Catastrophe
After I read the script for Catastrophe, I had little understanding of what the play was about. We discussed it in class and it gave me a better understanding of how I interpreted it. My group had four people, but one of them was absent the day we assigned positions for the staged reading. This worked out alright, because we gave that person the role of the protagonist. I called her that weekend to set up a time that she could meet to go over the script with us. Then I called the other two people in the group to make sure they could attend. We were unable to practice on the stage during our rehearsals. The first time being because we were the first group to use the stage and we had not organized who was reading which parts yet. The second time there was a class using the stage. However, since this is a short play and the blocking is minimal there was really no need to have to use the stage during our rehearsals. The only complication that I can see is that we probably should have used the space at least once before doing it in class. However, many plays by Havel and Beckett were performed in private spaces that they might or might not have practiced on either.
Although I was given the role as director, I believe that we more used the collective approach. Meaning that at different times we each had a hand in directing and gave our inputs. I know that in a more professional performace, it would have been nice to have a fifth person in the group to direct. As a member of our class it would have been easiest for that person to take on a partnership role. Since the reason for doing this staged reading was for us to learn how to do a staged reading, a fifth person working as in this type of role would have taken charge but still allowed for creative input. I have been in other productions in which the director took a visionary/auteur approach but this is usually because it has been a teacher or other authority figure. This would also include the few musicals I participated in in which the director had written the play and the music for it herself; this being known as the playwrite/composer approach.
In our reading of Catastrophe I believe that we approached it as a transcription. I felt like we took full advantage of what the playwrite himself believed that his play was supposed to be like. At least two of the other groups used the translation approach. They kept the "spirit" of the play but changed it slightly to fit the vision that they had for the play. However every group used the actual script written by Beckett (or used a script period) therefor nobody took the transformation or transcendence approach.
posted by Rebecca @ 7:48 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
You know I honestly forgot about the director or having someone else watch the play. I’m so glad you brought that up because I do agree with you in that it would have made the process smoother had we that fifth person. I think in regards to the outcome of the play we are fortunate that it is short and the lines are simple so the process goes by smoother. I only wish our props corresponded with what the text told us to use, I think it would have made it more realistic.
Of course props and more specific blocking would have made the performance smoother. But don't lose sight of the fact that we were not asked to do a performance. Kirk asked us to do a staged reading, not to see if we could act, but so we could gain a better understanding of the work that proceeds a performance. While all of the performance left things to be desired, everyone seemed to gain a better understanding of the play by doing it this way than if we had simply watched an independant staging of it.
Where you able to understand the majority of the texts we covered this year BEFORE class discussion? I always thought that the discussion time in class helped me gain full understanding of the pieces of work. Do you think that it hurt us as a group to not be able to practice on a stage for rehearsal? You also say that plays need to be rehearsed on the stage they are to be preformed on…however, should stages readings take the same precedent?
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