Each student will also do an individual oral presentation
based on his or her performance of a transformed or adapted piece of poetry or
prose.
In the oral presentation students will be expected to
demonstrate:
• understanding of
the text(s)
• critical
perspectives on the dramatic potential of the text(s)
• insights into the performance process experienced from
page to stage
• critical evaluation of their particular role and
contribution to this process of transformation or adaptation and realization.
During the presentation students will be allowed access to
their texts and notes for reference purposes only. The presentation should not
be read. Each oral presentation will last 12–15 minutes. The teacher should not
guide students or intervene unless the student is clearly struggling to
continue. In such circumstances, the teacher may ask a question in order to
help the student to continue.
The presentation will be recorded on audio or
video for moderation purposes. Teachers are reminded that the moderator is
instructed not to listen to any material beyond 15 minutes in the individual
oral presentation and that no marks will be awarded for any material
contributed beyond this time.
Also, review the grading rubric that was distributed in class.
And here is a sample oral with comments from a teacher:
Rough
Transcript with comments from Individual Oral Presentation
Words in bold: Things he does very
well.
Words in italics: Teacher comments –
mostly things he could have added
Different sections ‘headings’ in this sheet have been
applied retrospectively by teacher.
Introducing the novel and what he likes about it:
Introducing the novel and what he likes about it:
Summing up themes and ideas, style - a lot of sophisticated
ideas in a short space.
I like because the novel because it is enigmatic and oracular – flowing story, ref to mélange of different times/locations – eg conversations between Nabo and JazzMan – mystical atmosphere, dark imagery (he gives examples)
No panic in pace, strong sense of timelessness. Mixture of severity and lightheartedness can have powerful impact on audience. Intrinsic device in Marquez’ style (genre) of writing is magical realism. Speaker then explains why the book fits this genre: Realistic narrative and naturalistic … conjunction with elements of fantasy. Main source of magical realism is character of Jazz Man who is too haughty to simply be a fragment (figment) of Nabo’s imagination. Nabo doesn’t embrace/is unclear about Jazzman but doesn’t question him.
Introducing stage transition ideas:
Excited about putting on stage: various challenges, for example no obvious scene changes and ambiguous narrator. Novel mostly 3rd person but sometimes 1st person plural when talking about family – why?
Characterisation:
I thought about having Nabo as the central character but too two-dimensional and plays too much of a passive role. Therefore made more characters out of doctors and family.
We ended up playing different characters using tokens (does he mean symbols?) to represent different characters such as flatcap. Could this be related to the original text – Marquez’ presentation of chars?
Obvious difference between book and play is we started first scene as performers not characters. We thought this would be interesting because we did a play within the play. We embraced that idea to show different levels within the play. We were always ‘acting’ but would appear to audience to be in and out of character. This functionally allowed us to set up conventions with scene/character changes eg go and get changed at the back.
Get our ideas across to the audience and answer any questions they may have eg Sarah out of character asks about role of Jazzman and Simon answers her, which we hoped would make things clear to audience. Here he needs to talk about theatrical style - no technical theatre vocab to back this up – Brecht?, what kind of stage (proscenium arch) and why. Later he talks about split stage but doesn't mention anything here, and probably in a separate section from characterisation. This is a shame as the performance has an enormous number of well-used, sophisticated theatrical techniques.
When acting, very important to differentiate our different characters eg: When playing son of estate with high centre of gravity and sturdy posture; when I became ‘the performer’ I shuffled backwards, slumped my head and shook it to make it seem to the audience like I was now new character. Even better if he could relate to original text, and possibly more sophisticated ‘drama’ terminology
Characterisation relating to themes:
Adding the contrasts between the play and rehearsal also added the theme of dichotomy to the play – in the book there is conflict between black and white, life and death, real and surreal worlds Good, but why? with what effect (in original), we added the contrast between play and rehearsal. Why? What did this bring? This made final scene more powerful because at the end you break the conventions and you are breaking one of the themes of the play as well. (He doesn’t explain this well, partly because he didn’t set up/contextualize theatrical aspects in as sophisticated a way as he gave an overview of the text).
(Briefly talks about scene-setting): One thing I decided to change from the book to set Nabo physically in the hospital not attic because the clear cut nature of the hospital created more disparity between Nabo physically and the world in Nabo’s head mentally. Emphasized element of magical realism in book.
Fragmentation of time and timelessness in his conversations with the Jazz Man, I also wanted to include this in the conversations with the doctors. In the first scene I wrote, I had Nabo arriving at hospital, two scenes later I had reference to Nabo being at hospital for 30 years.
Characterisation in general:
Acting as Doc most challenging – I wanted to find the middle ground between character of opulent son and the character of ‘myself’ who is neutral. Characterise him as being fanatical man, often carried away and excited. I did this by Sitting forward in my chair, speaking up sentences when I got excited and having a higher tension than the others around me. Good that here he mentions relationship between actors on stage - awareness of group dynamics in affecting audience. Another scene I wrote is when the tutor arrives at the estate. In the book it is Nabo arriving. The reason I changed it was because the father and teacher are both more interesting than Nabo and able to set a better contextual background into Nabo’s life. Make storyline more followable and audience more engaged, increasing overall impact Good - clear awareness of impact on audience, though a little general. Wanted to make him passive and endearing, therefore hunched shoulders, maintained low centre of gravity and downcast eyes and way I interacted with other performers around me was to move behind them or out of the way. Was hesitant to speak and make eye contact, spoke in a common voice. Think I achieved audience’ sympathy – therefore effect of final scene, when Nabo’s animalistic madness was more alive to the audience. Why is this important?
Character development:
In the final scene when Nabo comes out of a coma in the book he comes out in mad and tempestuous manner. We wanted to keep the tempestuousness and also maintain and break conventions we had set up in the rest of the play. My idea was to have both Nabo’s in the scene at the same time accompanied by tempestuous music as well as moving in stylised movements like rabid animal, and to create moment of all conventions being destroyed, eg throw down coat stand we had used during scene changes, and to touch each other in the middle which is break from split stage we had created in the rest of the play. This is such a powerful moment on stage which he doesn't do justice to here.
Possible improvements:
One thing I am ashamed of is we didn’t include the character of the mute girl. Why is she so important? The reasons were we couldn’t find a gramophone which we felt was essential for her character, and we struggled with the scene we had written for her. I do think we failed to take advantage of such an intense and compelling character within the story; however overall we did achieve our primary aims which was to create a complex but followable story and also to involve the element of magical realism which reflects the original story. This latter sentence *could* work as thesis statement near the beginning of speech.
Conclusion:
I was very happy we made character of Jazz Man mysterious but not confusing to the audience, however by rationalizing the story so much and omitting the mute girl, the story lost some of its disturbing connotations and although theme of time fragmentation worked well, and didn’t confuse the audience, it didn’t achieve the mystical impact we wanted. But we did achieve the mystical impact by the Jazzman’s conversations with Nabo, and setting up the unconventional conventions then breaking them at the end.
Lack of close literary analysis and sometimes theatrical aspects not tied to the original text very clearly, though elements of the first section are excellent - concise and sophisticated.
I like because the novel because it is enigmatic and oracular – flowing story, ref to mélange of different times/locations – eg conversations between Nabo and JazzMan – mystical atmosphere, dark imagery (he gives examples)
No panic in pace, strong sense of timelessness. Mixture of severity and lightheartedness can have powerful impact on audience. Intrinsic device in Marquez’ style (genre) of writing is magical realism. Speaker then explains why the book fits this genre: Realistic narrative and naturalistic … conjunction with elements of fantasy. Main source of magical realism is character of Jazz Man who is too haughty to simply be a fragment (figment) of Nabo’s imagination. Nabo doesn’t embrace/is unclear about Jazzman but doesn’t question him.
Introducing stage transition ideas:
Excited about putting on stage: various challenges, for example no obvious scene changes and ambiguous narrator. Novel mostly 3rd person but sometimes 1st person plural when talking about family – why?
Characterisation:
I thought about having Nabo as the central character but too two-dimensional and plays too much of a passive role. Therefore made more characters out of doctors and family.
We ended up playing different characters using tokens (does he mean symbols?) to represent different characters such as flatcap. Could this be related to the original text – Marquez’ presentation of chars?
Obvious difference between book and play is we started first scene as performers not characters. We thought this would be interesting because we did a play within the play. We embraced that idea to show different levels within the play. We were always ‘acting’ but would appear to audience to be in and out of character. This functionally allowed us to set up conventions with scene/character changes eg go and get changed at the back.
Get our ideas across to the audience and answer any questions they may have eg Sarah out of character asks about role of Jazzman and Simon answers her, which we hoped would make things clear to audience. Here he needs to talk about theatrical style - no technical theatre vocab to back this up – Brecht?, what kind of stage (proscenium arch) and why. Later he talks about split stage but doesn't mention anything here, and probably in a separate section from characterisation. This is a shame as the performance has an enormous number of well-used, sophisticated theatrical techniques.
When acting, very important to differentiate our different characters eg: When playing son of estate with high centre of gravity and sturdy posture; when I became ‘the performer’ I shuffled backwards, slumped my head and shook it to make it seem to the audience like I was now new character. Even better if he could relate to original text, and possibly more sophisticated ‘drama’ terminology
Characterisation relating to themes:
Adding the contrasts between the play and rehearsal also added the theme of dichotomy to the play – in the book there is conflict between black and white, life and death, real and surreal worlds Good, but why? with what effect (in original), we added the contrast between play and rehearsal. Why? What did this bring? This made final scene more powerful because at the end you break the conventions and you are breaking one of the themes of the play as well. (He doesn’t explain this well, partly because he didn’t set up/contextualize theatrical aspects in as sophisticated a way as he gave an overview of the text).
(Briefly talks about scene-setting): One thing I decided to change from the book to set Nabo physically in the hospital not attic because the clear cut nature of the hospital created more disparity between Nabo physically and the world in Nabo’s head mentally. Emphasized element of magical realism in book.
Fragmentation of time and timelessness in his conversations with the Jazz Man, I also wanted to include this in the conversations with the doctors. In the first scene I wrote, I had Nabo arriving at hospital, two scenes later I had reference to Nabo being at hospital for 30 years.
Characterisation in general:
Acting as Doc most challenging – I wanted to find the middle ground between character of opulent son and the character of ‘myself’ who is neutral. Characterise him as being fanatical man, often carried away and excited. I did this by Sitting forward in my chair, speaking up sentences when I got excited and having a higher tension than the others around me. Good that here he mentions relationship between actors on stage - awareness of group dynamics in affecting audience. Another scene I wrote is when the tutor arrives at the estate. In the book it is Nabo arriving. The reason I changed it was because the father and teacher are both more interesting than Nabo and able to set a better contextual background into Nabo’s life. Make storyline more followable and audience more engaged, increasing overall impact Good - clear awareness of impact on audience, though a little general. Wanted to make him passive and endearing, therefore hunched shoulders, maintained low centre of gravity and downcast eyes and way I interacted with other performers around me was to move behind them or out of the way. Was hesitant to speak and make eye contact, spoke in a common voice. Think I achieved audience’ sympathy – therefore effect of final scene, when Nabo’s animalistic madness was more alive to the audience. Why is this important?
Character development:
In the final scene when Nabo comes out of a coma in the book he comes out in mad and tempestuous manner. We wanted to keep the tempestuousness and also maintain and break conventions we had set up in the rest of the play. My idea was to have both Nabo’s in the scene at the same time accompanied by tempestuous music as well as moving in stylised movements like rabid animal, and to create moment of all conventions being destroyed, eg throw down coat stand we had used during scene changes, and to touch each other in the middle which is break from split stage we had created in the rest of the play. This is such a powerful moment on stage which he doesn't do justice to here.
Possible improvements:
One thing I am ashamed of is we didn’t include the character of the mute girl. Why is she so important? The reasons were we couldn’t find a gramophone which we felt was essential for her character, and we struggled with the scene we had written for her. I do think we failed to take advantage of such an intense and compelling character within the story; however overall we did achieve our primary aims which was to create a complex but followable story and also to involve the element of magical realism which reflects the original story. This latter sentence *could* work as thesis statement near the beginning of speech.
Conclusion:
I was very happy we made character of Jazz Man mysterious but not confusing to the audience, however by rationalizing the story so much and omitting the mute girl, the story lost some of its disturbing connotations and although theme of time fragmentation worked well, and didn’t confuse the audience, it didn’t achieve the mystical impact we wanted. But we did achieve the mystical impact by the Jazzman’s conversations with Nabo, and setting up the unconventional conventions then breaking them at the end.
Lack of close literary analysis and sometimes theatrical aspects not tied to the original text very clearly, though elements of the first section are excellent - concise and sophisticated.
Overall lack of theatrical terminology – eg staging, and
theatrical background/context/style
Unclear ‘arc’ of piece overall, in terms of climax,
character development (if relevant).
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