What I learned in Theatre

Theatre Review

Theatron- to see or place of seeing (noun and verb)
A Theatre- a building with a stage designed for live and public performances
Theatrical Art- the art of telling stories by performing then for an audience (mythos – myth constructing)
The Theatre- a subculture of artist and crafts people who spend their lives in the business of “adult make believe.” (noun and verb; culture and subculture). An exchange of information on the occasion of an event.
The theatre equation-

A(actor) pretends to be --> X(character) is watched by --> S(spectator) is fully aware of each other and react to each other--> A(actor)

Phenomena: observations, looking at real concrete things

Semiosis: interpretation (hyper real, imagined.) Looking through and event that is literally there

LIVE THEATRE
Reality
-real time
-real place
-real people
Occasion
Action
Ephemerallity
-nothing left of the work of art itself
-traces remain, but event vanished
Mimesis (key element in A pretending to be X)
-Representation
-Imitation

CRITICS QUESTIONS
Understanding- What were they trying to do?
Effectiveness- How well did they do it?
Worth- Was it worth doing? Or What about it was worth doing or not doing?

THE ACTOR IS HIS OWN INSTRUMENT
Uses:
-Body
-Voice
-Thought
*Imagination
*Memory
*Intelligence
-Discipline
*Observation
*Control- being able to act something out being in control of themselves to where they can reproduce it every night

-Style
*Presence- extra ordinary ordinariness. How the present the work, includes costumes that require a particular kind of movement

CREATING A ROLE: ACTING PROCEDURE
-Exploration
*Movement (blocking)
>Movement
>Gesture
>Business- careful or spontaneous actions

DIRECTING
Mise en scene- is the director’s medium in which he works everything perceived, in the experience of the audience ephemerality

DIRECTOR’S APPROACHES
Transcription- renders the playwright vision faithfully on stage
Translation- captures and uses the spirit of the playwright and transfers it to the stage
Transformation- transform and reshape source material to create a new play(film directors)
Transcend- inventing the medium of the stage, write in the mise en scene like Rosmer and Rebecca been seen walking off stage and Ulrik coming throught the window

REALISM / MELODRAMA
Realism- actual events that could happen in real life realistic events
Melodrama- (resent definition) refers to people being extreme or over reacting (reality TV)
“Melo” “drama”- drama with music or music accompanying dialogue
Tragic hero- a hero that is divided against himself, they destroy themselves. Suffers because of something they did. They are drawn by circumstance
Melodramatic hero- a hero that fights outside forces is good in nature and is usually dressed in white and has music that is in the major chords. The evil they fight is usually dressed in black and has music in a minor key.

WHAT SEPERATES ROCK CONCERT FROM A MUSICAL?
Polyphany- music that takes you to an emotional place with multiple voices simultaneously singing. Enables conflict or AGON.
Agon- (a greek word stemming from protagonist) a struggle or game by means of polyphony.
EX: Rent

Rosmersholm

I attended the Friday night production of Rosmersholm. It was a different feeling going to see a play that I read just days earlier. I felt that the music that was played was suppose to represent the haunting aspect of the playwright because it had that spooky eerie sound about it. In the playwright I read, it never had an appearance of the ghost in the stage directions, so I felt that adding the music was a good way to interpret the haunting aspect. Another thing I thought was used as a visual indicator of a haunting was the blanket the character Rebecca kept using. During the end of the when it seemed like she was being inhabited by a ghost she began wearing the white ghost type shawl which could explain why in the end of the play the nurse thought she seen the white horse when it was really just the couple wrapped in the blanket. During the play I would find myself looking at the set in particular the photos on the wall. Some of the photos looked similar to the characters in the play which was interesting. I enjoyed this interpretation of the play and felt that the visuals and music where used well.

Rosmersholm

This play was supposed to be about a haunting, but to me it wasn't. When I hear that something is suppose to be about a haunting I think that a ghost will make an appearance. However in Rosmersholm, there is never an appearance of a ghost there is just hear say about people seeing a white horse, which is suppose to mean that someone is about to dye but again as I said earlier this is just hear say and there are no stage directions or anything hard core that lets the audience know that there really is a ghost. At the end the play the nurse alludes to the white horses again when it talks about Rebecca and Rosmer jumping off the bridge, while the she looks on. Before the nurse realizes it is Rebecca and Rosmer on the bridge, she mentions the white horse again leading me to believe that she has never seen the white horse before and just believes there is a white ghostly horse based on just hear say. I guess the author leaves it up to the viewer to believe whether or not there is a ghost and this is how ghost stories get started. Something unexplainable happens and we feel the need to come up with some kind of explanation, so we make it up in our mind that if we did not see something tangible that it was probably a ghost.

Trilogy of Midevil Women

I attended the 7:00 pm production of The Trilogy of Medieval Women in the Ida Green Theatre on the Austin College campus. The playwright was written by Antonia Bueno. I came into the play a little annoyed because it was raining outside and I had no umbrella so I had to sit in the theatre cold and wet. As far as the play it was very hard to understand because I did not get to sit in the section where you could listen to the English translation of the play so I was stuck trying to pick out the few words Spanish words I remember and try to draw out a plot and translation from context clues of the words I knew. However, I don’t believe I understood it all. So I will try to make and educated guess on what the plot was from context clues and body language of the two actresses, Antonia Bueno and Clelia Moreno. I think the play was about 6 women and the struggles they went through in 3 different situations. I did hear them keep saying something about Santa Reyna something. It is really frustrating not understanding the language. However, this is basically how most operas are that I have attended you don’t know the language but there are playbills that describe what is going on and you can also pretty much pick up on what is happening because of the exaggeration in facial expressions and body language involved in a opera, which is a type of melodrama. Overall I did not enjoy the play because of the language barrier.

Melodrama in Love & Basketball

Melodrama is the part in theatre, movies, or in television where people are acting extreme or it can be said that they are over reacting. When I say that people are acting extreme or over reacting, I mean that people are exaggerating simple motions, facial expressions or lines. The word melodrama can be broken down into its literal meaning which is "drama with music." An instance of melodrama can be seen in the movie Love & Basketball, during the part where the characters Monica and Quincy are playing a game of basketball to determine whether or not Quincy should marry the airline stewardess he is engaged to or marry Monica instead. During this scene, they are in a driveway playing. They stop talking and then music starts to play and as the game intensifies the song gets louder a game of basketball. There is a point where Quincy bumps into Monica and it takes her about a minute to fall to the ground, and her facial expression is as if she just got shot. This scene of the movie can be seen as realistic meaning that these could be actual events, however the actress over reacts and her motions and facial expressions are slowed. When the game is winding down so does the song, but at the climax of the action is when the song had the loudest pitch and hit the highest notes of the song that is held for a time. At the end of the climax Monica loses the game and the music fades out to complete silence, as matter of a fact everything goes silent as she walks off the court in defeat. So the drama can be intensified with a moment of silence after the melodramatic music and action. This example in Love & Basketball is a classic example of a melodramatic moment.

Trouble In Mind

I liked this play because of the technique of having a play with in a play to address social issues. To me it reminds me of reading history books and then me writing about myself reading the books, which in turn helps me to relate to the style of writing because it makes it easy to imagine myself in the play. The character Wiletta is a very intense character because she has to play a part that she does not agree with, which is a skill only the greatest actors in my opinion possess. It is kind of hard to read a play about racism where you can't tell whether or not the director Bill O'Wray is racist himself, which I think makes this play even more intense. Bill however, is just a character in the play so I guess I have to find comfort in knowing that the author of Trouble In Mind wrote this to get a reaction out of the reader.

Talley's Folly

Subject: I attended the Friday night performance of Talley’s Folly. This was a different kind of play that I have never seen before but it did remind me of 12 Angry Men when they are in talks about the case. Some of the jokes were hard for me to get because I felt like they were alluded to songs and things before my time that I don’t know about. I was also very hard for me to sit there for 97minutes without intermission. I disliked my overall experience because I was uncomfortable with the closeness of the seats which irritated me. The acting was good though because I could see how hard it would be for two actors to keep your attention on stage for that length of time, which they did well. I was also aggravated with Sally’s character because it was obvious she had this big secret she didn’t want to tell, but when it finally came out I felt like shaking her and saying, “Why did not tell him in the first place and all this drama could have been avoided!” But then I guess there would have not been a story with such a climactic ending. So the actress who played that character did a great job. In conclusion I liked the play but was very uncomfortable in the small theater.

Joe Turner's Come and Gone

Subject: The article that I decided to read was "The Good Christian's Come and Gone: The Shifting Role of Christianity in August Wilson Play." This article in short was about how all the characters in all of August Wilson's plays contained a male character that shunned and ran away from religion and Christianity. The reason the aurthor of this article gives for their denile of religion and Chrisitianity range from replacing it because it is a "white man's god" to if God is what all that people say he is, then why did slavery even exist? In the section where the aurthor talks about Joe Turne's Come and Gone, she talks about how Herald turns his back on Christianity because he feels like God should have helped him out of the hands of Joe Turner because he was doing God's will when he got caught. She goes on to say that Herald slashes him self which is the ultimate denile of the Christian sacrifce. I agree with her thoughts on this. However she goes on to say that he does not stay because he is in search of his African heritage, I don't totally agree with this. I interpeted it as he is in search of also something to believe in that is tangible. She does also bring out another point that I like, the point where Herald pays the people finder, which is similar to offering up a prayer. Overall this was a good article and there was not much that I did not agree with.

Joe Turner's Come and Gone

Subject: The article that I decided to read was "The Good Christian's Come and Gone: The Shifting Role of Christianity in August Wilson Play." This article in short was about how all the characters in all of August Wilson's plays contained a male character that shunned and ran away from religion and Christianity. The reason the aurthor of this article gives for their denile of religion and Chrisitianity range from replacing it because it is a "white man's god" to if God is what all that people say he is, then why did slavery even exist? In the section where the aurthor talks about Joe Turne's Come and Gone, she talks about how Herald turns his back on Christianity because he feels like God should have helped him out of the hands of Joe Turner because he was doing God's will when he got caught. She goes on to say that Herald slashes him self which is the ultimate denile of the Christian sacrifce. I agree with her thoughts on this. However she goes on to say that he does not stay because he is in search of his African heritage, I don't totally agree with this. I interpeted it as he is in search of also something to believe in that is tangible. She does also bring out another point that I like, the point where Herald pays the people finder, which is similar to offering up a prayer. Overall this was a good article and there was not much that I did not agree with.