This week were getting closer to the play and there is so much more left to do. Previously rehearsed scenes fall apart again due to lack of practice, revisited scenes which were previously finished are now found to be nonsensical. On average, a disaster on a massive scale.


Yet there is always a beam of light amongst the darkness. Today I saw the shadow-puppets scene for the first time, and it turned out to be much more visually appealing and useful as I had previously imagined. The shadows allowed for exploration of "unreal" elements, such as bloody impalings, brutal gut-severing murders and four armed evil queens. I really enjoyed watching the rehearsal of this scene, and I think it will be refreshing for the audience to watch it since it has never been done before at any school play to my understanding. The fact that it is different will also keep the audience's attention, which is of utmost importance to this year's play, since it is going to be performed in English, and usually people lose interest really fast when they cant understand most of what is being said, so they need something more, they need to be given visual stimulus to keep them interested as well.


Some scenes, like scene 3, which were previously rehearsed without masks, lost something since the masks were added. They lost expressiveness and meaning because the intonation of the phrases was not optimal, or clear in its intention, and without face expression it is even harder to express what little was there already, so the masks posed a challenge, but in a way, it showed us what had to be done. The characters on that scene, especially Deborah will have to be tweaked around in terms of characterisation and voice, because the character seems flat, and uninteresting to a certain extent. Reference from other sources, such as movies, books or other plays, about similar characters will help greatly in terms of understanding the behaviour and intention of the characters, that's why actors should be encouraged to invest some time in terms of character exploration in their own time.


What still worries me the most is the use of the human sized puppets, since I have been missing out on the last few rehearsals I still dont know if the movements are organic and believable, or if they still remain rough and non-flowing. this is a major issue in terms of puppet handling, and an issue we knew was going to emerge the moment we chose to use puppets for the play. We were warned that puppeteering was a trade that took a much longer period of time to master than the time we were allowed for this play to be produced, and the idea of the puppets not looking as if they had  a life on their own on-stage is one of my biggest concerns, and could be one of the deal-breakers for the audience's attention.


Not much time left for the play to premier and we still have lots of work to do.
Does the mask hinder face expression in able to allow for body expression to be more focused? Or is this effect just a natural outcome of there not being face expression, without intensifying the already present body expression?