Wednesday 7 May 2014

Blogologues: Find your own Material- Part 2 (Task 4)

The theme for our group is "Annoying Parents", and was accordingly selected by Mifrah, who is our director. The other members of the group include Ryan, Hamza, and Vanessa. This theme portrays daily situations in which parents act rather irritating or have weird habits based on how they take on their role of being a parent. The main reason as to why I like this theme is because it is a very broad topic, which can be interpreted, brainstormed and produced from different angles. Some perspectives that interest me would include families with typical cultures (e.g. Indian household), families with contradicting cultures, homosexual parents, foster parents, grandparents as parents, and much more. We could also look at this topic from another angle and see the different ways in which parents react to certain situations their children are going through (for e.g. is their daughter has a boyfriend). I think the two perspectives that would attract an audience the most would probably be families with typical cultures and parents with annoying habits. For example, if the family with typical cultures were Asian by nationality (either oriental or from the Indian subcontinent), an easy idea would be for the parents to talk about their children's school marks/grades and them being disappointed even though the grades are quite remarkable.

Blog 1: http://suburbanturmoil.com/the-25-habits-of-highly-annoying-parents/2013/10/29/

This blog is of interest to me because some of the annoying habits mentioned are relatable to a wide spectrum of teenagers and children in our society, including myself. My abilities as a performer are not very exceptional, but narrating these sentences would allow me to focus more on my articulation, projection, and inflection of words rather than my physicality, which is my strongest weakness. I have some ideas regarding how I could perform this blog to the best of its ability. After I finish narrating each habit, my other team members can briefly act out what the message is trying to say. For example, the first annoying habit is a about a crying kid in the theatre, and everyone in the audience getting annoyed because the mother or father is too selfish or careless to do so. If I were to direct this scene, I would have a mother and son sitting on two cinema seats at the front, and a couple sitting directly behind them that are trying to focus on the movie. There will be loud scary or action music playing in the background and the son will start crying. The mom will just ruffle his hair and not bother taking him out of the theatre, while the couple rolls their eyes at the odd family. The lighting would only have to be dim during the first scene as that is in a theatre, and the lights are always off while a movie is running. Costumes would almost constantly have to change from scene to scene which might be a struggle because the narrator (I) will need to stall time.

Blog 2: http://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/1j6akj/im_asian_and_i_hate_asian_culture
_because_of_my/

This appealed to me because it was an ideal example of our topic, and our audience members would definitely have Asian parents. Although this scene involves more gestures in general, they would be quite easy for me to perform as being angry is a norm for me and it would not be difficult for me to express rage. I would possibly use a red light backdrop for this blog because red represents anger the best, which will set the mood for the scene. No sounds would be needed and the narrator could just wear pyjamas or anything casual. Also, two people can pretend to be the parents and enter into the scene in between and scold the daughter for things that are not worth scolding for.

Blog 3: http://twodadsandme.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/big-boys-dont-fly/

This blog represents the struggles of two gay dads trying to raise their son, and how his behaviour stemmed up from his time at residential care. This blog appeals to me because I really enjoy the way the author has depicted his emotions using specific words and how their son treats them. I can see this being staged by two gay dads being present, and one of them being the narrator while the other on is acting with the son. There are many action cues in the script, so the gay dad and son have to perform some stage combat with each other. The lighting can be a bit dim, because the script's storyline is a bit dark itself. If I was the narrator, I would have to play a male role, and that is fine with me costume wise and acting wise because I have to pretend like I am gay anyway.


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