Blog 6

Well, today was the final day of class, and while we will meet tomorrow to finish the dramaturgy exhibit in the front lobby, I am sad for it. I look forward to seeing the final product of the show, after all the lighting and sound is finished and all the hard work everyone has done is shown to the William and Mary/Williamsburg community. I think that we all did a great job putting together the dramaturgy, and seeing the final product today, all the slides being put together and ready to be printed, I am sure that it will look great and be a testament to the hard work of the entire class. The show, as I stated in my last blog, looks wonderful and I am sure it will be a great success thanks to all the hard work of everyone involved. While I do not regret being apart of Macbeth, I do regret that I missed key rehearsals during a time in which the cast united and passed from one stage of emotionality to another, in effect making it impossible for me to catch up and continue to be apart of the show. I feel assured however that my being there, missing key moments in which the cast became something greater than just a bunch of actors, becoming a group of highly efficient storytellers and evolving into an even tighter knit community, would have only hindered the show. And from seeing the show last night I would have forever regretted hindering such a performance as was given, a performance which could only have been done with the unification of the entire cast during all the rehearsals, and especially at the end during days which I especially now regret missing. Guru, you were right, while I might have been able to catch up on the blocking, and that might have been okay for another show, I could never have caught up to the cast, in terms of the artistic vision of the play, in the time that we had left to put on the show. I would never have been able to catch up to the cast in terms of the creative aspect of this show, a show that is all the better for incorporating this aspect, and which only with an emotionally unified community, the Banjar, of cast members, would it be possible. I am greatly thankful to still be apart of your community, even if not on stage, and look forward to helping out in anyway I can to make sure that the show is a great success, as I am sure it will be. A show that I feel sure will be talked about for a long time among the Williamsburg and William and Mary community.

Blog 5

So, I saw the full show for the first time yesterday and I must say that it was by far the most powerful show that I have seen on the main stage yet. Even if it went up yesterday, with all the sound difficulty that everyone was having and the few mistakes that were caught the show would have been worth the money spent. The best thing about it by far is the high energy mixed in with culture, history, and the artistic presence of the actors. It was obvious that everyone was into their characters and that the entire cast knew what they were doing and were doing it to the best of their ability. I especially enjoyed the hip hops scene and must say that I was unprepared for some of the cast coming into the audience, extending all the energy on stage to the seats in which those watching were sitting. It was a fantastic touch to the entire scene and I felt not only a part of what was happening on stage but also was greater affected by the already profound energy in which the show had progressed with. Both the end of Act 1 and the end of Act 2 left me deeply emotionally touched and left me begging for more, the one thing which any audience member wants when paying money for a show is not wanting to leave and for the performance to never end. I was left feeling that sensation during both of these parts of the show, something I have never felt before when watching a main stage performance at William and Mary. In fact, usually I find myself looking at my watch wondering when the show will end. This is not the fact with "when the purple settles". The costumes, the dancing, the actors, and the energy kept me begging for more, and when it was all finished I was sad that it was over. So congratulations to all the cast members, Leah, Jen, Jason, Joey, and especially you Guru for creating a show that creates such a profound experience. While I am not on stage with the cast, and greatly saddened because of this, I am happy to do work behind the scenes if it means that this is the show you were able to produce, and by being able to continue helping with the show I truly feel apart of something great, and am extremely thankful for it.

Blog 4

While watching documentaries in class can be of great use in understanding history, I definitely enjoy when we get to be actively involved in the learning process. The class period that we spent learning pronunciation and words of the language of the Filipino's definitely did this, and it was very enjoyable despite the intensity of the heat in the room (by the way, can we put on the air conditioner next time, PLEASE!!!!). While certain pronunciations of words were difficult to master, and yet still not yet entirely mastered, it was great to attempt to speak this creative, and as we found out somewhat simple, language. Following the mastery of speaking the vowels, which to me seemed the easiest part because it is so similar to the way we say the vowels in speaking Spanish, it was surprising how simple some of the words were, simply adding consonants to the front of the vowels and then repeating them twice. While I know not all the words of this language are as simple as the ones we practiced, Titi, Dodo, Kiki, Bobo, and other words of similar simplicity, it was still exciting to learn and practice. Furthermore, I think that by practicing in class, we will be better prepared for the language's use during the show.

Blog 3

I think that the hardest thing for me up to this point is going to be attempting to contextualize the rape scenes. In rehearsal, when Francis just told us to attempt to visualize and create the rape scene on stage I definitely felt a little weird about it. It helps to be in the class so as to better understand the history in which this brutal act represents yet I feel that it is going to be continually hard for me to get to a point of comfortability during this scene, just as it was when we did the scene involving oral sex. However, by continually learning about the history surrounding these very graphic acts and how these acts serve not to necessarily degrade but to better contextualize this history for a more modern audience, to provide a message which might make the audience understand the brutality surrounding the history of this culture and the patriarchal attitude ingrained within it. These scenes in many ways attempt the same thing as the abortion scene which was performed during MEDEA this past fall semester. A modern audience, with our culture of graphic videos and games, is in many ways desensitized. In MEDEA, it would have been harder for an audience to really feel to pain felt by the characters by just killing children of a certain age. But when the abortion took place, in all its glory, on stage, right in front of the audience, ending with a blood soaked stage and an unborn fetus, the modern audience might better relate and feel sorry for the characters on stage. It was an act which provoked an actual response from the audience and left them thinking about what they had seen for days after. Because of my experience as Jason in MEDEA, the father who is deprived of all his children and his new wife by the brutal murders by Medea, I feel I can better understand the use of graphic content within the play. While it may be hard for me to contextualize the content now, I feel in the end the overall effect will be of greater meaning.

Blog 2

Hello class. In this blog I would like to take the time to discuss some of the things that we have recently been exposed to in class. First, I just want to say that the videos that we found documenting the flagellation ceremony and the mock crucifixion were pretty graphic. I don't think that personally I would ever want to take devotion to any religion as far as these people did. It looked as though it was the most painful thing in which anyone could do to themselves, and which we found out, which anyone could allow another person to help them do as well. Secondly, it was interesting to see the types of clothes which the ifugao people created. They were extremely native, with headdresses utilizing cloth and feathers, and displaying unique embroidery. When we were looking at the clothes I was visualizing the women dancing at the beginning of "Movement in Green" and was considering how awesome it would be if we could use these types of clothes for the characters playing the natives during this scene. Overall, the things which we saw helped me further understand the culture the ethnics which make it up.

Blog 1

Well, to be sure the classes have been interesting enough and have definitely helped thus far with understanding both the play and the characters in which the "purple posse" is attempting to create. The most interesting thing that I have learned in class has been when we surfed the internet looking for the old tales about the mythology of the Filipinos. The most interesting of all of these, an it was surprising how many there were, was of the tiyanak. Learning about the mythology surrounding this mythical creature made the scene in which Junior scares his sister that much more understandable. I enjoy mythology of different cultures and it was great to see and learn about the legends of a culture whose history we are attempting to contextualize in the play. Furthermore, I would just like to say that this particular monster must have taken a good deal of imagination being that it is an aborted baby demon that imitates a crying child to attract victims , take revenge on the people who deprived it of life, and to kidnap children, FREAKY!!!! Thank god it is only a myth.