World Of Theater Traditions

In drama we are in the world of theater traditions topic, we have explored different cultures (only in south east Asia and the continent of Africa). There were 3 main subtopics, theater with only ourselves, theater with masks and theater with puppets.

theater with masks isn’t typically a new experience for me as I am familiar with them, however the masks that we used during drama were from a completely different. At first they were made of rubber and were plain in color, with a common theme of dystopia throughout all of these masks. However, we then switched to balinese masks which were very colorful and were made out of a special type of wood that the Indonesians have a ceremony to respect the gods.

Then we moved on to the topic of puppetry, in which we started off using paper puppets which we made ourselves from paper and tape. We used these puppets to create a person using the three main elements: weight, breath and focus. We also had a workshop to help familiarize us with Wayang Kulit shadow puppetry, in which we learned about the puppeteers (the dalang), the puppets, traditions and shadow puppetry stories.To add to that we saw how the puppets are used on the set of “the lion king” which were very complex and looked very realistic. There are also helmet masks which were inspired by the Maasai tribe in Southern Kenya, which were very colorful and vibrant.

 

 

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