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March 25, 2008

Thunder Clown - Six Ring Show 3/18

Even though we had a rough opening, we still had several positive compliments on it, which is testament to how hard the team was working. Unfortunately, the opening shouldn't be such hard work. Thunder Clown is, for some reason, afraid of taking the next step in their invocation, which would lead them down deeper thematic ideas and emotional connections.

There were several dark scenes (which I always enjoy), the first of which was the very first scene. It crept darker and deeper down the rabbit hole until the back line, literally, saved the spiral by telling a player that she was wanted. This caused the audience to applaud happily, and it gave the walk on a nice, reoccuring character to pull off the back line whenever a savior was needed.

In rehearsal we worked on initiating with a line completely different than your partners, and it paid off in several scenes, as did some awesome patience and scenic dedication.

This week we are going to work on the patience and scene length. Good times.

Posted by Chuck Charbeneau at 5:59 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2008

Thunder Clown - Six Ring Show 3/11

There is nothing...NOTHING like applause after a scene or an opening to get the blood pumping during a show. When we walked into rehearsal at 5:30, no one on the team had ever done an invocation, and at the 7:30pm show that night, Thunder Clown put up one hell of a good example. So much so, in fact, that the audience thanked them for their efforts with a NICE round of applause as they went into their first scene.

We had good continuity last night, but we definitely need to delve deeper into the thematics that we are discovering in our opening and scenes to find the deeper parallels to play with. The team made some great discoveries in their game play during their set. Even when they weren't sure what someone else was doing they did an excellent job of allowing them to continue to do it with only minimal attempts to justify the unknown or uncomfortable. Most of the justification came in the form of story telling around the things that made the plot fuzzy to the main players, and this will only go away as they build the skill of keeping their own point of view in the face of a partner with a stronger point of view or an unknown or uncomfortable choice.

Posted by Chuck Charbeneau at 9:56 AM | Comments (2)

March 5, 2008

Thunder Clown - Six Ring Show 3/4

Thunder Clown rocked the house last night, slowly inching their way toward total world domination… and performing their first Harold. I really feel like their high energy and playfulness set the tone and the bar for the rest of the night and once again, they set it pretty high.

During rehearsal we toyed with using different edits rather than only using the transformation edit so that we had better control of the pace of their show. This was also a piece of my diabolical plan to use their transformations as the game in a Harold and introduce them back to sweep edits in a comfortable environment.

The team immediately enjoyed mixing in various edits and recognized the power and fun they had when they could effect their own pacing. The confusion set in when trying to fit their scene work into the scaffold of Harold.

I used the old AB BC DA structure to explain the relationship potentials, and then layered it up a level to AB BC DA 12 23 41, so that their scenes looked like:
AB
12
BC
23
DA
41

Maintaining and remembering relationships and character became a little frustrating until I inserted their transformation edit back in to the game slot of the Harold:
AB
12
Transformation
BC
23
Transformation
DA
41

and suddenly a little light went on somewhere in the group mind.

It’s a little dim yet, but it’s there.

Their show reflected their new-found joy in the pacing and their brains began firing on new cylinders as they investigated the idea of continuity. We’re almost there.

Posted by Chuck Charbeneau at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)