Late back from the weekend in glorious Cape Town, Andrew and I stopped in at a Farmer's Market type shop - stocked up on such basic necessaries as chilli jam, chilli sauce, thai green curry paste, olive oil, olives, dried fruit, and special African Habeneros sauce. All essentials.
We got delayed at two road blocks on the road from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown, I couldn't tell exactly what kid of work they were doing, but one can assume it was road work. Quite lengthy delays, but I enjoyed good conversation with Andrew about the workings of the Rhodes drama department, and the course options the students have on offer. It sounds like the interest in theatre pursuits is more evenly spread here across the fields of interests: design, direction, choreography, stage management and technical theatre are strongly represented as opposed to a majority interest in acting which I had expected (well, of course that was my own world view). This must provide great potential for collaborative works. He also told me about a couple of famous South African shows from the 1980's - 'Woza Albert', meaning "wake-up Albert" (Albert Lutula sp? the head of the ANC who had just passed away) about the 2nd coming of Christ to South Africa - an important piece of political (protest) theatre in SA history. It was followed by the musical 'Serafina' in which Jesus raises up all the dead resistance heros. ...This info was re-written from scribbled notes on the drive back to G-Town, so possibly some screwy details here...
As I was too late in getting into town to see the cast before end of rehearsals, I asked Dion to get the actors to each prepare 2 lines from the play - one which they think may be their character's loudest spoken line, and that which may be their softest. Though this is a non-organic approach, it is a great exercise to find the character's total range and journey. It emphasises making bold choices and committing to them. I got this one from RADA also, and love using it myself. Naturally, the choice of line may change throughout rehearsals, but the risk-taking and strong-choice making should remain.
Made a stir-fry when we arrived home, and did some voice class prep for tomorrow morning. I'll be running the morning workshop for an hour and a quarter. The company have designated morning training classes. Dion and I have asked for three of these time slots to specifically focus on voice and language for our Shakespeare, and also dance choreography for the show (though they'll be other times for this as well as it is integral to our hip hop vs pantzula (tow households both alike in dignity/awesome-dance-moves concept. They also have yoga as well as mime weekly training classes. It would be wonderful to be in an ensemble such as theirs - working consistently all year on numerous productions, school and mainstage, touring a bit, teaching a bit, and training regularly Not to mention, performing at the National Arts Festival right here at Grahamstown. I'm going to get to it one day.
No comments:
Post a Comment