Arts up in the Forest

1.) Moments of art that I don't want to miss...

I think it's safe to say that the "rock art" that Mrs. Moon had showed us as we went up into the mountain was simply breathtaking. To think that the rocks were staying on top of one another without anything to hold them in place is quite fascinating, and surreal. But what truly took the cake for me, was when Reca's group had done their piece and how they made the audience walk through the pathway as well to follow the actors, and get rid of the empty spaces (get it?) around the forest. When I had done my piece with my group, I thought it was a really cool approach on how we used the surrounding areas behind the audience and in front of them at the same time. This was all good up to the point where I had gotten a huge cut on the back of my neck from the vines that were ripped off of me in the play, but I stayed in character (thank the lord). Kevin's group at the end really amazed me as well. The fact that the actors were having their performance about death (I think) on top of two gravestones were really cool and really eerie as well.

2.) One thing I experienced personally in the exercise was the importance of staying in character. When the vines were ripped off of me, the small sharp parts had cut the back of my neck making it feel like one huge rope burn except with small sharp things sticking out of the rope... The immediate reaction to something like this normally, is to touch the cut or maybe stop the play, but I was glad that I didn't. The reward of knowing that I hadn't stopped the play and had gone through with it for the theatre was a good experience for me, and has added more insight towards what 'staying in character' really means.

3.) The emotions that were running through me constantly was that of "wow... is he/she okay?" because in both the performances, at least one actor would do something that would make me feel as if they were hurt in some way. I think that this was a good tactic by the actors to induce a feeling of tension between the audience and themselves, making the audience have that constant feel of 'being on the edge of a seat.'

4.) The pictures were the thing that had most inspired our group to do what we did. And the poem, was basically the key underlying tone of what we had based our space study on. The sounds and the visionary sequences that were in the play were all put together by telling each other what we had envisioned each description in the poem as, ultimately making a performance that ran with the ideas of the poem. We had gotten a person that was playing the guitar under the shade area to come over to our group and she had agreed to play in the middle of the audience. I thought that this was a really cool way of making our 'own' music on top of what other noises the group had to make around the audience (rustling branches, Wally's constant whistle/hooting like an owl etc..).