Comedia Dell´Arte

After we were finally over with the Greek Theater unit, we started the Comedia Dell´Arte unit. We have been learning about several of the characters that revolt and form the world of comedia. The first day, we did an exercise in which the interpretation of a Zanni was required. I will admit I absolutely detested the Zanni´s character, since even though they may be extremely fun to watch due to their borderline retarded clumsiness, I found pretty comical, since he earned his title with a badge and a big belly, not knowledge. I feel I could interpret this character, but not to my full potential, since well, I lack a humongous belly. Columbina is out of the question, I have to be a woman, sadly, even though I really found the idea of the cunning servant interesting. The Pantalone, again, was not one of my favorite characters. He was funny, but interpreting a horny greedy old man is just not my idea of acting, specially since we have to keep it school appropriate, if not I believe I would have a fun time. Maybe too fun. Capitano seemed like an extremely funny character, since even though he acted very tough and with a high standard, he ran away from trouble every single time he could, which made his position ironic, due to the fact that it is bravery which gets you to that position. Kind of reminded me of the Three Musketeers or Much Ado About Nothing. The one role I thought I would not feel comfortable with, but allowed stupidly gracious exaggeration was The Lovers. The Lovers let me do my favorite thing in acting in general; Talk with a  flagrant mexican accent. There is absolutely nothing I enjoy more than talking with a mexican accent, since I do it well and it can make the death of a puppy sound funny. My acting with Pedro was enjoyable, even though we had a small misunderstanding on what exactly we had to do, and the lines did not come out until after approximately 30 or 40 seconds after they had to. From what we have done until now, I feel that this unit will be a promising one, and that the class will have a lot of fun- If we let loose and lose absolutely all sense of timidness, kind of like the people in the video we observed in class which  as soon as told by their teacher, popped into duck action and started doing exactly what they had to with no remorse at all, all while dressed in tights. I am now actually beginning to feel more comfortable in class with the group we have, but definitely not as comfortable as last year. Looking forward to it, though.

Play Review John Malkovich

I do not mean to be rude or to impose a feeling of negative criticism upon the reader, (Ms. Morrison), but I´ve enjoyed staring blankly at a wall more than I enjoyed The Infernal Comedy. The endless singing of the two ladies strangled by their bras was like raped by 1000 screeching bats and even though John Malkovich´s acting was not bad at all, the play itself, in my opinion was defecation. And again, even though the acting was good, you can´t make a diamond out of feces. I wanted to leave early during the intermission, except there was no intermission, and the seats were just an inch too short to place your head back comfortably. The thing about this "play" is that it´s more of a 2 hour monologue with opera intermissions. I´m not going to lie, I wanted to shoot myself through those parts, yet some of the things John Malkovich said were actually interesting and intelligent, and he did do the crazy man part well. What intrigued me a bit is that I actually felt that he was a tad crazy himself. The time spent there I felt was lost, since I could have been watching t.v or picking my nose, all that kind of productive stuff. The lighting was TERRIBLE, the reflectors were like flashlights, they were shaky as hell, and it seemed like the crew were handicapped. My only positive review about this: The orchestra was BEAUTIFUL. They played in perfect synchronization and the pieces they played were amazing and complex. I only actually clapped for them, since they were great. Overall, this was the worst play I have ever seen, excluding fourth grade Macbeth, I hope this play stops being presented so John Malkovich goes back to doing awesome movies, such as Being John Malkovich, and I hope that those singers don´t breed.

Ninja

boingboing.net/2011/10/21/improv-in-toronto-dare-to-fight.html

Monologue Revised, Added and Edited

Good Morning! I´m glad it´s finally my turn to speak, cause I feel a slight “irk” making it vague. Are you telling us this crap because you want us to buy your book? Because if you really wanna know, that was some of the worst advice I've ever heard. Don´t you feel guilty of making all these people think of themselves as being “afraid”? Do you want your sister to lose weight? Tell her to get off the couch, stop eating twinkies and maybe go out for field hockey. And you, wanna know something? No one ever really knows what they want to be when they grow up. You know it takes a little, little while to find that out, right, Jim? And you... yeah, you. Sick of some dick shoving your head down the toilet? Well, you know what? Maybe... Instead of letting it rain on your pillow every night you should try to lift some weights, take a karate lesson and the next time he tries to do it, you kick him in the balls. Cause you see; we all complain all the time, but we don´t do shit about it, we just whine and drown in our own sorrow making a storm inside a glass of water. Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful. So stop bitching, grow a pair and do what you gotta do, cause no amount of whining is gonna get you anywhere. You can get all the help you want, but in the end it´s only you who can do the change. Think of it this way. If The world were to end and it´s only you and no one else, and the sky were to suddenly open up, making there be no law and no rule, leaving alive only you and your memories. Do you want to reminisce about the golden days or regret the shameful ones? But well, I´m not gonna blame you, actually, who am I to judge? Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood.

Reflection 2

Today in class we went to the library, and I worked on my monologue. Even though it was a terribly slow and painful class, since the substitute could not understand the concept of difference between tech lab and library. Other than that, the class was overall good, I fulfilled my monologue successfully and posted it on the webpage. I´ve had a great time writing this one, since I could really relate to the person I invented. The use of a tad of foul language made me feel more comfortable, since that is how I actually speak, there has to be no retention of emotion.

Reflection 1

Today we watched a presentation done by Fernanda, Vincenzo and Elena. The presentation talked about a slightly racist yet very interesting approach to Lysistrata, giving it a "hood" aspect. Even though this approach can be considered as a joke, it is an amazing opportunity to exploit the stereotypical qualities contained within us. All the "throwing the baby" and the "baby daddy" jokes made during the presentation,(and Vincenzo´s comparison of "balls as blue as the trashcan") are a very unusual, satirical and stereotypical approach to Lysistrata, but hey, what´s greek comedy if not stereotypes and penis jokes right? Until now, all of the representations of Lysistrata that have been projected in the class wall have, even though changed from the original version, conserved the original script and concept of the play. The alternative suggested today was to keep the idea of women abstaining from giving into men´s seduction, yet let the script flow in a different manner. This is pretty funny in a crude way, since women from the "ghetto", at least as Hollywood projects it, with no intention to be stereotypical and racist, promiscuous, which leads it to irony at it´s purest. Overall in this unit I have learned about the "dark side" of greek theatre, and the funniest one. At the beggining of Lysistrata I expected it to be another boring read like all the books sent by school. After the first fifteen pages, the crude humor and the sexual jokes had me hoping for the next time we would read in class. Also Alessa´s inability to pronounce "hocus pocus" cracked me up. Overall this unit has been enjoyable, and I look forward to starting the next one.

Monologue

Good Morning! I´m glad it´s finally my turn to speak, cause I feel a slight “irk” making it vague. Are you telling us this crap because you want us to buy your book? Because if you really wanna know, that was some of the worst advice I've ever heard. Do you want your sister to lose weight? Tell her to get off the couch, stop eating twinkies and maybe go out for field hockey. And you, wanna know something? No one ever really knows what they want to be when they grow up. You know it takes a little, little while to find that out, right, Jim? And you... yeah, you. Sick of some dick shoving your head down the toilet? Well, you know what? Maybe... Instead of letting it rain on your pillow every night you should try to lift some weights, take a karate lesson and the next time he tries to do it, you kick him in the balls. Cause you see; we all complain all the time, but we don´t do shit about it, we just whine and drown in our own sorrow making a storm inside a glass of water. Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful. So stop bitching, grow a pair and do what you gotta do, cause no amount of whining is gonna get you anywhere. It´s up to you.

I created my blog Ms. Morrison

The title speaks for itself.