Reflection

Sorry for the late post, my internet has been down and unreliable for the last month or so.

5th October

Rehersals are comming along for our end of year exam. It's scary how close it is, I'm really worried that a few of us won't pull through.

I have Meg perfect, more then perfect. Getting to do it at the show case was a wonderful opotunity and got me ready for it well in advance. Mockingjay is comming along well and hopefully should be perfectly polished in the next few days.

Bazzar and Rummage though is another story. It's so difficult to get my tounge around the accent and I'm having real trouble with it. I'm sitting with our teacher for lunch times and free periods just practising my lines with the acctent to try and get it right.

It is so fustrating to not be able to do something right, to not be able to do something that you know that you should be able to, but I guess there is only one way to learn and it is to practise, practise, practise and then practise some more.

Michelle





23rd October

On the 21st of October we had our practical exam for Drama, and it was terrifying! I was sitting back stage making sure that I wasn't making a sound and there was Amy-lee running around whispering loudly along with Duncan and I wanted to slap them or something and tell them to shut up and stop making noise. It was painful just to hear.

When it was my turn to do my monologe, I was nerve wracked, it was terrifying and I was scared out of my wits and I didn't know what was going on. It was more scary that we didn't know exactally what they wanted to see.

Half way through my prose a whole heap of phleme build up in the back of my throat and I really needed to cough but I knew I wasn't aloud to and I kind of spadfaded (where your voice goes all funny) which had me kicking myself because I didn't want to do anything wrong.

Our group play way alright, though Amy-lee didn't exactly pull her weight. She was the only non-pre teriary in our group and she had a script on stage which was very irritating and what is even more irritating is that I shouldn't have to be trying to give her prompts on stage when she has a script in front of her!

If I could do it again, I think that I would definatly insist that we have groups that are made up of only pre terciary students because even though I don't want to be harsh to Amy-lee, her lack of commitment due to it not being as critical for her was a bit of a drag and her having a script on stage threw me off a bit.

All in All I think I didn't go too badly and I hope that I got a good mark, but now the waiting game is almost as tantilising.

Michelle




5th November

There isn't really alot to talk about any more, we have finished our classes for the year and now it is study time! I'm waiting on some last minute study notes off my teacher but then I will be all ready to go for my written exam.

My exam is on the 19th of November and it seems like a long way away from where I am now since I have finished exams for my other subjects but I'm sure that it is goig to creep up on me very fast so the practiseing of writing reviews are already under way.

Michelle

Monologues out of my EARS!

(written on the 15th of September while away in New Zealand)

Wow! Getting 2 monologues just before the break is seriously HARD! In comparison the EARTHQUAKE in Christchurch was easier!
I'm struggleing with learning them on my own, especially the shakespeare one because I don't have the support or encouragement that I get from the class which is really hard.
I guess doing both my UTAS monologue and the one that I'm doing for the Bell Shakespeare Scholarship audition is making it harder because I don't know where to start or what to do first and I haven't got any guidance from my teacher.
The other thing that is hard is time, because we are traveling in a motorhome I have no time alone to learn and do homework because everything is go go go and then when we stop there are 5 people in one small van.
Oh well, back to homeworking I go!
Michelle

Presure and Holidays

At last X Stacy is behind us and we are not a giant fail! So pleased about that! Now it's time to get focused on our end of year pieces. I am doing a bit out of 'Mockingjay' by Suzanne Collins and one of Meg's monolouges out of Hotel Sorrento. Full on! Because of wonderful UCP I get to do a preformance of mine fisrt week back which I am looking foward to because it means that I will have to have my monolouge done which is good.
The other thing that we are doing in the class piece. We are doing the importance of being Ernest. ...I have 20 lines. That's right, I'm lane, with a total of 20 lines! Not very pleased :(
I guess its because Mrs Hastings also wants me to apply for the Bell Shakespeare scholaship (due the 23rd and only got info today!) and because of UCP and Much Ado About Nothing which is all alot of work but still, 20 lines makes me sad face.
If one of the boys that had a reputation for screwing up lines on X Stacy screws up all the lines with me I WILL NOT be happy!
Well now, time to learn lines before I got to New Zealand for two weeks in the morning! I already know about half of the Lane one's ('Yes Sir' is there about 10 times!)
Bye! See you in 2 weeks!
Michelle

Stresses

Woooooow, time is going so fast! Less then a week to go before we preform X-Stacy, our big play that we have to do. I play Anne, a mother who's daughter has died of an overdose of recreational drugs. It is getting so stressful! We have one person in particular who will not turn up to rehersals and it is getting so irritating! I mean it is one thing to not care about her own marks, but it is holding us all back. This happens to be the same person who tried to attack me a week and a bit ago because they got an internal suspention because she sent me a nasty message on facebook. I can laugh about it now but it wasn't so funny at the time. It was really scary, but at the same time it was kind of dramatic, which is ironic. Drama in Drama.
Yes, our class is getting along fabulasly. It was really scary though, that was one day in which I did not like drama. Not one bit. I've never been attacked before. Oh well, I guess that it is just one more thing that I have experianced that I will be able to draw from one day.
The other big news (I know, this is going to turn into a big complaint) is that first off Much Ado About Nothing, we got the director that we wanted. And then he decided that were not going to do it set in WWII, no, were going to do it set in a modern office building. And then I didn't get Beatrice, I'm 'Leoni' which was Leonato. I was really upset, and yes, I did cry, but I got over it and now I'm moving on though were not starting it until after X-Stacy.
Every day I am finding that I am thinking more and more about the fact that our drama teacher Jill is leaving at the end of the year and going to Queensland. I wish that she didn't have to go. She is the best teacher that I have ever had and I don't know what I am going to do without her.
I really want to do well and try to get an EA this year because I want to do her proud, even though she keeps reminding me that it is almost impossiable to get a EA in Tassie. Oh well, I am going to try. I asked her if I had already gotten too many B's to get an EA and she just told me that it is really, really hard, but not impossiable but highly, higly unlikely and that HA is still really, really good.
Oh well, this is the end of my rant for now, there will be more comming soon, after Tuesday which is preformance day.
<3 Michelle

Much Ado About X Stacy

Hey there guys!

The main topic of this post is about our Drama Exam that is going to be happening soon (X Stacy) and Much Ado About Nothing. First thing I am going to do is have a little bit of a rant. With out After 3 Theatre Company (A3TC) we had a plan of attack, we were going to do Much Ado About Nothing and it was going to be set in WWII. Well, after the countless hours that I spent writing the notes of what needs to change ect. Andrew who is going to direct has come along and decided that we're going to do it set in Australia in 2010 in an office building... We already had a plan! you we're going to direct Much Ado About Nothing set in WWII in France!!! -.- Oh well, he's the director, it's his call.

So after that it's been flat out doing paper work, audition schedule, attendence sheet, contracts, contract list, everything that I've had to do has a list about a mile long.

The other thing that is going on is X Stacy, the play that we're doing for Mid Year assesment. Its..... sinking.... slowly.... There are a few dedicated people who have lines learnt, everything ready. We are ment to be preforming next week but after our teacher talking to our year level co-ordinator we have been given an extention because of the stress of exams. Atleast with the recording of voice overs done and paperwork in a folder for Much Ado About Nothing I feel like something is happening....

Michelle

Eclipse

The Twilight Saga Eclipse is the move adaptation of the third of the Twilight Saga books by Stephenie Meyer. This is the book where Bella has to choose between Edward the vampire and Jacob the werewolf but she discovers that it will never be a clean cut.

I've seen this movie twice now, at the midnight screening and the next day and it's really good, I cried when Bree died because I read the book and so I fell in love with her, shes awesome, I wish that it could have ended differently for her.

10 stars out of 10 and I recomend that you all have to go and see it :)

The Runaways

Ok, it has been a long week, alot of work has been happening because it is Musical week and I emailed off my 100 word review on Friday which took FOREVER to finish!

I just wanted to make a quick mention of some awesome movies. First there is 'The Runaways' staring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, I won't talk too much about it because I just wrote a 500 word review on it and handed it in, the next is The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Yes, I'm one of the nerds that went to the midnight screening of Eclipse.... on a school night. It was amazing, I loved it and there will be a full review after the musical when I can think straight!

We are well into X-Stacy at school and after this week we start with Much Ado About Nothing!

Michelle

Back from Japan

Ok, let me start by saying that Japan was awesome! I got to see so much new stuff, it was amazing! I even watched some Japanese game shows.

Today, we had drama! Yay! first time I've been to drama since I got back, I was greated by the news that we're starting X-Stacy in 5 weeks.... Just the news I wanted to find out! Costumes are being done by the end of the week! Presure is really on now, we weren't going to do it till next term.

Also found out that my cinema tickets for the special screening of New Moon and Eclipse are sitting at the cinema ready for me to collect, yay! I am so excited for this movie (eclipse) because Eclipse is my favourite of the Twilight Saga books and I can't wait to see it brought to the screen.

Something else that is exciting is that new episodes of a TV show that I watch (True Blood, based of the Sookie Stackhouse novels) had season 3 begin when I was away and I got to come back and watch it. It's amazing, I love it. Alan Ball (the director) discribes it as 'Popcorn for smart people' but I will be giving a detailed review of the first 3 episodes of season 3 next week.

Until then have fun!

Michelle

Japan and Much Ado About Nothing!

Hi Guys!

This is more a notice then anything, you may notice that as of the 25th of May there is a 3 week or so gap since I've posted/made an entry.... I'm going to Japan with school and so as much as I would love to post, I'm not going to have a chance to while I'm away because I won't have any internet connection or spare time especially while I'm at homestay.

On an almost related topic, I almost cancelled my trip to Japan and I cried yesterday because Mrs Hastings told me that Jacob and I could go to a Shakespeare workshop in Hobart for shakespearian duolouges with UTAS but I'm going to be in Japan still on the 5th of June! (to work on Jacob and my Much Ado About Nothing duolouge that we did in the eisteddfod.) I was so upset and I still am! It's such a great opotunity but I can't go because I'm torn between such great opotunities! And what more, because I can't go with him, now Jacob can't go which makes me feel bad. Oh well, there isn't anything I can do about it, but I really wish that I could go though, I would learn so much and I am so proud of our duolouge, atleast I get to do it again tomorrow night at the winners concert at the Eistdfodd.

Talk soon!
Michelle

Much Ado About Nothing

I just had an acomplishment and thought that I needed to share it! We're doing Much Ado About Nothing for A3TC (After 3 Theatre Company) at school and I'm helping out with the script and I just finished writing up all the notes for every scene and what we need to change to make it WW2 and i've sent it off! Now Jacob and Mrs Hastings need to go through it! so exciting!!! Well It's 12.28am so I had better go to bed, but I'm so pumped!

"Letters to Juliet"

Let me start this blog post by saying that I am scared about how much Shakespear I've been doing lately, becauseI find him too hard to understand and here I am about to talk about a movie that I saw inspired by 'Romeo and Juliet'. I'm sorry that I haven't gotten on with the rest of my colloquim posts, they are comming, it's just the Eisteddfod week here and so it's been hectic and I have Drama assesments next week that I've been preparing for along with Japan.

Anyway, in a nutshell, this week I have done about 5 or so things in the eisteddfod, including Shakespeare (Act 4 Scene i from Much Ado About Nothing) and I have started helping with the adaptation of this years A3TC (After 3 Theatre Company) production, Much Ado About Nothing. We are setting it in WW2 so we need to sit down and figure it out.

At any rate, here comes my rant about Letters to Juliet!

From Movie Promotion:

When aspiring magazine writer Sophia and would-be restaurateur Victor fly from New York to Italy for a vacation, the stage seems set for some much needed romance in their relationship - especially since their destination is the coty of Verona, home of the star crossed lover Juliet Capulet of ROMEO AND JULIET fame.

But Voctor is far more interested in finding suppliers for his future restaurant than in wooing Sophia, who ends up getting a vacarious romatic fix from an unlikely scource; she joins a group of volenteers who respond to letters that pour into Verona from around the world - letters to juliet seeking advice about love. One such letter that Sophia responds to dates back to 1951 and came from Claie, an Englishwoman who fell in love with a young Italian man in her youth but let the opportunity slip away.

To Sophia's suprise, her letter inspires Claire, now a grandmother, to travel to Verona in search of her long-lost love - accompanied by her grandson Charlie. With Victor wrapped up in his culinary quest, Sophia, Charlie and Claire scour the beautiful Italian countryside in search of Claire's long lost love. In the process, romance blossoms in unexpected ways, eventually facing Sophia with the very advice she wrote in her letter to Claire. Will she find the courage to seize love or-like Claire- spend a lifetime regretting the road not taken?

I cried and I laughed tonight, this is an amazing movie, seriously! I'm not going to post more about it at the moment because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it (it only came out today) but I will be posting more about it when it's been out for a while!

Michelle

Colloquim - Post 2

Well now, it's time to talk about the amazing colloquim again!

Today I'm going to be talking about the first activity that we did. We learnt about presence in space to do with Art. I won't talk about it too much because it was for the art students so I didn't find it all that interesting.... We had to take a space and manipulate it.

We were given the couch area and we decided to turn all the tables and the couched upside down and have them face in directions away from each other to make it an uninviting place. We also had pieces of cardboard around the place seperating the people who were in the space (very uncomftably!) and in fetal positions ect.

We had 3 hazard witches hats around the place and on each of them they had A or R or T written on them in duck tape.

The next thing that we had was lunch. Ha ha that was cool :) We had a BBQ and it was great to get to go and talk to everyone and meet everyone else that was there and then get to catch up with the people who I go to school with who I hadn't been in a group with.

I'll be updating again soon so keep an eye out!

Michelle

'Presence' Collopuquim post 1

Sunday I went to the colloquium! It was amazing and I learnt so much but it was so annoying having to be up at 5.30am to get to the bus on time. I'm going to be posting one by one because it was such a big day that I have so much to report about.

But first off is a suggestion. I kow that this was the first year that art and drama students were together but I don't think that it worked that well. I know that I personally didn't get much out of the art activities and they didn't really interest me but then when we got to the drama activities and workshops, I was very interested and engaged and I was trying to get as much out of it as I could which was kind of very hard when you have the arts students complaining to you that it's boring and that they didn't know why they had to do it a so forth.

Before the day really started, we had Mick Lowenstein preform a gig for us, and it was amazing. I laughed so much, he was amazing and it blew me away. He really engaged his audiance and made his presentation interesting.

I will be posting back again soon with the next part of the colloquium because I have more then 6 pages of notes about the colloquium.

Michelle

"Remember Me"

Hi guys! I wanted to talk about a great movie really quick. A while ago I went to see "Remeber Me" starting Robert Pattinson with my mum. I wasn't acually expecting to go and see it, we just didn't have anything to do that night so mum was like 'Well, we have nothing better to do, Remeber Me comes out today, lets go see that' so i said ok.

Boy I am so glad that I went to see it! It was amazing.

Before I say this, don't get me wrong, I love Twilight and I love the books, however I do not love the hype around it, it gets very annoying. so I was thinking that it was going to be a mushy film. Man was I wrong.

Remeber Me is set in 2001 and follows a man named Tyler. He has a disfuntional family and is living in New York. To begging with I was wondering what was going on, why was all of these things happening, but I went along with it anyway. Its amazing, as you go along, everything falls into place and everything fits.

When I got to the end, I cried, it was so sad and so beleiveable, it blew me away. The issue that it delt with (I really don't want to give away the ending so I'm trying not to) was so amazing, it threw me compleatly and I think that it is important that it is delt with because there are so many people who weren't really connected with a tradgety that now are finding new connections with it.




***************************WARNING!!!!! PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE! I JUST REALLY NEEDED TO SAY SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*********************************






*************************************NO REALLY, THERE ARE SPOILERS COMMING*********************************


When September 11th happened, I was only 8 and I didn't really understand what was going on, I remember being annoyed that the cartoons weren't on because the news was, seeing what happened in the dignified way that it is portrayed in 'Remeber Me' made it real on a level for me and made me understand, I was blown away when I walked out of the cinema and it has made the tradgety so much more real for me then what it was because of how old I was at the time, I think it's so important that September 11th has been Remebered in the way that it has been shown in 'Remember Me'.

When I saw it zoom out on Tyler in the World Trading Center, then saw the flash of the date in his sisters class room, it all crashed down on me and made it so real and helped me to understand what I didn't when I was 8. I think this movie is fantastic and everyone should go out and see it because it is so amazing to see it through the eyes of others and give some perspective.

Michelle

Tutorial #1 Journaling

Hey guys!

So today we had our first Tutoral with Fernando. It was all about doing Journal work and different ways that we could do our journal.

I learnt that the idea of having a journal is to help think of ways to do things. It's a way to help with the creative process and help get those ideas.

The example that we were given was 'Dear Journal. I hate art today' then we were told to write about WHY.

We also need to talk about how the day went, what we did and what we did or didn't get out of it.

Doing the exercises to do with Shaun Gladwell (click for link) and I learnt that my brain can not be trusted to just come up with a journal entry on it's own without being made to stop and think about things.

I came up with single words. Yes, that's right, all my pathentic brain could come up with is single words. It now has to go and sit in the naughty corner!

Either way, this is what I came up with:

pink clouds sign. DROP! wow. how is he doing that? denim jeans. helmet is green. cross legged. indian style. FAST! kick. BREAKDANCING! belt. silver. metal. squares - thinking outside them. white sneakers. hands. shadow. refelection. ghost

Do not ask me how I came up with such unintellegant things that a two year old could have told you because I have no idea! Bad brain! Go sit in the naughty corner!

We then looked at a painting and had to think of questions about it. We had to ask questions to do with it to talk about it rather then just saying 'There is a duck looking at a golden egg. There is a tank in the background.'

These are the questions I came up with :

What does the duck want with the golden egg?
Why is the tank moving in?
Will the golden egg have a golden future?
Why is the colour so bright but the duck is so sad?
Is this why the duck crossed the road?

Yes, I know, I figured out later that it was the chicken who crossed the road, well now the chicken has a friend and that's the duck. Congradulations chicken.

Well that's all for today! I'll blog again soon!!

Michelle

Welcome

Hi everyone!
This is my first post in my new blog!
I am so excited to be starting my UTAS course while still in college! I'm a year 11 student and I am doing the Advancing gifted college students in the visual & preforming arts program. It will mean that I have finished the first two units of my first year at uni! I'm enrolling through doing Drama 5C which means that I'm doing the pre-tertiary drama course.
SO EXCITING!
I'm going to use this blog as my journal throughout the year and hand in the URL at the end of the year so this blog is SUPER important! So I had better not stuff it up!
Cheers!
Michelle