So I loved theatre for a few years now, and I'm rather fond of singing. About five months ago I was introduced to a new program being formed in Wichita Falls called Opera Breve. A program founded by Broadway actors, producers and musicians that were either from Wichita Falls or have a wonderful fondness for teaching budding singers and actors to become stars.
I immediately sent in audition material, and was accepted =D So a week ago it started, and I've been working non stop at rehearsals for this show. In all honesty, these people have helped me grow as an actor exponentially over the past 9 days.
The most interesting thing that I've learned is my singng and character type. According to the Broadway folk, I am a "juvenile". That's actually a lot better than it sounds. It basically means that I could play "Rolf" from Sound Of Music or "Aladdin" from Aladdin or any number of young youthful characters.
The rest of my fellow participants have been learning the same general things, and it's more fascinating every day!
They chose 4 songs to go along with my voice and character type, and here they are:
1. "In Whatever Time We Have" - Children Of Eden, as "Japheth". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyMjstbkDto
2. "Close To Home" - Children Of Eden, as "Abel". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGRkFjiDksc
3. "Follow Your Heart" - Urinetown (yes, that's what it's called =P), as "Bobby Strong". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyWCRoHPdzw
4. "This Plum Is Too Ripe" - The Fantasticks", as "Matt" (First male singer). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkuT4tiMlXg
I've been so blessed to have this oppurtunity, and to work with such great actors and singers, and I mean my fellow particpants just as much as I mean the teachers and tutors. We perform this Thursday,Saturday and Sunday =) Now, back to studying my music. Later interwebs!
Monday, August 1, 2011
Beowulf Part 2 "Blocking, Stage Fighting & Really Pointy Death Weapons"
I've been really busy with a recent project so I've haven't had a lot of time to play with this. sorry!
Hey again! quick re-cap of part one: I wanted to put on a dark production, something sinister. I wanted to do Macbeth, but no one else wanted to, so I got Beowulf instead, which has great potential to be cool and dangerous. I didn't get any of the actors I wanted, but I did get actors, so I could actually put the show together, it would just take a lot more effort. There we go, re-cap done.
The first thing I had to teach my new actors was called blocking. Blocking is basically where you are supposed to stand on the stage. that wasn't too dificult, but it took some memorizing, after all, Beowulf is a very long production.
Okay so now that everyone was in place, it was time to make eeveryone aware of something important - fight scenes. this show was full of them, everybody fought, and fought and fought. If we were going to make this show worth watching, I had to aquire some real swords, and a good choreographer. Well, I got one of those two things. Fortunately, most of the people in the show were just as crazy as I am, so they just happened to have arsenals of pointy objects perfect for stabbing and the like.
But I ended up choreographing all the sword fights, and let me tell you, it's not my strong point. here's a video of one of the shorter fight scenes, which I was actually pretty proud of. This fight is between Beowulf (the Hero) and Unferth (the Jerk). The point was to stress how bad a swordsman that Unferth truly was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV4ejVfGi5I
This show had a lot of stuff like this. there were gymnastic fight scenes, hand to hand fight scenes, and even a scene where I used customized wolverine like swords, but thats for another time.
(Beowulf defeating Unferth)
This show needed a lot of weapons, and we couldn't necesarily find all of the specific weapons, so I built them. The coolest of which are these: Thor's hammer and Loki's dragon claws. Thor's hammer was made out of cardboard and a lot of hot glue.
(Thor's hammer before it was painted and decorated)
It may look puny right, but that thing is as solid as a rock, and twice and dangerous. Loki's dragon claws are even cooler though. they were made of six machetes combined into two very sweet swords.
I don't have a picture, not at least of them individually, but I'll show a picture of them with teh rest of the cool costume in a while.
Other than that, we had two carve two practice knives, buy several real swords (mildly dulled down), staffs and the such like.
My fellow lead Beowulf and I nearly died on multiple occasions due to unecassarily dangerous (but really cool looking) fight choregraphy.
Okay, part 2 is done! Next part will be all about costuming, and thats about it! thanks, until then, later interwebs!
Hey again! quick re-cap of part one: I wanted to put on a dark production, something sinister. I wanted to do Macbeth, but no one else wanted to, so I got Beowulf instead, which has great potential to be cool and dangerous. I didn't get any of the actors I wanted, but I did get actors, so I could actually put the show together, it would just take a lot more effort. There we go, re-cap done.
The first thing I had to teach my new actors was called blocking. Blocking is basically where you are supposed to stand on the stage. that wasn't too dificult, but it took some memorizing, after all, Beowulf is a very long production.
Okay so now that everyone was in place, it was time to make eeveryone aware of something important - fight scenes. this show was full of them, everybody fought, and fought and fought. If we were going to make this show worth watching, I had to aquire some real swords, and a good choreographer. Well, I got one of those two things. Fortunately, most of the people in the show were just as crazy as I am, so they just happened to have arsenals of pointy objects perfect for stabbing and the like.
But I ended up choreographing all the sword fights, and let me tell you, it's not my strong point. here's a video of one of the shorter fight scenes, which I was actually pretty proud of. This fight is between Beowulf (the Hero) and Unferth (the Jerk). The point was to stress how bad a swordsman that Unferth truly was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV4ejVfGi5I
This show had a lot of stuff like this. there were gymnastic fight scenes, hand to hand fight scenes, and even a scene where I used customized wolverine like swords, but thats for another time.
This show needed a lot of weapons, and we couldn't necesarily find all of the specific weapons, so I built them. The coolest of which are these: Thor's hammer and Loki's dragon claws. Thor's hammer was made out of cardboard and a lot of hot glue.
It may look puny right, but that thing is as solid as a rock, and twice and dangerous. Loki's dragon claws are even cooler though. they were made of six machetes combined into two very sweet swords.
I don't have a picture, not at least of them individually, but I'll show a picture of them with teh rest of the cool costume in a while.
Other than that, we had two carve two practice knives, buy several real swords (mildly dulled down), staffs and the such like.
My fellow lead Beowulf and I nearly died on multiple occasions due to unecassarily dangerous (but really cool looking) fight choregraphy.
Okay, part 2 is done! Next part will be all about costuming, and thats about it! thanks, until then, later interwebs!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Beowulf Part 1 "The Beginning Of An Epic Tale"
Okay here's a quick synopsis of our version of Beowulf. The Norse gods Loki, Thor and Odin are alive and titan like. Loki grows bored with normal godly activites and wagers with Thor that he can turn the bravest man alive into a coward. Naturally, Thor accepts. Odin claims that Beowulf, a small boy is the bravest man alive. Loki, being the god of mischief that he is, sends monsters after Beowulf to test him, but in the end, Beowulf proves to be braver than even Odin could have imagined, slaying everything that Loki threw at him. unfortunately, as the epic tale concludes, Beowulf is mortally wounded by the final monster, and dies shortly thereafter.
With that premise in mind, I began to build a play. I had a director lined up (interesting story), a stage, a script, all I needed was actors. Now I have a group of friends, all of which are experianced actors and singers. I'm proud to say that they are all excellent artists in their respective fields, and I desperately wanted them in this production. But in a strange twist of fate, I couldn't get any of them to act in this. Being theatre people, they were already busy or unavailable. So When everyone showed up for the auditions, I was surrounded by a group of people who had either A). never acted B). acted once or twice or C). only come because their parents wanted them to.
I should explain something real quick, this production was to be produced via 4-H. 4-H usually is only for things that will help around the home or a farm, but one daring mother started a club in it called A.C.T. (Actors Creating Together, cute right?) and managed to get 4-H to sponsor it. The main reason I tell you this is because that made our show officially a "school show"...A.K.A. a "learning experiance for young actors"...A.K.A. not something I would have wanted to show off to my friends. Now all these actors were teenagers, I had already put my foot down on that, this was to be a serious play, done seriously, with serious attitudes. Or something like that at any rate haha.
Anyway so there we were, running through auditions. Now I had a very clear image of how I wanted this show run, but I wanted to be in it as well, so with some help from a very generous mother of mine we got a group of MSU theatre majors to cast the show (for some reason I figured it would be biased if I did it.)
The show had 25 characters, but was written in a way for 10 actors to double/triple/quadruple specific roles. Well we had exactly 10 actors show up, so it was just a matter of doling out the roles. Here are the different main characters:
* Beowulf - The Hero
* Loki/Grendel/Grendel's Mother/The Dragon - The Villain
* Scop - The Story Teller
* Sister Mary Alfric - The Nun/Priest
* Thor - The God of Thunder
* Odin/ King Hrothgar - The King of the Gods/King of the Thanes
* Sigrid - The Love Interest
* Hunding/Wiglaf - The Best Friend/Best Friends Son
* Wealtheow - Hrothgar's Wife
* Unferth - The Snooty Jerk Guy (Draco Malfoy basically)
A lot of these characters had other small roles they doubled with, but these are the important ones. With the exception of Loki, Thor & Odin, all these characters are straight from the epic tale itself. With experianced talent short in supply, I was nervous for the production, but I barrelled on. I was cast as the villain, Loki. With the roles set, we were ready to begin the fun part: rehearsals. But all that's for another post, if anyone's interested. Until next time (I promise next time will involve cool pics of the show!), later interwebs!
Playing With The New Toys
Okay so I've never blogged before so I'm getting used to this new stuff. Within the next few days I'll post something about my theatrical stuff I've been doing ove rthe past few years so I can gget a feel for this whole thing.
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