This school play was a completely different experience than any other previous ones, I think it’s because this time I felt much more attached to it, be it for the fact that now we were part of the stage design and production, or also the fact that I came to every rehearsal this time. An activity that takes so much of your time becomes like your priority, and for the, what, three months that the play took to put together, it was basically all that I could think about, specially the last month or couple of weeks before the play, because of the pressure and excitement. I think the play was a bit chaotically arranged at first, but as time went by, everything started piecing together, the idea of each scene working by themselves separately at first seemed as if it wasn’t going to be very good, due to the fact that there were only three directors, but amazingly it managed to work just fine. In my scenes for example, specially scene five, at the beginning when there was no director, the actors would just mess about and wouldn’t take things seriously, but then as some people were kicked out or left the play, and pressure started building due to the proximity to the play, the actors started taking things more seriously and ended up giving ideas and working as a team. In my opinion, the play exceeded my initial expectations, probably because it all seemed to come together at the end of the process and seemed quite disorganized and messy before that. Only one thing concerns me now that the play is over, and it is the fact that this last one has highered the bar, and will raise bigger expectations for next year, which makes me nervous, not because I don’t think we are a good drama group, because I do think that when we work together we yield good results, but because what the IB 2^nd year group did was more than good, and sometimes these things just occur, unexpectedly, and that’s what worries me.

I’m all excited about Paucartambo and I’m all ready and set up. I even did my baggage already. We’ve done so much preparation and studying about it and Andean theatrical culture that I just can’t wait to see it with my own eyes. Obviously there is a concern, not the weather or how we are going to share rooms, but how we are going to be able to see and analyze the whole party in the very limited time that we have, and only with our point of view. By point of view I don’t mean our opinion, but the actual things that we see, our visual perspective. Its going to be challenging and I think whaty will be the most helpful in this is to have a clear research question so that we spot the precise things were looking for.

Is it possible to analyze and condense hundreds of years of culture and tradition that has evolved in the party in only one visit? What about the dynamic elements which will seem fixed if we only go 1 time?

(this post was saved in the drafts folder for some reason, as seen on the image above, and it dates 10/07/11, also the post will be published as if it were sunday because thats the original date written.)