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Post by RufusScorpius on Jun 4, 2019 23:18:42 GMT
I've mentioned in the past on the shoutbox and other threads that I did a performance of "Beowulf" at my company's mandatory fun day, and a video was requested (no picture= never happened), so guess what I found in the company archives? Yup. A live stage performance of "Beowulf" in 9th century style as performed by a completely untalented and amateur hack (with the comapany's Big Boss and the city mayor in the front row). Sadly, it was by and far the best performance of any entry in the employee "talent" show. So yeah, if this was considered good, then think what we had to suffer through with the rest of it all....
I know, it doesn't exactly follow the story to the letter, but I had to adapt 1,300 lines of epic into a 5-7 minute performance without losing the flavor of the story. I embellished some parts and took some liberties with the translation of the prologue. I believe that less than 10% of the audience had ever heard the story before, and maybe a handful had every been to a live stage play. I lost count of how many people asked me after the show if I wrote that story myself. I had a bit of a difficulty time with it because I looked out to the audience and they were all smiling. I didn't know if they were smiling because they liked it, or smiling because they thought I was an idiot. Oh well, it was a feeble attempt at bringing some culture to what is otherwise an hour of excruciating ear bleeding karaoke...
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pgandy
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Post by pgandy on Jun 5, 2019 2:09:44 GMT
It looks like YouTube thinks your video too dangerous to be viewed, as they did mine sometime back. I opened a Vimeo account. They have a free service if your video isn’t too large. I forgot what the next account up cost, their web page will tell you. As well as I remember it wasn’t much, especially for someone making many videos. I found they upload faster to them than YouTube and there is better resolution using them.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jun 5, 2019 4:08:58 GMT
Interesting. I see the link just fine. Technology- always disappointing in the end...
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pgandy
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Post by pgandy on Jun 5, 2019 4:39:41 GMT
I got it now.
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Post by Jordan Williams on Jun 5, 2019 17:27:05 GMT
Fun! I love the props.
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Post by Curtis_Louis on Jun 5, 2019 18:38:17 GMT
Great! Thanks for sharing!
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Post by Cosmoline on Jun 5, 2019 19:44:19 GMT
Good show! Bringing history to life is a passion of mine, and I'm lucky enough to be part of a living history group to help. But getting the public to stay interested is a monumental difficulty.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jun 5, 2019 22:15:03 GMT
Thanks guys! It was a bit difficult to put myself out there on stage- I was wondering at the last minute just what the hell was I thinking... The problem with a one-man show is that everything needs to go well because there isn't anybody to cover if you blow a line. But it went as good as I could have expected it to.
I did this particular show with the intent to bring some culture to my co-workers. I was wavering between doing this, or a scene from Shakespeare. I chose Beowulf because... well...because it's cool and it's what nearly every modern fantasy story has a basis in.
I had a much more complex original concept concerning the props which included a flag or visual device for each character and other things, but with the time limit I had to work with and the high probability of prop failure, I decided to keep it as simple as humanly possible but still give it the flavor of a 9th century fireside telling.
Either way, I'm glad it's over.
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Post by Cosmoline on Jun 5, 2019 22:56:23 GMT
I've had five years doing this kind of thing now at various public events. I remember my first effort, a demonstration of I.33 with the group, resulted in complete failure. Everyone in the audience *LEFT* except one poor guy who couldn't leave because he was the last one left. He fled afterwards LOL Since then I've learned to boil things down to "moments" that will capture the audience. These can be visual, auditory or some other spectacle. For example, for the 2017 show we did a theme of the black plague. I was representing the clergy and came into the stage doing a booming rendition of "Deus Irae." I apparently scared the bejesus out of some of the crowd, which I take great pride in ;-) I intentionally used the operatic 19th century version of the tune (famous from "The Shining") rather than the more complex plainchant. A little anachronism in the service of education. I then boiled down the presentation to a few minutes where I hit on Piers Plowman and the social impacts of the plague. Then I left while they were still interested and made way for the next presenter. This year we're doing the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 and I've been opening with a booming rendition of "Sumer is icumen in" along with a chorus of fellow members. It's working good so far. I am going to improve on the presentation this weekend by having the audience divide itself between commoner and noble using the "head and seat" method. So some put hands on head, some on seat, and you just keep filtering out until you have two people who are on "team noble." Audience participation is great but if you go over the implicit limit they'll balk. The overall key is to lose the fear of looking like a fool. In theater the fools are kings.
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Post by Cosmoline on Jun 5, 2019 23:01:03 GMT
For reference here's a bit from last year's "law and order" presentation. You can see the little girl really getting into it! LOL. I'm the pontificating cleric, of course. Note that the big "hook" we used to pull the notoriously fickle ren fair crowd in was a screaming old woman (bless her) being nailed to the stocks.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jun 5, 2019 23:32:45 GMT
Very good, Cosmo. Very good indeed. I think the key is to lead the audience to a high point, then leave them there. In my own presentation, I purposely ended the show on the cliffhanger "... and Beowulf ruled wisely for 50 winters until..." then cut the story off, with the promise that "tomorrow, I shall tell you of the dragon". You never want to let the audience get bored, but leave them hungry for some more.
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Post by Cosmoline on Jun 5, 2019 23:38:21 GMT
Yup. And of course remember that your audience is not youtube unless you're doing a youtube video. Live audiences are completely different critters. As are different live audiences. So just because the video sucks (it almost always does LOL), that doesn't mean you did.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jun 5, 2019 23:46:27 GMT
Yes, the video is awful and the sound is muffled (as would be expected by a cell phone vid), but it's a permanent record none the less. A live show is unique, it can only be experienced once, then it is gone. It has a magic all it's own that only exists for the moment of the show. In fact, in viewing the video I can see where I made a mistake in the narrative but covered for myself immediately; I rehearsed it that after the attack of Grendel's mother on Herot she fled into the night THEN Beowulf donned his armor and went after her. During the performance, I placed Beowulf donning his armor after the alarm was sounded but Grendel's mother was still in the hall. I had to vacate the mother before Beowulf arrived or the battle in the lake couldn't happen. I did that recovery on the fly. And I said twice that Beowulf became king of his own people...but I don't think anybody but me noticed that part.
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Post by legacyofthesword on Jun 8, 2019 4:01:00 GMT
Awesome! The way you talked it down, I was expecting something much less engrossing. Great storytelling! You struck a nice balance between preserving the flavor of the original and modernizing the tale for your audience's understanding.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jun 8, 2019 11:30:31 GMT
Awesome! The way you talked it down, I was expecting something much less engrossing. Great storytelling! You struck a nice balance between preserving the flavor of the original and modernizing the tale for your audience's understanding. Thank you for your kind words! I still think it was crap, although not as crap as it could have been. I just wish I wasn't so rushed for time- to tell even an abridged story it would take twice as long. As it was, I had to cut huge sections out, then move around a few things to fill the narrative gap, and cram it all into less than 10 minutes without losing the flavor of the epic. That's why I decided to cut out the entire episode with the dragon and leave that as the cliff hanger, as well as cutting out most of the lake battle and the Holy Sword that actually was used to kill Grendel's mother. All of Beowulf's narrative of how he won strength contests and killed sea monsters and such was cut out because it would have taken too long and the audience probably would lose interest in that anyways. What most people don't know is that Beowulf has a very strong Christian theme that runs through the story. Grendel was from the line of Cain, and therefore unsalvagable evil. Hrothgar's warriors were so much in despair of Grendel that they turned back to their Pagan gods (from which no good would come), and so on. I didn't have enough time to expand on that theme, so I left in that Grendel was from the line of Cain to give the audience an idea of WHY he would attack- to have left that out would have removed the foundation of why the story exists in the first place and would make it just some guy fighting some other guys (like a modern Hollywood movie, for example). The theme of the epic is that weapons won't work against evil, only the strength of character. In every battle, the weapons failed and it was up to the hero to use what God gave him to destroy the threat.
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Ouroboros
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Imperial, Mysterious In Amorous Array
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Post by Ouroboros on Jun 8, 2019 13:23:53 GMT
Fantastic! Not at all what you had led me to believe--You never mentioned you were alone....I loved it! The sincerity of the presentation is what made my kids jump onto the couch to watch with me. They were enthralled, both knowing the story but, as my youngest said when you snapped Grendels 'arm' "daddy your friend is amazing! its hard to be alone on stage. He has really good measure. Does he do more shows?"
Well played sir!
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jun 8, 2019 23:00:35 GMT
Yeah, the "arm snap" bit. I thought of that just a few days before the performance. But it brings up a good point about the level of planning that goes into even a short stage show. I had to have a stick. And I had to have one that I could break. And I had to remember to bring it with me. And all the other details of the show. The costume I made from old bed sheets and blankets. I had to study how Anglo Saxon clothing was made, then I had to make it. I actually sewed most of it up in my car on my lunch breaks. I had to have a prillar horn, and be able to play it. The alarm whistle I made from the thighbone of my Thanksgiving turkey. You can't see too well in the video, but I had a Sutton Hoo purse made from a printout of the Sutton Hoo purse cover that I laminated onto a wooden lid, then made the purse from an old pleather jacket. I had to have a "campfire" and a cooking pot that would stand by itself on a smooth wood floor so I made a tripod out of heavy sticks tied with jute string with diagonal bracing. And the flag with base that required testing for portability and stability (I ended up having to add 10 lbs of weight to the bottom and fill the lower PVC with a wood dowel to stiffen). And I don't think you can see so well in the vid, but the sign was bilingual with old English runic on the one side, and modern English on the other that said "Beowulf's Saga". And most importantly, I had to bring it all with me for the show.
Not to mention editing the Epic down to a single person stage performance, then having to think about how to present each element of the story. AND how to open and close the show. I also had to coordinate with the venue to get the lavalier microphone (not easy to do) and then wire it into the costume so it couldn't be seen. The vid is cut at the beginning, but I wandered onto the stage, set up the flag, wandered around a bit, set up camp, tried the stew and SPIT IT OUT- EWWWW Yuck! At the end of the show when I pointed out that the hour was late and the travelers "had eaten the stew after all", that was the joke- the audience ate my raccoon stew.
Overall, it was a year of planning from concept to final performance. It was enjoyable, I certainly learned a lot about Anglo Saxon stories, musical instruments, and clothing/equipment. That was a lot of work for $0.0 payment.
In all, I had over 35 individual pieces of prop just for that short show. Oh, yes, and all done in the strictest secrecy so the entire presentation would be a surprise. All I told them was that I was going to tell a story, I never said which story or how I intended to tell it....
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Post by demonskull on Jun 8, 2019 23:34:35 GMT
Thoroughly enjoyed this, you did a great job !
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