STUDENT STATEMENT – PRODUCTION 2012
Emily speaks of the production as fun and a way of meeting people she otherwise wouldn’t have. This affinity to a ‘network density’ (Maroulis and Louis 2008, 1907) or connectedness with peers explains Emily’s positive feelings towards the production. Emily’s experience holds much of the same
sentiments as Rose’s response. Emily, however as an actor states that she had never been considered as anything more than an extra. This relates to a statement made earlier around talent. In her role as Hippolyta she was able to develop this character and find a way to play this woman, this powerful and demanding woman. At times she would say, she is very unlike me and in other ways she is like me. Method acting (Stanislavsky 2008) had played a role in how Emily saw herself as the character, she had thought about the affinity she had with Hippolyta. Emily would try to play her character one way, perhaps loud and demanding and then try to play her as nasty. This experiential learning through performance is similar to Wiley’s performative experiential education (Qualters and Wehlburg 2011). Finally she settled on a demurely sarcastic, controlling Hippolyta. Hippolyta was further brought to life after this with her costume, make-up and physicalisation.
Several actors and I decided to meet at a local costume hire venue so that they could all have a say in their costume. Emily, I remember as being particularly amazed at the costumes and the choice available. She started to select items, on her dressing room door there were yellow gowns and pale blue. She had one gown with fragile pink flowers upon the bodice set in a soft pink skirt. She tried these on and I observed as outfit after outfit she would find something wrong. She exited the change rooms feeling that she wouldn’t find anything, seeming almost defeated. Then I handed her a dark maroon velvet cape and told her to pull her hair up and look at herself in the mirror as Hippolyta. This suggestion to imagine herself as the character through facial expression was in part, me grasping at straws to find her a costume and appealing to her learning preference of method acting. She
announced, “This is it! It’s the colour, this is an angry, seething colour. The texture is royal, I love it!” I had just experienced this participant discover for herself the idea that colour can translate mood (Jackson 2014).
Emily discovered too that she had a voice and that she could have a say and like Rose she states that while it took time it was worth it using the analogy, “It’s just, it’s just a seed it’s not even a plant yet, it’s just a seed and it grew and it got to be just beautiful – it was, it was incredible.” The students began with the seed of Shakespeare and they did make a real and tangible performance from this seed. This beautifully articulate description offered by Emily points to ‘story drama’ (Schonmann 2011) in that it began with a stimulus and was built upon through work-shopping.
2.
Kevin Musician/Composer (Transcribed from commentary on a video)
STUDENT STATEMENT – PRODUCTION 2012
Hi, I was involved in a production a school production this year, it was called A Midsummer Night’s Dream and you know at the start I didn’t really want to do it because there’s some certain stigma attached to guys who go and do a Broadway production and that’s why I’ve never done productions before, but I went along to a couple of the writing sessions, writing circles or something and you know I found out that we got to write our own, the play or not exactly our own but we wrote it on the basis of Shakespeare’s play but we got to stuff around with it a bit and mix it up and change it to how we wanted to adapt it.
I’ve seen a lot of Broadway productions done by schools and it’s not great! But this was really good coz it was all our own stuff and I really like music, I’m into music and so we had a school band to do all the music for it so I got to play all the music for that and I even got to compose a piece for a year 11 dancer to choreograph a dance to. It was just really enjoyable to sit in with the band and just watch the show every night and then to just see the audience enjoying my piece and well later on someone pulled out because they had to go away so I just decided to do the part of Egeus. And it was pretty funny, because I got to sit in the band, where the band sits and then jump on stage play my part, run back. You know no one really noticed, it was not a big deal. That’s another advantage of a school production.
It was just a really, well enjoyable to work with the teachers and the students, we all got along really well. And that’s about it!