Catastrophe reading
Reading Catastrophe on my own, I was suprised that such a short play was performed in front of an audience. I also thought that people would take time to travel to the theatre in hopes of spending at least 45 minutes to an hour there in order for it to be worth it. As far as the play goes, the director seemed kind of like an ass and more superior than his assistant. This was especially evident when he repeatedly asked her to light his cigar for him.
When I met with my group to prepare for a staged reading, we did a little background research. We found out that we could stage this to where the director and the assistant would be dressed in military like costumes and would be examining a prisoner. We added some lines in a few places, such as when the assistant tells luke what to do with the lights in technical terms. We also added in towards the end of the play where the director says, "there's our catastrophe". After that line we added: "the perfect citizen". From our research we found that this play was written before the fall of the Soviet Union in order to describe what they felt was the "perfect citizen".
Labels: Brad Jones
posted by Brad @ 10:18 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I agree that the play was to short to really develop a storyline that would catch my attention. However, after our discussion in class I realized that this is exactly what the playwright intended. This play was not meant to be one that people traveled to see. The play was supposed to travel to the people who were to see it in their living rooms. Because of the political nature of the play and the possible penalty for performing it, it makes sense that it would be so short. This way the actors could memorize it quickly and then throw the script away leaving nothing to tie them to the play.
I really like the point you brought up about the reasoning behind the lenght of this play. The short lenght of the play does make sense if you look at the political nature of it and the penalties for addressing such issues.
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