Ash’s blog

With no soul in music, there is only sound.

…WOW… Just came back from performing our ensemble. Few mixed feelings… firstly releif to know its over… and to know i can get my lunchtimes back :)… impressed that everyone did such an amazing job (other group included) and also a sore throat

Have to say I suffer from a terrible illness where after I perform i tend to come down from the adrenalin rush and start doubting my performance personally… I am very critical of myself and I try not to be but i can’t help it - just doing what comes naturally.

But you know what - we rehearsed and went over things and didn’t give up when things didn’t work and overall it paid off. I know our group can’t collaborate for s………….ugar…….. :S… but we pulled our fingers out in the end and worked together well when rehearsing. It also helped to have someone take charge - not to bos us around or have the rest of the group slacking off, but so we could get thigns done with less umming and arring.

Our sashs we had ended up being around our waist, basically because we had no time to fit them in anywhere, and also it was difficult to use them effectively without looking messy. I think our Gods, spirits, music whatevers shone a tad brighter, which was helped with hair and make-up. The puffs did alrite, that line the blue one forgot though… lucky pinky #3 came through or else chaos would have arisen for sure.

Now there was an executive decision made where in the actual performance cheese (A.K.A. Alex) decided to cut half a scene, which was totally cool. It really tied up our performance nicely and I’m so glad he DELIBERATELY DID IT AND IT WAS NOT FORGOTTEN…..

Pretty much gotta be happy with what we did… well theres no changing it now! What I’m happy about most is that we kept fairly good focus, we didn’t forget lines or stuff up transitions and everyone had a lot of fun and that’s all anyone can ask for.

Peace out, Ash xoxo

P.S. If anyone wants my autograph it’ll be on Ebay in 10 years time when I’m rich and famous living the life in Hollywood :)

Wow. Pretty sure I’m the only one in my drama class blogging anymore With the final week leading up to our performance night we have edited, tweaked, polished and a whole other improving words to our performance. We came away from Trafalga knowing what we had to fix and we’ve done that and so much more. I am even proud to say that i know my lines! I know proud acheivment.

Last night i made sashs for everyone in our group with symbolic colours to help represent our Spirits better - red for Folk, White for Pop, dark blue for Rock and light blue for Roll. I’m also going to come up with some symbols to paint on our faces which will hopefully make our spirits of music that much better.

Well, taking a break from drama as of the end of this sentence… I’m all dramad out for this week, I need to reguvinate ready for Tuesday - our big night (Couldn’t have come any sooner)

Peace out, Ash xoxo

Well long time no speak eh?! My computer skills (and visitation) are becoming less and less frequent. However, on my way to breakfast I stopped and saw my old friend, covered in dust. Then i heard it… the sound of a small violin. As i stared into the screen of my once beloved computer i thought - ‘for old time’s sake.’ So I jumped on and came here to make a special effort to blog… of course now I’m hungry :P.

Yesterday we travelled up to Trafalga for a ’show and tell’ of our ensembles to the school… to pass the time, we started going through our ensemble - thats right ON THE MINIBUS!!! going down Princess freeway, boy we must have looked hilarious… a small bunch of kids on a bus with soft looking blocks making faces and talking rubbish while our driver tries hard not to have a mental breakdown over the directions

Overall i felt the trip was worthwhile (once we got there) Performing the entire ensemble all together for the first time infront of an audience was a challenge and we certainly know as a group where our strengths and weakneses lie within the ensemble, and what we have to do to alter the performance, to make it just that much better. I enjoyed watching the other school perfom and to see their perspective on the prescribed structure.

So with a week till performance night couldn’t be happier with where we are at - I know what i have to do to contribute to the group and the others the same. I’m ready for a fresh start Monday and I am starting to get excited about perofrming it to an audience!

Peace out, Ash xoxo

(Puff Daddies for 2007)

Masking tape. Oh yes we went there! The super ensemble is no more!! Seems without Clarry here the other group can’t cope and decide to take it out on our group. I’ll tell you the REAL story seeing as though Kara can’t…
There we were minding our own business when suddenly BANG! The enemy sprang on us like guerilla warfare and attacked us with their briefcases… so we fought back. What choice did we have? They stepped on our turf first - only the masking tape could stop them now… Mwa ha ha ha ha!!!
So - at this present time the drama room of Norwood Secondary College has been divided… by the dreaded masking tape! *dun dun dun* half of the rooms ours… and we graciously gave them the other half.

On a more dramatic note, the progress of our group this week has been outstanding! Since Monday, we have rehearsed and scripted at least 50%… we started the week with only one scene done, and now we have 5 and are currently working on the remaining 3 scenes left to script. I am really really really pleased with how far our group has come along this week and i think that’s partly because we knew we had to really get our bums into gear as we didn’t have a teacher to guide us for a week. We have weekly, no correction, daily plans of what we are going to do and where we are headed and i can confidently say that i am feeling a lot less stressed about having the work done on time… because it’s becoming more and more likely every lesson that we will.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Cheers! Ash xo

P.S. it won’t let me do my secret message but it’s no secret when i say the other group smell funny!!! Oh yes thats right… i went there… ya face.

long time no see… I’m updating with the little time i have free while I’m researching some Bob Dylan stuff for a possible scene…these days i seem to barely have enough time to scratch myself…

Emotional update - ridin the roller coaster feelin a mixture of happiness, excitement, angst, STRESS and frustration (ride that loop a few times) overwhelmed, exausted… times all these by about 10 plus more impressive emotive words and thats me in a nutshell. Honestly I’m a physcological wreck i don’t feel like myself and the bad thing is it’s going to bottle up until the pressure is too much…

 now thats overall  - only a fraction of that roller coaster is because of the ensemble… nevertheless still freaking out… if i could swear on here i would but i’d possibly get into trouble so i won’t.

I think the ensemble task in general is going slowly… there needs to be way more work contributed by EVERYONE (yes including my slack self) particularly because of the limited amount of time we have left. Our ideas are good don’t get me wrong but theres too much discussion and not enough experimenting…

I feel a little out of my comfort zone for this. I’m working with these amazing people but i feel like im not being myself im not putting myself out there and giving it all i can. at the moment i feel like we’re all a bunch of yes men agreeing with ideas because we’re all too polite to say anything else.

 newho… thats my update…i’ve laid all the cards on the table… hope to update soon…

signing off. 

Todays class had us rolling in ideas (as well as our own filth) as we got our props!!! Fun stuff. Our group got “puffs” as they have affectionatley been named, and the othe grouop recieved briefcases. However these props did have a twist. One was different from the others. We recieved 4 puffs. However!!! 3 were pink while one was blue *dun dun dun*… and the briefcases… one was old…the others new… if i continue like this i think my whole post is going to rhyme… is that how you spell it? ah well you know what i mean!!! I have a hunch an inkling a feeling that this slight differing in the same props is quite possibly playing on the individuality Vs. conformity idea… either that or Clarry couldn’t find four of the same objects so picked those as a substitute…

Oh yes tiny detail… we thought each group came up with such good ideas we thought wouldn’t it just be easier if we combined our ideas… so we did… we combined our ideas…as well as our groups so we are now the SUPER ENSEMBLE!!! *cue heroic music* i feel this will make our overall performance much better…

Peace out, Ash xoxo… can i keep a puff when we’ve finished with them?!?! PPPPPPPLLLLLLLEEEEEEEAAAAAAASSSSSSSEEEEEEE!!!

P.S. (my fomputers cucking up… but my secret message was gonna say - arron your a dork… not very exciting but thought id respond to arrons blog in a subliminal way… but i loved ur anagrams… entertaining :P…)

I dont think i’ve been more obsessed with the Beatles… EVER!…  than for the half hour i was today! Todays lesson we began to workshop particular characters our group had brainstormed the other day, to see if they would work in our ensemble or not. Bit of an “ensemble audition” in clarry’s words.

I tuned into the minds of many - screaming hysterical fans - my main hysteria directed at none other than the Beatles. I enjoyed doing this as it not only gave me an opportunity to be as loud and as dramatic as i wanted, but i also gained an insight into what i need to bring for the ensemble - energy, control, confidence and belief… but thats another story…

Anywho as I was saying - Later our group came together and showed eachother what we came up with - deciding what we thought would / wouldn’t work in our ensemble. From there we picked one character and began to build a minature scene based around that character. Ours worked well - we used screaming fans and set our scene at an airport which i thought worked really well. Overall i really had fun with this workshop!!

Peace out, Ash xoxo

ok just a random thought I had to get this down but I have no paper and my brothers stole my pens… i’ll kill them later

Anywho my thought was that the Beatles were a popular U.K. group… my idea is that here are these bands emerging into the world of music, moulding and changing musical history, completely different to any other music previously heard. Now heres the thing - when i think of suburban England, i think of houses - all look completely the same lined up side by side with no room to breathe. And here are these examples of extrodinary bands that break that mould and become something individual. … if this doesn’t make sense its because i’m literally just typing as i go and not checking what i’ve actually written… so this is what word vomit feels like…sort of… ok well anyway im off to watch Family Guy and then its bed time! … sleep well and keep rockin!

peace out, ash xoxo

In todays class we jumped right into the fantastic world of  improvisation were our ensemble groups came together to improvise, experiment and play with different soundscapes. Our group found pretty nifty sounds to compensate for the static on the radio, and also managed to transform ourselves into a human radio with Cheese being the red dial, Cass and Kaitlyn being the ugly orange line with all the stations listed on it and myself transformed into the knob. I also liked the other ensembles idea of the ipod, the dial at the front spinning and the the machinery inside manually selecting the song from archives of songs. There soundscape worked well and i reckon with a bit of fine tuning both ideas can be turned into something worth putting into the ensemble performance.

Peace out, Ash xoxo

Good evening folks! I thought I should update my blog seeing as though this stupid thing keeps a track of when you post things… it was so much easier when you could make up the dates yourself… *cough*who said that…what…?

 Anyways - yesturday we had to recap what we were doing in class from about 6 days ago - I can’t remember what i did 6 hours ago let alone 6 days ago! But i believe we revisited our 5 tableaux scenes, which grew gradually as another element of Epic theatre was added to it. I like what our group has - but i definately agreed it lacked fluency. But i believe if it was more rehearsed we would have made it flowed better. I’m really liking working with my group - not having worked with them before it’s a good opportunity to see how they learn and what ideas they have. Which brings me to todays lesson…

We spent our double lesson today in our groups, first brainstorming ideas, themes, possible characters and music styles for our ensemble piece, and the second half of the lesson was spent researching. I love what our group came up with today. Some important questions were raised such as what musical influences helped to shape society today, what historical events were taking place at the time a particular music style came out, as well as what different music styles there are.

I‘m really looking forward to really get my teeth stuck into the historical side of things in particular, not so much the music but what was happening at the time and the social norms that contribute to the music being how it was. This topic is huge but at the same time so broad - so many possible things to look at.

Peace out. Ash xoxo