Analysis - Confesiones by Ana Correa

“Confesiones” by Ana correa was a “unipersonal” in which she explained and gave tips of how to act and then did short demostrations of her acting. 

She talked about how build a character and how one recognize in her characters as she says for performing as someone else one needs to be connected with themselves. For example when she act of the teacher she could recognize she was sometimes like that with her pupils and this make her reflect. But then she said that her body was not just for acting, to appear as someone else, but her body was a support of information. She then performed a passage of Sin Título – Tecnica Mixta where she represent a native woman and had a kushma with text printed in it that was what people said about the terrorism there. In the inside of the kushma, which she later turns to be the outside, there were photos of native people in the terrorism times. She achieves to be a support of information this gave to his character a deep and emotional resonance as it’s not any more acting to represent another and entertain the audience, but to tell people a reality that they weren’t aware of.

In another scene she talks about the use of props, how she converts an object into another by her way of using it on stage. How manipulation change a simple object into another. But the manipulation of props had to be seen as a prolongation of the actor, not as something he uses. Making an object to appear to be another is a clear example of “imagen dividida” as the audience imagination has to be activated to complete the image which isn’t there, but is instead suggested. I think that this tips she gives to us work in some kind of theatre but it depends in the context, you can’t use this in realist or naturalist theatre but you can use it in a more expressionistic theatre (which she mentions to do in the beginning).

Can any prop be used as another? Although and object can represent something more the object which is used it conveys different things to the audience. For example the texture of the original object will tell us something and will transmit a feeling to the audience (for example a metal texture gives us the feeling of cold, hard, while wood give us a more warm feeling which seems nicer to the audience.) Also the proportion and size will influence as even though it is representing something more, the size of the original object will be the one conveyed to the object being represent. The color will give us also different feelings and it also has to work with the color scheme in the play. As we can see we can transform props in the stage, but we can’t transform whatever into another thing. The original prop although is representing something more convey characteristics to it, so that the original prop although is not what is representing has to be chosen carefully as not by transforming it on stage will give the feeling we want to give.

The tips she gave to us work in a type of context, we can’t just take them and apply them in all of our performance. Yuyachkani has a similar way of acting, which has many conventions followed in all of the different plays so she has talked the tips that will obviously work in a type of theatre like yuyachkani, but we have to consider that not in all theatre practices is the same. Also she speaks in a broadway as we have to consider them and also see the effect it has in the audience as she talks more in an actor point of view but she doesn’t consider much a director point of view so she doesn’t relate much how her work affects the audience, the different effects that are build up and how. I think that is why the director is important, because the actor can transmit and work on a character, when it’s well trained, by them. But regarding the set design is not the actor who consider this but the director. The director gives coherence to what the actor does.