“Vocies 2000” was the school’s play for the end of the year (2007). Probably the first major school production as a play then the casual musical we put up. The production was and felt smaller then a musical, but the effort was still 100% as much.
The play’s story is… well, there really isn’t a strong single storyline structure to it. The play is made up from a number of skits, mirroring the image of the teenager’s life at school where we find the drama, the comedy and the thriller (if there is any) of everyday student’s situation. The cast is big, but the number of skits made the casting equally divided so everyone manage to say a line or show enough characterisation of contribution to the play. Off course, the plot of the play was basically the largest advantage to everyone experience or inexperience in Drama because we recognise a school environment and setting whiles the characters as teenagers, well, we are after all teenagers.
My goal was basically to put acting skills to its fullest and put up the best damn show ever! As a former drama student (of which I loved so much) I had to decide whether to drop Drama or Art as an IB subject. It was a hard decision but it seems that Art will play a major roll to my life in creating. But continuing on with the subject, I chose a character almost similar to my persona so all I have to do on stage is to magnify my personality to magnitudes of 100000. And this character’s name was Harry. While reading the script, I thought to myself “Hey, this guy is awesome. Funny, charming (in some sort of way), full of wit and absolutely good-looking!” There weren’t any photos in the script but I was already imagining the image of this character. “I can play this character! He’s excellent!” I told myself non-stop.
When auditions came up, Alexis agreed to take his lead as my skit partner as Jerry. Supposedly, my character was his best friend but like all best friends, I make fun of him. We went into the auditions and aced it. We both felt connected to our characters and in some way sort of way, we are our characters. This made not only characterisation easy but fun! Every time we rehearsed it was always progressing and ends with laughter (of success!).
Rehearsals were always fun and energetic as the build up to the performance night makes us jolt with delight everytime we thought about it. Everyone would always turn up in the drama classroom, fully prepared and ready; some even skipped a meal or two. Because it wasn’t all work during the rehearsals, but also a perfect way to bond and intersect well with others, especially students from younger or older year groups. Every time we met up was like another exciting social gathering!
But when we worked our scenes, some problems were encountered. Because Alexis and I were always working other stuff and our rehearsal days clashed with events such as the music fobessia, we didn’t have much time as others did. The day we blocked our scene with Ms. Tessone, not only we manage to cover three quarters of our scene properly, but we achieved a lot in terms of characterisation and acting. Alexis being my Drama classmate for 2 years gave enough practice of relationship to be more comfortable with each other during our act. We both even have experience role-playing with each other and love to improvise. Even though w had our own scene to act out, it was necessary for the both of us to act as back ground cast to give the more of a school’s atmosphere in other’s scenes.
There was two nights of performances, and the audience is secluded for family and friends because the production wasn’t large enough to advertise (such as our musicals) and also the stage seating isn’t large enough to support more then 300 people.
During the performances, all the cast put a lot of effort into their scenes to making a spectacular show. A lot of the cast are new to speaking roles on stage so their enthusiasm is no doubt really high. I enjoy the whole 2 nights as on stage and backstage. In the future, I hope I would be able to join other new production as a lot of my energy is release through acting.
I believe I achieved my goal in this activity well enough to say the performance was a hit amongst those who enjoyed it (particularly my family who I know enjoyed it). This demonstrates my enthusiast of the Arts and hopefully shines onto brighter things in my future.