This week we started practising for the upcoming PPP's. We were given a stimulus and we had to start analysing it and extracting what we could from it. In my case it was Caravaggio's painting "Young Sick Bacchus". At first, we just had to analyse the stimulus itself, which was rather simple, just state what I saw. But unlinke predictions, this part of the process, the recognition of elements, is not as obvious as I thought it would be. Details such as shadows, contrast and composition are important elements on the painting, not only what you objectively see. 

"Young Sick Bacchus"

For example, Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and fertility is often represented in paintings as a chubby character, with a full pot belly, and a red blush on his skin. He is always surrounded by large amounts of grapes and fruit. In this painting, he seems to be the opposite of the image most of us have about Bacchus in our heads, since he is pale, thin, and only has few fruits around him. The contrast between the stereotype and this representation gives us the idea that Bacchus, and all he represents (Fertility, abundance, joy) is no more, he has become sickened.

 From the analysis of the stimulus we now have to create a concept and a vision. Take away important elements and then use the broader concepts (abstracting from the painting completely) to envision a play. The process itself becomes much easier when you have a clear concept, because from there the vision just flows naturally, you have a backbone from which to guide yourself so that the whole process has coherence.

I'm still unsure on where to start, or what concepts I can extract from this painting. The first part always seems the hardest. This is because you have to be careful not to over-interpret the stimulus just to include your own ideas. One should only focus on what is there, and after taking out the concrete elements, start interpreting them. For example, saying that wine is poisonous and bad for humanity because Bacchus is eating the grapes, which make him sick. Nowhere in the painting does it imply Bacchus is eating said grapes, and even though grapes represent wine in our culture, they may only be grapes for the sake of grapes in the painting. That's why a clear analysis of the stimulus is essential for an adequate development of the PPP.

Is it incorrect to research about the historical/personal context of the stimuli and its creator? Since, it would probably change the lens through which you interpret it. 

Trying to direct the scenes for the play has proven to be difficult. Not only because we are lacking a clear storyboard-like vision for the play, but also because it is hard to control a group of students which dont come into the rehearsals with enough motivation. 


For example this Saturday I was in charge of the rehearsal of the first scene's dancing choreography, and had no idea whatsoever on what to do. Since the actresses will use yoga-balls as their dance partners, then I had to include the balls in the choreography, but unfortunately we didn't have the balls with us. So the fact that they were working with imaginary balls, made it harder for them to keep concentration. Concentration was main issue #1. How to achieve it? Thats what i tried to figure out throughout the rehearsal. At one point i was so desperate that I actually made them lie on the ground and relax and then make them move their body parts and balance the space. This exploration proved futile, because the actresses seemed to experience a sort of shame. Shame of their own body expression. They weren't actresses preparing for a play, they were individuals that were still concerned about their appearances.


I couldn't understand how, being in a theatre, surrounded by fellow actors and actresses, which are aware of the process and shouldn't judge you, but in turn show admiration for the theatrical work, these students would still feel shame towards their own exploration. They only did the minimum required and wouldn't move an extra muscle to try and explore their movement capabilities.


This will be a big problem in terms of creativity coming form the actors themselves, which is mostly present in our plays. 


The second problem was the fact that I had never created a choreography before and we had to make a very energetic one. And given that we stil dont have the balls, there is no way we are going to be able to visualize it. Maybe all the work weve done so far will be rendered useless once we get the balls, be it because they dont bounce as much, or because movement with them will be too difficult. Im certainly not very optimistic towards how the play is going to look in the end, but, before I think about the future, I have to focus on how to solve the recent problems that have been emerging.


Since concentration exercises dont work on younger students, how should we make them understand that they should have no fear of their bodies?

Puppets, puppets, puppets. Its all I think about whenever im thinking of the play. It is becoming increasingly apparent that we are not going to be able to produce the amount of puppets that the original play required, not only because of time we are lacking but because we have such a small "workforce" to manufacture them.


So how do we fix this awkward situation? Well, for one we could just reduce the number of puppets in the play and replace some of them for plain actors. But then it would look odd that a very small amount of characters are represented by puppets, it wouldn't look consistent. Another solution could be to simply adapt the play so that only one type of puppet is included, say only pirates, or only peasants, and then rewrite everything. But By far the simplest solution that came up was to find a way to reuse the puppets, so that they served more than one function. So that a pirate in one scene could be dressed to be a merchant in another. Though this will prove difficult in terms of the striking resemblance between one character and another, with the right change of clothes and props it could work.


This wee we also had a workshop with Martin and Maria Laura, the puppeteers that taught us how to make the puppets in the first place. In this workshop they taught us how to maneuver the puppets and what things we should learn before handling them. Something very useful they taught us was that the puppets must keep their axis, as in they must keep their posture, be it straight or crooked, it should remain the same throughout the performance because our posture is not really flexible, and if the puppet suddenly changes the way it stands then the audience loses the illusion. The other important aspect we should always keep into account is the direction or focus in which the puppet is looking at, because this is usually what guides all the movement.


We were put into groups to try and show what we had learnt on some puppets. I had a three-man group to  maneuver only one relatively small puppet. The result was quite catastrophic in the sense that the movement in the puppet seemed segmented and artificial, and not all part of the same impulse. This was due to the fact that there wasn't much coordination between the legs arms and torso because each person in charge of their body part wanted to do different things at different rhythms. We later realized that becuase of this, it is much simpler to control a puppet with less people, for that way the puppet will be fully synchronized.  I realized that in order for the double puppets to work on our play, we would need to either video-tape the puppets in movement and then show it to the actors to see how they can improve or to just get a big miror so they can practice.


Is there a way to fixate a certain expression in the face of a foam puppet without stressing the hand? Since this could be used to differentiate merchants from pirates.

This week we had a workshop about puppets and puppet-making, given by both Martin Molina and Maria Laura Velez, who are part of a puppeteering group called "Tarbol"

At first they introduced us to the history of puppets and their use throughout history. What impressed me the most about that part was to understand that puppets have been entertaining an adult audience for most of its history, and only recently has there been a change to more infantile audiences because of their didactic use. So right off the bat the introduction to puppets changed my whole perspective about the potential use of puppets, and how there is much more to them than just slapstick infantile entertainment. They have the ability to express anything, from family-oriented fun to politically and socially challenging messages, and that they have super-human capabilities.

At first I thought that these abilities were merely aesthetic, as in more pronounced body features, almost a cartoonish approach, but they go beyond that. In one of the plays they presented to us called "Santuario de Febriles Sonrisas" they made a puppet start levitating at one point, defying the laws of gravity, and it looked really poetic, like the fading away from reality and entering his own world, or a struggle between conciousness and dreams.which wouldve been really difficult to do with actors. It gives performances a completely different spectrum of tools they can use in order to get messages through. Then the other play that Martin and Maria Laura showed us was a more family-oriented one, and it included a ghost a dog and a cooking woman, all of this with hand puppets. So it is definitely useful to have puppets not only because of their aesthetic or physically defying aspects but because of their practicality, all you need is one or two actors, and small amounts of material to put on a whole performance. Yet, by making the puppets so small, they are only intended for small audiences, reducing the amount of people that can be influenced by it, but making it a more personal experience.

But the personal connection between the puppets and the audience is not due to the size of the audience, but because their ability to interact with it. For some reason it seems easier to a member of the audience to respond or communicate with a puppet than it is with a person. I still cant figure out why this is, maybe because the puppets represent only fictional characters, while actors cant hide their human condition when interpreting the character. Much like speaking directly to a character rather than to person acting as medium to the character.

The making of the puppets proved tiresome and quite frustrating at times because Martin made it look so easy, and then we tried and reproduce what he did and wound up with very different outcomes. But I guess the diversity of the results is also giving us more ideas and ways of making the faces, drifting away from the conventional and entering a realm of imagination. For example Esteban's puppet which had tentacles and at one point movable eyes, or Nicole's puppet which had round bold features and a really small mouth, which made it look very cartoonish

Why arent puppet shows more frequently directed towards adult audiences? When did this tradition stop taking place and was replaced by infantile shows? Why?