Commedia dell'Austin
September 14, 2001

Hirsch's Log
Iricus and Ilia took off around 10 or so this morning, driving the flats, and anything else that went into the truck (some folk sent things like Aldith’s needlework tools, to avoid problems at the airport - needles, scissors, etc. ...).
     Some of us went into town to attend the first workshop, with most of the rest of the troupe coming in for the second workshop. Aldith stayed back at the Condos because she needed some down-time. While she was at the condo, she cleaned up ours, vacuuming the floors, cleaning up in general, and had a long talk with her mother (who called here, as we can’t make long-distance calls out).
     Ernesto Maldenado’s workshop was interesting, but it wasn’t as useful for SCA purposes, as it would have been for other troupes that had already left, such as Commedia dell’Carte. The workshop was really a discussion about performances at Renaissance Faires. Bonefinder found it interesting, but he’s got experience with one-man shows at Civil War re-enactment events and Ren Faires – most of the rest of the folk at the workshop were either SCA or really had no real need for the workshop. Oh well. It wasn’t a bad workshop, it just wasn’t something that was useful for us.
     Olly Crick’s second workshop concentrated on writing scenarios. He broke folk into groups of four or five, and after discussing the process, we created the first act of a scenario. Then we walked through that first act, and got critiqued both by Olly and by our fellow attendees. We were allowed to stay until around 5, rather than only having 2 hours for the workshop we had 3, which was really appreciated.
     When we were done, we said our goodbyes to the folk from I Sebastiani who were still here, and to everyone else who were at the workshop. Then the troupe split into groups – some of us came back to the condos, others went to go see the famous “Austin Bats” – there are millions of them apparently under one of the bridges, and there’s a small park there where you can observe when they wake up and come out in a huge cloud around dusk. Those who saw it said it was a pretty astounding experience.
     There were performances this evening, but except for Ernesto Maldenado, they were ones we had seen before. So, we decided to blow off the performances. This wasn’t any kind of an insult to the performers, but most of us have been running on less than our normal amounts of sleep, and we needed some serious “down-time”.
     Wulfric did a nice dinner for those of us who came back to the condos. After, we sat around “yeowing” (talking, insulting each other, the usual); and somewhere along the line we started critiquing parts of our performances, and we did some minor script-doctoring for the first part of the script. Seamus wrote things into Wulfric's script, so I will have to either borrow that, or get him to send me the changes. We didn’t do anything truly exciting to the script, just an attempt to tighten the opening scene a bit.
     Before going to bed, we checked with the airlines ... turns out the “Party Flight” got cancelled. Figures.

Juan's Log
Iricus and Dawn left early this morning. Going to Disneyland. I’m tempted to smuggle myself back in the truck. Oh well.
     The only thing we did today was the final part of the Olly Crick lecture.
     It was really good and covered writing techniques for creating scenarios.
     Basic process is:

  1. Decide on the location.
  2. Decide on general people who are likely to be in this place.
  3. Assign Commedia Characters to the people in this place.
  4. Decide on what is motivating the people.
  5. Based on these motivations begin outlining the senario.
     The Senario itself needs to be broken into the following basic pattern.
     First Act - Introduce the characters and their motivations. Set up the conflicts.
     Second Act - Increase the Conflicts. End the act with either everything more confused or almost completely resolved except for one character.
     Third Act - Solve the conflicts.
     It was pointed out that in the first act the pattern of introduce a character, get the next character on while another is leaving until all the characters have entered and exited. When the last character is established, begin bringing the other characters back until all have been on stage and their conflicts have been established.
     Really fascinating stuff. I wish that Aldith had come in for this class, since she is one of our primary writers. I think she would have gotten a lot out of it. She decided to stay in for some down-time though. Hopefully my notes are enough to draw from.
     Decided to come back in and have dinner at home. Play some more Chez Geek. The word had spread like wildfire through the troupe during the week about this game and now everybody wants to play it.

See photos of Commedia dell'Carte's final performance (with the cart)

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