I am my own wife

I am my own wife, written by Doug Wright, is a story about a seventy-year-old transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf who survived the Nazis and communist regime, and open a calendestine gay bar on his own. The process of creating the script intrigues me a lot because there is a period that Doug Wright is confused by who Charlotte is and what kind of character he is creating. In order to decipher Charlotte’s secrets and present the character on stage accurately, Doug starts to explore how moment work contributes to the process. He incorporates interviews, first-hand files, newspaper etc. into the moments and creates moments in the perspective of Charlotte. 

I am also interested in the setting because according to the set designer Derek Mclane, there will be a wall in the upstage, displaying furniture owned by Charlotte. Those furnitures are not only props, but also a narrative of the story, showing how Charlotte is living her life. Moreover, there will be a more realistic room in the downstage, and when the lights of the wall in the back come up, the room will disappear. The juxtaposition of the abstract display of furniture and the realistic room shows a contrast between Charlotte’s present life and her mythical stories. So I am looking forward to seeing how the setting achieve that goal.

reflection 2.21

This week we are working on adding tech to the scene. Through lighting, we can build up the tension and create atmosphere more clearly. Firstly, we decide to give every skit a theme color. We used blue wash in the first skit to show the sadness and loneliness of the girl, and red spot light on Joyce to express her anger and evil, and purple wash for Ruth’s scene, expressing her helplessness and confusion. Also, after the first draft we found that the transition is not effective as we expect, so we decide to add more elements of viewpoints like kinesthetic response so we can react to others pace and play around with distance. Also we apply lighting to help us enrich the transition. In the beginning, we have usual house lights to show the scene is based on daily situation, and in the first transition we have the white lights strobing to show the chaotic state of the characters, which also differ from the colored lights we used during the skit. And lights will become more chaotic each transition to add more layers after each skit.

And we have also come up with an ending. Because we want to leave an open ending at last so the characters will address their problems, and each character will have a moment to show that their life has to go on. I fall asleep, Joyce close the computer and Ruth leaves for school, so the audience will have their own imagination of whether the characters have been relieved from the struggle or not.

What we have to do next week is to add voice-over into the scene. For the first skit, because I am reacting to the voice over so we have to experiment whether we should have someone to stop the soundtrack before or leave time for my lines in the soundtrack.

collaborative link

https://youtu.be/CnXtCQ9OTf0

reflection 2.8

    Our group has changed our focus a lot these days, initially we aimed to lessen the importance of words in our work, but we find that too hard to achieve because our topic is abstract as well so there may be inclarity in expression of ideas.

We decide to write three skits in which we show a struggle that the character is going through. The characters may live in an unhappy family, or being bullied by others because she is a stammer, or is suffering from eating disorder, and they do not necessarily solve the problem and reach relief in our scene because actually in life people don’t deal with their struggle that easily so people can more relate with the character. And we aim to visualize the suffering through abstract expression. For example, we try to use a lot of voice over to express the inner feelings of the character in scene 2 and 3. And in scene 1, because the girl is distanced from her family, so we use voice over as her parents instead of having the real parents on stage which can show the disconnection between them and emphasize on the girl’s own feeling.  

    This two weeks we are just working on coming up with the script and how to transition from scene to scene, and we decide to start the play by three actors randomly walking on stage with neutral state and then light focus on one of us then her story begins. We intend to show that everyone is normal when facing others but actually inside everyone has their own struggle and going through pain is human’s common experience. And in the end the characters will do exactly the same as the beginning, walking without emotions to show that life has to go on and the incapability of avoiding the struggle.

    From now on we have to move to stage and experience with blocking and the effect of the voiceover. Also, we try to incorporate the scene of two nature battling with each other into one of the skits so we have to shorten that scene and present the most important part. For next week, we aim to revise what we have and see if we need to add something to build up the characters. Since Bowen is not here anymore, we want to pay less attention to the tech, but we also want to use tech to add on to the story. We haven’t explored how the lighting will be applied in the play so we have to work on that as well. Ruth was sick last week so we have to spend more time on creating the script than we expect so we have to use the time wisely next week and get everything we need down as soon as possible so that we can present it and hear the feedback from classmates and teachers.