It is particularly popular in Beijing, the city from which it's name comes. 

Chinese acrobatics, although not usually used to tell a linear story, are the pinnacle of Chinese theatre. Popular all over China and with people of all ages, the acrobats are trained from a young age to be able to do mind blowing performances with their bodies. From being able to hold themselves completely horizontal from a vertical pole in mid-air to balancing an umbrella on one toe, each act is filled with amazing performances accompanied by great lighting and music.

A less famous category of theatre in China, Chinese New Years plays are extremely common. Around Chinese New Year, which will be on February 10th this coming year, it is traditional to reenact the history of the Chinese Zodiac. In the Zodiac, there are twelve animals that fall in the same order in each twelve years cycle. This order comes from an ancient story in which all of the animals participate in a race. The first animal to finish was the rat, then the ox, and so forth. It is particularly common to put these shows on in schools to help children remember the story of Chinese New Year. (I played the rat in my school's Chinese New Year play when I lived in Beijing!)

~ Julie

Bring on Your Wrecking Ball

A couple of weeks ago Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band  brought it live in the Verizon Center in front of a sold out crowd. A life-long fan, I have never been disappointed by the extreme stamina and talent of the E Street Band and that night was no exception.

With such a deep history of music, the E Street Band played a combination of some of their oldest pieces and a bunch from their latest album, Wrecking Ball. Their experience and talent kept them going through numerous requested pieces and oldies that hadn't been performed in decades. I was especially impressed by the ability of the Band's newest member, Jake Clemons, the nephew of Clarence Clemons who passed away this passed year. This young saxophone player had some huge shoes to fill but he rolled right along with the crazy atmosphere of the E Street Band's improvisation.

My favorite part of the evening, though, was watching the music I had been listening to for weeks come to life. On the stage, the reality of the lyrics Springsteen writes mean so much more. For me, this is the reason live performance is so much greater than recordings of any kind. Watching the artist feel the words he writes or even watching the actor delve into the character he has created is a communication with the audience that transcends what is possible on T.V. and in movies. This, I realized, is why I love acting on a stage where human connection with the audience is made possible.

~Julie

You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

 

And once again the end of another great show comes around and the cast of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown finds itself full of post-show emotions. It is rare that one gets to work with a group of people in such harmony, but this cast was the closest I have been a part of yet! And that's not even to mention the extraordinary talent that each of the actors in the cast possesses! It was a piece of my life that I know I will carry into whatever I pursue next.

But the experience would not be complete without a little bit of reflection and evaluation:

I would be lying if I said that this was what I had planned on doing with my spring semester. And yet, like always, I was brought back to my favorite theatre in the world to play Linus van Pelt in the Woodstock cast of AHC's You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. But it was only with some serious convincing, particularly from our music director, that I decided to take a risk and jump into my first major role in a musical.

This show taught me so much about my own self-confidence and desire to try out things that might be out of my comfort zone. But even more than that, it taught me how to use the stage as a place for experimentation. I know that I won't get anywhere by hiding away and playing children was a very effective way to learn this lesson. The more I thought about my characterization and watched those around me delve into their's, the more important the simplicity of childhood became in our telling of Charlie Brown's story. Little kids have no problem speaking their minds, or playing the games they want to, or even sounding a little silly sometimes. And while this was what Linus was experiencing on the stage, it was also what I was realizing inside. You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is full of these kinds of lessons and I hope the audiences could sense how important they really are.

~Julie

Laughing: Russian-Style

Lately I have had several interactions with Russian literature which have helped me to better understand their culture and their influence in theatre. In I.B. English we recently finished reading Crime and Punishment, a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which tells the story of a young man who is dissatisfied with his life and ends up murdering a pawnbroker because he thinks this will benefit humanity. He suffers from the consequences of this action greatly until he confesses his crime and is sent to imprisonment in Siberia. Themes of suffering as well as poverty and drunkenness are prevalent throughout the novel.

In I.B. Theatre, we also read a Russian piece called The Seagull. It is actually a play, though, written by Anton Chekhov, one of the greatest Russian playwrights. The story of The Seagull revolves around the struggles of the upper class in Russian society and ends with the destruction of innocent life and even a suicide. The play was written in the late nineteenth century, only a decade after Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment was published.

Because I had the background of reading Dostoevsky before Chekhov, I was aware of the difficult times that Russians were experiencing during their industrialization. However, the struggles of the people in The Seagull seemed generally less significant than those in Crime and Punishment. Interestingly enough, this is how Russians created comedy. They were experiencing such difficult times, so even their comedy is dark. Russians would be kept entertained merely by the ridiculous worries of a man who's biggest problem is an addiction to writing. Even ending the story with a suicide would please the audience because the world that the characters live in was just so unrealistic to them the events were laughable.

I think that this points out the importance of context in the understanding of characters and even of the plots of theatre performances. So often, plays are written for specific audiences of  a certain time period, and it is only through extensive exploration that they can have meaning out of context. One of the most interesting aspects of an actor's life is the duty to learn about a completely foreign culture and time, and the give it a purpose in the modern world.

~Julie

A Voice from the Past

Upon the suggestion of one of my friends, I recently went to see The Artist, the nearly silent film about the transition from silent films to talkies, which came out last year. The movie was stunning from start to finish. It was a compelling story with talented actors and a new twist on the classic conflict between youth and tradition.

My favorite aspect of the movie, though, was watching how much more important movements are in silent films than in regular movies. I have always struggled with using my body on stage and so I was amazed to see how much more specific movement is when doing silent films. How do you say everything you need to say without your voice? Sure, the movements are exaggerated, but it is so much more complicated than that. Each time George Valentin moved his eyes, or adjusted his mouth, it changed every aspect of how his emotion was being perceived. Even the adjusting of a garment can change an entire character. Without words, the focus of the audience is direct towards their expressions and the way they use their body and so it becomes exponentially more important.

I wonder how many times they had to shoot each scene to get each detail just right. Maybe their skill comes from the fact that the stars of the movie are both dancers, but I was captivated by how aware of their bodies they were. I personally aspire to develop this sense of self-awareness and hope to learn more about the techniques of silent films.

~Julie

Suspending Our Disbelief

The other day in class, my teacher was trying to explain a theory to us using an analogy and scenario. However, every time she began, someone in the class interjected skepticism or a hypothetical problem with the story. For some reason, it was nearly impossible for everyone to accept the fiction and be entertained by it.

I think this is indicative of a greater problem with how entertainment is viewed in general. Unless we have experienced a situation or have seen it occur to some extent in some aspect of our lives, it is difficult to captivate our attentions. It is almost like we have isolated ourselves so that we won't even allow our imaginations to take us on even the slightest journey from the straight and narrow path ahead.

So what does this mean for the performer? It means that it has become our duty to break down the barriers. When people are satisfied with their lives, they are unwilling to consider what we have to offer. However, by learning how to sell the performance that people never knew they wanted to see, we can build curiosity. The more connections we can make with the audience, the more we will be able to pull them in and let them believe in the imaginary world we are living. And by helping them suspend their disbelief, we might help them learn a little something about themselves.

~Julie

The I.B. Highlights Show

As the culmination of a great deal of hard work, my fellow students in IB Theatre HL 1 and I performed our one-woman-shows in the IB Highlights show this past Friday! It was a true success for each one of us and it gave us a chance to paint our own personal stories on the stage. The show was a collection of pieces that we each put together, surrounding a theme we wanted to express to the audience. I chose the theme: Happiness is the Road, and ended up performing three monologues (including one from Seinfeld), a mask piece, a song called "Dark Clouds" by Soozie Tyrell, and my own rendition of Goldilocks. I really pleased with the final product!

As at the end of any major project, though, it is time to reflect on the process of putting the show together and on how well it was received by the audience.

At the beginning I was clueless. I had no idea how I would be able to put together a show that told a personal story without boring the audience with endless tales about my life. I started out by picking a theme that I think about and talk about all the time. We began writing in class, time which I spent jotting down unfinished stories and ideas that I thought were related to my theme. Slowly, but surely  learned how to piece together a well formulated monologue. The part I had the most difficult time with was learning how to direct a monologue at a particular person. I would find myself just talking for no good reason. However, seeing the other performers in their pieces really helped me identify who I could speak to in each monologue. I eventually ended up with several pieces that I was really happy with.

Another area of my show that took a lot of work was the mask piece. I knew early on what the plot of the piece was and exactly how I would use it to relate to my theme. I had to spend a lot of time, though, working on the details. I had to learn how I could interact with objects that weren't there, for example the car and the cow that I imagined in my mask piece. For the car, I practiced how I would use the car in the piece by actually getting in and out of my car. I had to make sure that I imagined every detail of the car I was using so that I could interact with the car on stage the same way as I would if I was on the road. The cow was an even more unique situation. I wanted there to be a cow in the middle of the road that interrupted my journey home. I knew I would have a difficult time communicating such a random animal so I worked on creating the idea of some kind of living thing. It ended up being one of the most successful parts of my show as a whole and one of the most well liked.

My song was a particularly scary piece for me because it was the first time I had ever sung alone on stage. When choosing my pieces, though, I felt that the song, "Dark Clouds" was essential to the theme and was an opportunity for me to take a chance. I knew the song ahead of time so the process was more about coming out of myself to be able to sing in front of an audience. i am very proud of the results of this piece.

Finally, the Goldilocks piece was unique in and of itself. It was the last piece I wrote but it was one of my favorites because I though it was unique. When my show started coming together, I felt that I needed a piece that stood out and was different from the rest. I talked to my senior director about how I could incorporate the different types of theatre that we had learned about throughout the year in another piece. She told me to look back through my journal and see which kinds of theatre stood out to me personally. The result was the story of Goldilocks that required the audiences curiosity. I decided to make the character I was playing a mystery that the audience could discover details about as I went on Goldilocks' adventure. With some very well placed sound effects and lighting, the story unfolded very nicely.

Ultimately, my favorite part in putting together the show was working with my director. I personally didn't know anything about lighting before the show. However, working with my director, we were able to combine my visions for each piece with her experience and background knowledge. A lot of the details, like the light shift in the mask piece from amber to light blue, at the exact moment that the music started, I could never have come up with on my own. I learned so much in the short amount of time that I spent with my director and I felt that my show improved exponentially because of the suggestions she had.

~Julie