Everyone's a Critic
[ Class
Logs ]
Khayet
10/11/99 10:37:38 PM
Shainman Rehearsal Hall
The largest room in the Istan Harper Hall, save the Ballroom, this room has wonderful acoustics that make sound bounce off the walls just so. From lessons to rehearsal to just listening to the marvelous sounds always filling the room, there's always a surplus of people about, harpers of every rank, and even a few holders. Tiers fill almost every wall in the room, the choir levels on the right, the orchestra one directly in and other smaller areas for more specific group rehearsal on the left. The room is spotlessly clean and only completely empty in the early hours of the morning when most harpers have to tear themselves away from their work for a few winks of sleep.
Linne, Alesa, and Kayla are here.
Obvious exits: Main Hall
Kayla smiles and takes a seat once she arrives.
Caelan walks in from the ballroom.
Caelan walks in, erping as he sees that the others have arrived before him, but managing to ask, somewhat quietly, "I hope I'm not late...?"
Sighing that he had to be taken away from his studies to attend a /theater/ lesson, Assel trudges his way in, muttering something in a sarcastic tone about 'diversifying interests' in a good impression of a journeyman's lecture tone.
Khayet shakes his head, "Not yet.....Have a seat.....Nice to see you again, Assel......"
Linne looks up as she sees that Khay has entered, and gives a quick wave, before grabbing out her usual materials and ready to learn!
Caelan nods, and sits down, away from most of the others, just not feeling he belongs next to the others.
Assel looks up in surprise at the greeting, gives an indifferent nod of greeting, before taking his own seat.
Khayet gives Linne a nod and a smile, taking a seat on the stage, looking over his notes. "Everyone ready?"
Kayla smiles and nods to Khayet. She takes out her note pad.
Assel rolls his eyes a bit. He's always ready, even if he doesn't especially want to be.
Linne flashes a bright smile in the middle of a quick nod.
Caelan chuckles, and nods, "For one of your lessons Khay? Of course I am..."
Assel can't help but look at all the other harpers, so enthusiastic about it, and mutters to himself again.
Khayet takes a final sip of his klah and stands. "In our last class, we discussed primarily the audience, and I was just going into the process by which an audience makes a judgment about any given performance. This does not necessarily mean a concert, play, it could be something like a ball game or runner race. We also discussed why we decide to perform, why we like to do it, those of us who do...." He levels his eyes on Assel, grinning slightly. "We also discussed the philosophy, 'Let me entertain you' as opposed to 'I will entertain you'....." He pauses, allowing everyone to catch up, as it were.
Assel has the presence of mind to blush and stop muttering to himself as Khayet's gaze meets his.
Tomias walks in from the ballroom.
Khayet asks, "What do you all think goes into the judgment process for an audience?"
Assel can't help raising a hand and smirking, "Whether anyone bungled a part of it."
Kayla raises her hand.
Linne frowns over her shoulder at the reluctant harper, before turning back to Khay and raising her own hand.
Khayet nods, "Alrightly....Kayla?"
Kayla says, "Whether or not there is an emotional reaction. Be it humorous or tragic."
Khayet nods, then looks to, "Linne....?"
Linne nods, sure of her part, "How appropriate the performance is to the setting. You don't do a humorous play at a sad occasion or a melancholy tragedy at the hold spring gather."
Khayet nods, "Good. As I had quoted from Master Sebell's performance guide for apprentices, 'That some plays, concerts, gathers and even sporting events flop is less a comment on their real artistic worth than on the difficulty of understanding the audience and the process by which an audience collectively and individually forms a judgment.' He then goes to define this process as firstly, the decision to attend, secondly the construction of the collective self-image, and thirdly as projecting the expectations of the collective self-image to the performers......Any thoughts on this?"
Linne knits her brows, attempting to understand this by mulling it over in her mind, "So, we have to be aware of what kind of attitude that the audience is exuding at us and act accordingly....?" She asks rather hesitantly.
Yantik, in the back of the room, stares at Khayet with a look of hopeless befuddlement. "So... it's not the play, then? Or the actors? It's the audience's fault?" The poor boy looks baffled.
Assel stifles a chuckle and quietly quips to nearby apprentices, "You have to recognize that they don't like you if they start booing and throwing cabbage."
Khayet nods, "That's the hard part, but you hit on that in your previous answer. You wouldn't want to play a dirge at a gather, would you?" He pauses to listen to Yantik, "Not always, you have to pick the venue for the performance. It's unlikely that a simple hold in the middle of nowhere is going understand a farce about the complexities of betting in Bitra. Or a play about freezing to death in Southern Hold. There are many factors, and little fault, actually."
Khayet says, "And if they started doing that to you, Assel, what would you do, on the staged, clothed in cabbage?"
"Oh." Yantik mulls over that one for a minute, slouching down in his seat. "So, it's not that the audience is bad, then. Just... not right? Like, the same audience that didn't like the Bitra thing might get a silly thing about... um..." The apprentice trails off. "Well, something else?"
Khayet nods, "Exactly. Location, age, gender, rank, education and climate can all effect an audience's understanding of the material, and if they find it entertaining."
Looking up in surprise at being called upon, Assel opens his mouth to retort, "Well, I, for one, would do my best to /not/ be up there in the first place."
Tomias shakes his head. Some harper this one is going to be if he's not going to perform.
Khayet had been expecting that. "Hypothetically speaking then.....If, hypothetically you were giving the most stirring performance of your entire career, and the audience didn't appreciate it, what would you do?"
Yeah, just like good old Uncle Jallor.
Assel does have some understanding of politics, and decides to cut his losses and just answer Khayet straight, "Well, I'd probably just put up with it, finish the performance, cabbage or no, and stalk off. To do what I'd like to do -which would be ram that cabbage right back down their throats- wouldn't exactly get me any better of a reaction." He does sound irritated, though.
Khayet nods. "How about you, Tomias?"
Tomias shrugs. "I'd do my best, finish the performance, and chalk it up to experience.
Yantik grins lightly, leaning to whisper to the girl next to him. "Probably give up," he says lightly. "Start throwing cabbage at them; at least that way they'd react. They might even think it was funny." He tries -- and fails -- to look appealing.
The girl snorts, whispering back quietly. "And your fellow actors would wait patiently until the play was over... then /lynch/ you."
Khayet says, "They might, but they'd more than likely be all the more upset, not to mention those your performing with. Before I move on, does anyone have any question about what we've discussed so far?"
A quick shake of the head is given by Assel. Of course, he probably wouldn't ask anyway. He just wants this over with so he can go back to what he was doing before.
Linne files the new information away in her mind before giving a go ahead via a quick negative.
Yantik just shrugs, glancing around at everyone else and letting the information flick across his brain, finding very little fertile ground.
Caelan shakes his head quietly, to show his lack of a question.
Tomias shrugs...
Khayet says, "Alright.....One of the things that Kayla touched on before she was called away was tragedy. Just like there are times when comedy is appropriate, there are times when drama is appropriate. People need not only to be entertained, but to have a release of their emotions. This is called the catharsis theory. Tragedy can be defined by the amount of either terror or pity it creates in the audience. The more powerfully these emotions are evoked, the more likely the are to be purged from the audience. Such purgation leave the audience emotionally drained and able to see life more clearly and intellectually. When would the use of catharsis be an appropriate tool to use?"
Yantik gazes blankly at Khayet. "Uh... If a person's unhappy?" The answer is painfully general and rather helplessly thrown forth.
Khayet nods, "Good....Anyone else?"
Linne opens his mouth to say something, but then reconsiders, realizing she really doesn't know, and shuts it.
Khayet says, "Go ahead Linne....."
Linne shakes her head, "never mind."
Khayet says, "No, go ahead and say what you were thinking."
Linne umms for a few long moments, before hesitantly beginning. "Uhh... for the terror part, if they are feeling bored with their life.... Want some excitement..."
Khayet says, "That's a perfectly fine statement, Linne. Anyone else have anything to add before we get into the other tools of the trade?"
Assel decides to give Khay a break on this one and doesn't make a surly remark.
Khayet nods. "Right.....Tools of the Trade...Performing is an art form, and there are elements that are standard to every play, every concert, every sporting event, and to other forms of art as well. Some of these elements are very limited, such as sculpture, as it is characterized in a spatial base. Music is defined in a temporal base. What sort of base does theatrical performance have?"
Tomias raises a hand.
"Unh?" A helpless noise escapes Yantik's lips as he stares at Khayet.
Linne raises a hand
"Tomias...." Khayet nods, drifting back to his klah for another sip.
Tomias thinks. "I believe that it too would be temporal.
Linne begins to get a bit antsy, from holding her hand up in the air.
Khayet points to Yantik, going to have to learn that lads name....."What do you think?"
"Umm..." Yantik stares helplessly at Khayet. "Uh, I think... I mean, if you... I -- " He trails off. "Could you repeat the question?" The last is submitted timidly, in a tiny voice.
Linne sighs, and switches which hand is in the air, nursing her other arm until blood returns.
Khayet smiles ever so slightly, "Aye, what sort of elemental base does theatrical performance have?"
Yantik rubs at the back of his neck with one hand, his eyes focused on some random point of dust. "Yeah, that's what I thought you said." The words are barely audible. "I, uh... " He swallows. "Air?" The word is obviously a random stab into the room.
Khayet nods, "So, spatial....." and then smiles to Linne, last but certainly not least.
Linne hmphs and finally puts her hand down, unconsciously rubbing it with her other to get the blood moving again, and speaks, fairly confident of her answer. "Well, it has some aspects of both. It has the spatial aspect of the objects: actors, props, scenes, and the temporal aspects of music in that there is the timing involved and the voices of the actors. It's not one or the other, just something in between."
Khayet nods and smiles, "Very good, you're dead on. Temporal, dealing with time, spatial dealing with space. There are all sorts of things that go into both. And here, is where we truly get into theatre as the broadest aspect of the Craft, because it uses four general veins. Visual, temporal, motion and narrative." He takes another pause, and this time actually sits down before drinking his klah.
Linne nods in satisfaction at having the right answer to a rather complicated question.
"The visual vein is generally the costuming and scenery, they are in many ways the base and the mirrors for the mood, the tone of the production. Line, form, mass color texture and space, they all work together to set the background, a sense of things. Sometimes they tell of things that 'came before' in the story of the play. Is there anything else the visual vein can tell us?"
Linne stops feeling smug and thinks hard, not really coming up with anything.
Khayet glances around, "Anyone?"
Tomias says, "The time that it takes place in?"
Yantik shrinks back in his seat, attempting to appear insignificant... or, better yet, not to appear at all.
Khayet nods. "Lighting angles are also visual....." He takes a deep breath, "Pitch, rate, volume, phrasing, stress and pausing can all create mood in the Temporal Vein. I've little doubt that all of you know that sound creates mood at least as well, if not actually more effectively than things that we see. In song for instance, if you compare the mood of Moreta's Ride to that of your average gather reel, you'll have little trouble telling that Moreta's Ride is a more dramatic, tragic song where the quick beats and rollicking notes of the reel is certainly more festive. They could both have been written in the very same key, but it's the arrangement of the notes, the tone, the variations of speed that tell the tales. The sung or spoken part of theatre is truly no different in this. I would like you to each, in turn say the phrase 'let me entertain you', but make it different from the one before you, either in emphasis, timing, weather you sing or speak it...."
Khayet says, "Assel....Will you begin please?"
Assel, jerking up from his near doze, Assel blinks alertly, and decides to put some meaning and heart into one thing in the lesson, at least. "Let me /entertain/ you." He sneers, putting venom and distasted into his voice.
Khayet looks to Yantik, still trying to come up with the lads name, "I'm sorry, what's your name?"
Yantik blinks. "Me? Yantik."
Khayet nods, "Aye, you go next please."
Yantik winces, somehow expecting that. He pauses, then smirks faintly, shifting his weight and speaking in a quiet voice. "Let me..." He pauses, as though searching for a word, then concludes: "...entertain you," he suggests, his voice laden with dark intention and subtle euphemism.
Khayet nods, smiling, "Good.....Tomias, if you please?"
Tomias nods and stands. Taking a deep breath, he speaks. "Let me entertain you" he says, his voice intriguing and mysterious, conjuring up images of far hills and mysterious travelers...
Khayet bows his head to Linne.
Linne stands up, looking very dignified, and takes a deep bow to Khayet, while saying, "Let me entertain you." With just a hint of a British accent. The way a vassel would talk to a lord who requests enjoyment.
Khayet nods. "Excellent, everyone....Motion....the physical aspect on the move. It puts emphasis on words, thoughts, it gives the actors something to do other than stand there and say things that they might never otherwise say. For example, let us all pretend there's someone to might right. I turn to him and say, 'I'm going to kill you,' Just like that, in a bland, boring tone with no action other than turning my head, is it threatening? Or would you find..." He turns his whole body, not just his head, a sudden, fluid motion. Left hand and arm mime drawing his dagger and raise in the air as he looms over the invisible victim, at what seems to be the top of his lungs, repeating the line, "I'm going to -kill- you!"
Linne gives a little start and mini-gasp of surprise at Khay's sudden movement, then chuckles at her surprise, "Definitely more effective."
Tomias nods. "Indeed...
Assel gives his own little chuckle, "It's more dramatic, but a bit less realistic." Decides he's had enough of this anyway. Getting up, he stalks off, back to his haunts in the archives.
Khayet smiles ever so slightly. "So now you see how motion adds to everything. There's but one final thing to discuss tonight, and that is the narrative. The story, the entire reason for putting on the production in the first place. A play is storytelling in grand form....Can anyone tell me the elements of the narrative?"
Linne raises a hand, a couple coming instantly to mind.
Khayet narrows his eyes, intending on a talk with the archivist later. "Linne?" He asks as his facial features clear back to their normal, seemingly placid features.
Linne either doesn't notice Khay's expression or chooses to ignore it, realizing it has nothing to do with her, "Well, the plot is a big one, an having believable characters who develop as the story progresses."
Khayet nods, "Good. Can you think of any others?"
Linne ummms.... no more instantly coming to mind...
Khayet nods, "Okay, the remaining are point of view, exposition and action. The exposition is the background, the past of the tale. Characterization is that what makes a character that character, the things that have happened to him or her to form them into who they are. Plot, or storyline, I'm sure you already know to be what is going to basically happen or be achieved. Action is the method in which the storyline is expressed, the physical aspect of things, choreography, blocking....and finally," He pauses to a sort sip, "Point of view is the view from which the story is told, it can be first person, second person, third person and so on, just as you could have in any amount of literature....." He takes a long, slow breath, "Does anyone have any questions?
Tomias shakes his head...
Linne also gives a negative
Khayet nods, closing his eyes. "Good.....Same time....Class dismissed...."
Tomias stands and stretches, then walks over to Khay, glancing at the archivist. "You want some help with him, cousin?
Linne stretches out after having sat down for so long and gets up. Giving a grin at Khay, she says, "Thanks for the lesson. I think I'm going to be un-me and actually go to sleep...." She heads off.
Khayet looks up, his 'teaching mask' having totally dropped. "Assel? I'll have a chat with him tomorrow, but thanks. Good night Linne....Sleep well....."
Tomias frowns as he looks at Khay, an absent wave to Linne. "You ok, Khayet?
Sudanna walks in from the ballroom.
Khayet frowns a bit himself. "I don't think lunch's sat well with me. I'm sure it'll pass....."
Tomias nods, still frowning. "Are you sure?
Sudanna says, "Well Khay, that's not what a concerned friend who sent for me said...."
Sudanna drops her pack and starts pulling out all sorts of medicinals and herbs, "Anyone want to tell me the story?"
Tomias shrugs. "I don't know, Sudanna... All I know is that once he finished his class, I notices that he was a bit ill looking.
Sudanna rinses her hands with redwort and rinses the tube as well. "Khay, are you hot or cold?
Khayet looks to Sudanna, blinking rather blankly. He looks to Tom, and then shakes his head. "Linne....." Last to leave..... "Well...I dunno....I've had a slight headache e'er since lunch....and it doesn't seem to be sitting well with me at all...."
Sudanna reaching over to place her hand on his head, then checking his pulse... "Hon, sounds like one of two things.. food poisoning or a flu. Do you ache as well?"
Sudanna looks up at Tom. "What kind of 'ill' look? Pale and weak or flushed and hot?
Tomias says, "A little ill at ease, and greenish."
Khayet nods, "A little, more in my head than anywhere else...."
Sudanna says, "Good, sounds more like a flu then a poisoning, and as uncomfortable as they are, flues are easier to treat. Khay, I am going to mix-up a few packets of medicine and leave instructions with Tom on how and when to take them."
Khayet nods, "And that means....I'll be in bed a day or so?"
Sudanna says, "/If/ you start having severe vomiting, come to the infirmary, but some is expected, okay? Here are the packets.. Tom give him one every 6 hours in a mug of hot water for two days. Then see how he is."
Tomias nods. "Ok. I'll see to it...
Sudanna turns to Khayet "At least two days.. I want to catch this before it /really/ catches you.
Khayet sighs, thinking to himself a minute. "Lovely....."
Sudanna laughs at Khayet "Awww, everyone needs rest. I have a feeling this is the only time you get it, when you are sick!"
Khayet frowns a bit, "I don't normally get ill.....I cannot honestly remember the last time I did....."
Sudanna says, "Then maybe this is your body telling you to slow down a bit. I honestly don't think I have ever seen you go to your bed at a reasonable hour, and yet you are up and studying at the crack of light."
Khayet says, "I've never slept much, or well....Talia's tried every tea and compound known to man to try to help me to sleep....."
Sudanna says, "That may be dear, but you can still rest yourself and not push all the time you are awake. Relax and let go a bit. But for now, get to your bed, Tomias has your meds all ready... and if you need me, send a firelizard or a friend. I will be in the infirmary tonight, all right?"
Khayet nods, "Layin' down actually sounds good just now....Thanks Sudanna...."
Sudanna says, "Anytime Dear.. Go rest.. Do you need help to your room?"
Khayet shakes his head, "I think I can make it....Thanks again though...."
Sudanna packing up her kit and watching him head out. "Remember I am in the infirmary tonight..
Khayet nods. "I'm sure if I worsen you'll be visited by my Kageen...."
Sudanna says, "okay.. I am glad you are in good hands.. go..."
Sudanna walks to the Main Hall.
