I am very glad to have chosen Theater as my IB Group 6 class. I can already notice looking back on our filmed performances from the last three months that I have become more willing to put myself out there on stage without feeling awkward, though I can continue to work on that going forward. Learning all of the different methods to put yourself into the character from our Stanislavski unit has definitely helped me with that, as it allows me to ignore my own hangups and simply act as the character would.
The Brecht unit, though it went in a very different direction from the Stanislavski one, taught me a lesson that is equally as important: the ability of theater to change the world. Realizing that the art you are performing could seriously impact people who could then go out and affect the world certainly puts more pressure on the performers, but it also gives theater an air of distinguished importance, and has motivated me to push myself and take my acting more seriously. While Brecht stressed making characters unsympathetic and keeping the audience from becoming fully immesered in the world of the play so that they would be more likely to pay attention to and later act on the social messages being taught, I feel that having sympathetic characters can help with sending the message in another way; when bad things happen to characters you like because of the unjust system, it makes the viewer emotionally invested in fighting against that system for the sake of the characters. Humans are generally more likely to respond to a crisis if they are shown its direct impact on a human life, after all.
Outside of specific units, having to plan out scenes, adapted or original, with my classmates has increased my appreciation for both directing and cooperation. When you are in charge of setting up the scene, you have to have very significant detail planned out for the actors to make the most out of. You are the one with the most direct control over what message the performance is trying to send, and how the audience should feel. In particular, the scene we adapted from The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Brecht showed both the advantages and disadvantages of props. Having props can not only make a scene more realistic, but also, as they did in our performance, add extra subtle layers to the scene with how the actors interact with them. The downside of props is that you have to keep track of them, making sure that people bring them out when they’re supposed to and that they use the rights ones and, perhaps most importantly, that the props never get in the way of the acting. I will be considering all of these points going into future scenes we do for this class with props.
Lastly, as the main video editor for our class, I’ve been slowly learning about both how to best balance audio so that both the actors and any background music can be heard at the apportioned volumes (plus what kind of music is most fitting for the scene), as well as how important camera positioning is. I hope to continue improving on these skills and the others mentioned above going into the rest of this year and beyond.
