Journal #2 - 9/18/18 When looking back at my Research Presentation from the spring, the main changes that needed to be incorporated were regarding criteria B. I began working on how to add a few more bits and pieces of information on the beginning and coming into popularity of Victorian Melodrama, and the competition between England and France. The next piece that needed work, was my moment of theatre. Luckily, I did not need to completely shift gears on what I was doing, and I was able to still focus on portraying the physicality of the theatre tradition as seen through the stock character of the heroin. However, noticing that even though my moment before was not a polished monologue, there was little discussion of how my moment came about and why I was choosing these specific actions and so forth. To remedy this, I decided to cut down the actual length and text of my monologue, and instead focus on the first bit, stop and explain why I was choosing to do these specific actions, and have it be more of a work in progress. This changed the dynamic of the whole moment, and even though it is much rougher than before, I feel that it will show my application better. The last piece that I really worked on was the explanation of my process. Beforehand there was little explanation of how I learned about these methods and focused on deciding how to portray my world tradition. After taking a few photos of me working on my moment of theatre, and making sure that I will explain this better, I feel more confident in this piece of the presentation, but also in the presentation as a whole. It has been very different when practicing my presentation since adding these updates, but I think that the changes were needed to hone it in more and hold it to a higher standard.
Journal #1 - 5/2/18 The past two weeks, I have been working and beginning to compile my theatre world tradition research presentation. After choosing my topic of Victorian Melodrama, I began looking into possible sources that I could use. After looking through a few data bases, I was able to find Blood and Thunder, a book written by Maurice Wilson Disher about the origins and social context of the theatre tradition. In this book, as well as in other websites and journals that I have found, such as “Victorian Melodrama and the Performance of Poverty,” by Kristen Leaver, and “18th Century Theatre” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, I learned that dynamic between the lower class and how melodrama became a way for them to live vicariously through the characters and triumph over the villains. This also gave an outlet to explore darker themes, but mask them with the humor in each instance. This week specifically, I began thinking about my moment of theatre, and knew I wanted to be able to choose something based off of whether or not it would work in the style of melodrama, so I began by looking at examples of Victorian melodrama performances. Once I had spent some time looking into specific vocal techniques, I had decided to either focus on the facial expressions or voice inflections. The next step I took was to begin thinking about a monologue that would align well. I initially began thinking about taking a monologue from another show and translating it into Victorian melodrama techniques and style, but as I was researching on Tuesday, I began looking into the first English play that is considered a melodrama, A Tale of Mystery by Thomas Holcroft, and found a monologue that would let me show a mixture of the ranging facial expressions and voice inflections based on the mood of the line. The next work session, I will be able to look more into the possibility of using this monologue, and continuing working on adding more to the context and explanation of the tradition.