THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-12-12T08:30:00.001-08:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Betrayal: Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter’s Betrayal is a solid example of a play that has both benefits and downfalls between the reading and the staging, yet is still a play imbued with the potential for an ideal catharsis. On paper one can easily mingle through twists in dates and follow the references of “plants” by back checking. Sure, it’s cheating, but I’d consider it more a reward for reading the play. On stage a person can become confused, especially with actors likely attempting to appear as younger and younger versions of themselves. Yet without hearing the words spoken a person misses out on Pinter’s most profound characteristic as an author, his impeccable use of rhythm to create natural speech and perfect balance of pauses. So much of what gets said in a Pinter play are the things that in fact don’t get said, it’s what happens in the silence, when just reading that silence contains nothing. Though it can be considered a benefit to look back on the play for the sake of clarification it’s also part of the effect of the show to loose things. “Plants” that seem frivolous at one time will suddenly gain significance at a later point, typically at the moment the object is created/given that significance. Yet from then on we will no longer see the item, in the past it doesn’t exist; as soon as we get it its gone.

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-12-12T08:30:00.000-08:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

No More Master Pieces: Artaud

Artaud had simply grown tired of the spectacle of the stage. He saw a spectacle being made of honest human expression and in his contempt for this increasingly formulaic art he came to some very rash conclusions. From one extreme he rushed to the other wanting to abandon all remnants of this now contaminated mode of expression. He wished to recreate and bring art back to the innately human. He wanted to take back art.

“…it is because every possible ingenuity has been exerted in bringing to life on the stage plausible but detached beings, with the spectacle on one side, the public on the other—and because the public is no longer shown anything but the mirror itself”(SOD: Artaud, 1688).

This mirror is, as has been previously mentioned, an representation of our daily masquerade. If theatre tries to communicate in same ways that we do in common interaction, then how can it possibly achieve anything new? The flaw, as Artaud saw it, was in the use of words, the connotations and semantics we find ourselves lost in when communing, endless cycles of pointless dribble. He wanted to incite a revolution, a rediscovery of the physical body. The theatre had both the ability and responsibility to portray humans truthfully, as organisms composed of flesh. In order for it to be accomplished there must be a return to the physical gesture to force the theatre away from the natural inclination to retreat into the head. An almost Buddhist experience of complete clarity through physical awareness occurring on stage.
This view is inherently flawed because though they may have witnessed such an experience (doubtful considering the…. impracticalities of his work) there is no reason why the audience should come to the same realizations of their physical self. He is missing an essential element of the theatrical experience, an empathic relationship between audience with character and actor with role. Artaud assumed that by placing stereotypes, such as Guard or Maid, on stage that the character and all of its connotations will truly exist within the scene.

“…this disinterested idea of the theater which wishes a theatrical performance to leave the public intact, without setting off one image that will shake the organism to its foundations and leave an ineffaceable scar”(SOD: Artaud, 1688).

How can we be expected to see our “ineffaceable scars” when the action itself fails to remind us of our wounds. Artaud neglects the internal body, the essence of emotion established through a mingling of mind and flesh, the complete experience. The absence of words creates, not a deeper communication, but a breakdown thereof. Arguably words are the human attempt to facilitate the connection between the two experiences used to relay messages not merely of the ‘now’ or the ‘self’ but of a life lived. Ideally theatre should be the marriage of the two extremes, Artaudian theory and the theatre he had grown to hate. His principles and concepts of cruelty were precisely what the theatre of his time required yet his methods lacked the tools to create it; namely the most important tool of all, the central presence of humanity.

“We have the right to say what has been said and even what has not been said in a way that belongs to us, a way that is immediate and direct, corresponding to present modes of feeling, and understandable to everyone”(SOD: Artaud, 1687).

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-12-12T08:29:00.001-08:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

The Hairy Ape: Eugene O’Neil

Eugene O’Neil’s The Hairy Ape is a startling example of the emotional spectacle paralleled with the physical one. The opening scenes take us into the bowels of a coal and man powered cruise liner. Firstly is their dormitory, hulking men in small quarters, hanging from railings as apes, aggressive faces and primal grunting permeate throughout the entire scene. O’Neil, in the opening stage directions, instructs that “…this scene, or any other scene in the play, should by no means be naturalistic” (O’Neil, 1). There is also the furnace room, a gigantic menagerie of metal and men, sweat, coal, and barbaric shouting. Later we see this alloyed hell-mouth paralleled with a Fifth Avenue street corner. Adorned in a fine jeweler’s and furrier’s shop with bright lights, sparkling merchandise, and over exaggerated price tags. Every set is meant to be boisterous, larger than the lives of those on stage, it’s a reminder that this is billed as a comedy for a reason, it’s meant to be satirical. Where O’Neil gets us is when he takes that away. I laughed aloud when I visualized the begging’s of Yank and the Ape’s exchange. Only when he is thrown into the cage, physically and emotionally beaten, a man turned animal, in an that sudden and inconceivable instant I felt ashamed.
I can’t imagine seeing this production live. All of that spectacle in true form, the lights and color and sounds, all to be ripped away in one final attempt at acceptance. Yank is turned out by the one being he had hoped would be his brethren, and until that time we had laughed at his misfortunes and awkward attempts at becoming a citizen of the world. In considering every piece of spectacle none was quite nearly as profound or terrifying as the simplicity of a dieing man trapped in a cage facing death and his own inevitable inadequacies; a supreme spectacle of emotion.

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-12-12T08:29:00.000-08:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Sunday in the park with George: Sondheim

It was interesting to see a musical that maintained the clichéd conventions (guy gets girl, silly jokes, ballads and toe tapers interlaced to emphasize emotion, the friend who’s also the antagonist, ect.) while still being something with a powerful message and incredibly moving moments. It really is quite the interesting balance. Yet….for some reason, I still managed not to so much enjoy it. Maybe I’m just a product of modern society, it takes a lot of variety to keep me entertained. The songs didn’t evolve; they just all kind of repeated the same things in a different way. And when the characters sang together it was more like two solos that are occurring at the same time, even when the parts overlapped. Too much one level and too much disconnect to keep my interest perked.
And lemme tell ya, that’s one show I don’t think I could survive in. Doing that every friggin night?! Man…as a lead, you never rest, as a secondary you spend ages on stage just sitting there or patiently waiting in the wings to make a perfectly timed entrance. It just looks like an all around stressful production. And how many nights in a row? Slag…not me man, not me…and ya know, I can’t really sing, so I guess I’m not too worried, but I’m just saying.

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-12-12T08:28:00.000-08:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Fences: August Wilson

There is a common tendency to compare August Wilson’s Fences with Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman. It makes basic sense, both are about a man struggling to cope in the wake of occupational life hazards, only one is black and the other white. Yet unlike Willie, Troy lives his life in defiance of the standards of his society; in rebellion of the dreams of being a star baseball player he was forced to give up. Willie’s self-delusion, brought on through an excess of branding his existence to survive as a salesman, leads him to fall too stringently into his role as a middle class provider and thus effectively ruin his family. There are as many parallels within the stories of these men as one is willing to take the time to find, yet where they ultimately differ is in what defines them as a work.
Death of a Salesman presents a tragedy dictated by a self-sacrificial act of revenge against a father. Yet Biff is not the worse of the two siblings, in fact his broken life, though appearing meaningless, serves a grandiose purpose, to drive his father to realize the lies he’s been telling himself and eventually pay the ultimate price for the sake of his family. Happy on the other hand has led an equally worthless existence yet for a far less noble reason. Whereas Biff was the apple of this fathers eye Happy was never in his field of vision. He sought to be just like his brother (or rather the image of his brother upheld by those around him), and when Biff failed to succeed Happy stagnated as well, he lives his life as though he’s still in high school; frivolous relationships, a father who still hasn’t taken an interest, and jobs that are hardly worth having and no plans for a career. Additionally Willie is living his life as a lie, a mask he dons as a salesman, he gives the impression of a success in his vocation and a happy home, when in reality he’s failing to make a cent, cheating on his wife, and has effectively ruined his children. He is wracked with guilt, and his flirtation with insanity shows it. In opposition his wife, who can’t have been ignorant of his affair, spends her days denying it so fervently that she manages to actually make the cognitive decision he’s been faithful. The two “lead” characters, those whose problems are mapped out and addressed are really the less tragic. We follow them along the intricacies of the story, we see them come to an understanding, by the end of the play Willie is dead and Biff is ready to move on, a conclusive ending and one that the audience can walk away feeling whole about. Yet if you pause to reflect, if you truly empathized, this play leaves you empty, stunted, pained. The tolerable conclusion is suddenly inadequate, two lives have been saved (in a sense), while two others have been shattered beyond repair. Where do Hap and his mother go? There is a lack of evidence, of experience, a pit generated for the audience to wallow in; the cruelty is present in the emptiness of our answers.
Conversely Fences gives the audience far too many answers. Troy’s emotions are splayed, Lloyed’s frustrations drive every aspect of his being, Rose’s disappointments, her problems and the solutions she makes for them are beyond even her understanding so how can we as mere audience members hope to fully comprehend. Well, as Wilson so eloquently sought to accomplish, we can’t. The magnitude and multitude of revelations and the mysterious nature of the characters themselves (mysterious to the typical theatre going audience anyway) can easily confound. It is hard to pinpoint an enemy. Troy has led a hard life but he’s also been unfaithful and squanders his child’s dreams. Are we to hate society? It doesn’t seem like he tried to conform to it so how can society be to blame for the tragedies brought upon the characters? It isn’t fate, or God, for the character worse off, Gabriel, is truly one of his closest disciples. In fact it is through Gabriel that we receive the most complex message of all, a single truth too complex to grasp with the head or body, one that can only be felt with the emotional soul, the piercing sensation of “…the gates of heaven stand[ing] as wide as God’s closet.” (SOD: Wilson, 1985).
Contextually these plays are similar in construction and theme, but ultimately their cathartic message is completely different. By Death of a Salesman we are reduced to nothing, it doesn’t seem that there is truly any hope for the characters, they appear doomed to drift, after all the sacrifice and pain they still loose. Fences teases with the prospect of a life of dreams, Lloyd is now free to do what he wants, Troy’s daughter is a new generation, Gabriel has experienced God; an audience is left too full of possibilities and hopes. One play causes us to recede and the other to burst, should you suffocate or drown either is a cruel fate indeed.

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-12-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Endgame: Beckett

Beckett’s theatre is one of drifting, defined by a pervasive lack of hopes and original thoughts. In Endgame we find the setting in what can be assumed as the end of the world, one in which all humans have been struck sterile. The characters are vagrants, scraping out a pitiful existence off of left over rolls and ritualistic pleasantries. The blind Hamm and his faithful assistant Clove (raised from birth to be a servant) are simply waiting for their lives to end as per having accepted its meaninglessness. These are characters of sheer emptiness, so one is left to wonder in what vain can catharsis be garnered. If there is a statement to be made, a mood or tone, a central idea which dictates the action (or lack there of), if the play has a purpose, how can it thus be conveyed?
It becomes a matter of the players giving life to what would otherwise be empty shells. The tragedy is not in their fate, but in the eager acceptance of it. Conflict comes from infighting between the characters as opposed to in protest of their circumstances. If the audience can thusly be imbued with pity for the characters as real people then the dichotomy of the ridiculous and the horrible will level an interpersonally cruel experience.

The Ghost Sonwhatahappeneda?....ok not funny...

2006-12-08T12:08:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT:
“The Ghost Sonata” was an awfully weird play. I mean it started off interesting enough when the student meets the old man outside the house. I guess I figured it was going to be one of those older man teaches younger man his own wisdom by magically taking him places and showing him things he had never seen before and thus the student, Arkenholz, would learn from this journey with the older man. But in fact it was nothing like that and instead what we are left with is an array of all these events happening and in the old man ending up in a closet acting as though he were a parrot. I thought long and hard about what this could mean and how this play could relate back to his life, but it was very difficult to come up with a conclusion. But after looking at notes and doing some background checks on Strindberg’s life and quotations – one random biography site said that he had said that he hated his childhood, in fact he compared dinner with his family as a painful hell that he rather would not have had. He went on to say that it was not only awful for him but also for the whole family to sit in their own miserable lives. I for one do not feel the same way but I guess that’s why I’ve never written anything as obscure as “The Ghost Sonata.” Another aspect of the play that related back to Strindberg’s life was when one of the characters say’s that the cook was sucking them of all their nutrients because this is actually what he thought towards his cook when he was a child. In both aspects the cook is giving the family the bare minimum but what Strindberg used it for in the play is the inability of the household to fire the cook be just as he was unable to as a child.

-Joel

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE! sung out loud

2006-12-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT:

To be honest, besides the movie adaptations of “The Producers” and “Moulin Rouge”, “Sunday in the Park with George was the first musical I had seen all the way through. I had seen a slither of other musicals on television such as “Cats” and “Kiss Me Kate”, I had also semi helped out with the high school musical version of “The Wizard of OZ” but outside of that I hadn’t really been exposed to much musical theatre. Along with everyone else one of the few thoughts I had about it was why they were bursting into song and if they knew they were singing. But stereotyped questions aside what I found interesting about this particular production was the fact that it was very detailed. Everything from the movement of the actors to the noises the orchestra would make was right on cue every single time, it is as though they spent a lot of time on this production and it showed. At first thought when thinking about how much work they must have put into the timing between the actors and the orchestra I figured that it was just for the spectacle of the show but after further thought I came to the conclusion that it had to be detailed. “Sunday in the Park with George” is about an artist who only used a certain amount of colors on his paintings and in addition to that he did not paint in strokes, instead he used tiny dots to complete the portrait. This artist left it up to the viewer’s eye to distinguish the picture and when looking at the painting it would appear that the artist, George, went into great detail with a wide array of colors when in reality he did not. So like George the director HAD to be just as detailed as the artist. In fact one of the climaxes of the play involved the detail of the orchestra along with George painting and repeating the words “red, blue, red, blue…” Even though it was pretty long and late at night when we watched it, the play was smart and technical enough to where it kept me intrigued enough to enjoy it the whole way through.

-Joel

Further more on Pinter

2006-12-08T08:55:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT: Pinter's work in relation to his life as well as August Wilson's.

The best example of Pinter’s minimalized dialogue is in the first scene when Emma asked Jerry,
“Emma: Do you remember that time…oh god it was… when you picked her up and threw her up and caught her?
Jerry: She was very light.” (Pinter, pg 19)
First reaction to this is – nothing one tends to think she is just making small talk trying to relate the past to the future and even though that is exactly what she is trying to do it is just short of the whole picture, which is her reminiscing on their past love affair. If one were to know before hand that the child represented their affair with each other the audience members’ whole perspective on the play would dramatically change. What is also interesting is that in relation to Pinter’s life story, he too was having an affair which is how writing this play came about. One can imagine that going backwards through the play is not only us watching how the affair developed but also Pinter’s way of reliving this time period of his life. I am not sure how well a playwright could pull off writing about a something, such as an affair, without actually experiencing that something themselves. I would think that one would not be able to be as accurate in the exchange of dialogue and emotion between the characters and would have a hard time steering away from being trite. One who I believe would back this up is August Wilson because he insisted that if one were make a film version of his play “Fences” he insisted on the director being a man of color. The logic behind this I imagine would be that only a black man could know how to determine the way of the play because they too on some level had experienced some sort of racism that he went through in his own life.

-Joel

Pinter

2006-12-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT: "Betrayal"
I really liked “Betrayal” for the same fact that I liked Stoppard’s “Arcadia”; I just loved how the playwright could play with the sense of time and form his own format of the play when telling the story of an affair between a man, Jerry, and his best friend’s wife, Emma. Traditionally many of the plays would move forward in time – introducing the characters – rising plot – climax then the descending of the plot and ending, but not in Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal”. In “Betrayal”, the chronology of the play starts from the end of the play then moves backwards in time and shows the audience how the affair started. In addition to that, the play starts/ends with a cliff hanger scene so that even after the play is over the audience member is still wondering whether or not the couple got together I the end after all.
Minimalism is a term that can be used to describe “Betrayal” for a variety of reasons; one would be the whole “less is more” effect it has on the play. We discussed in class how minimalism is where the play is stripped down to its bare necessities; Pinter does just that with the dialogue. In the first scene Emma and Jerry are shown in a restaurant having lunch or dinner together, yet judging by their dialogue it appears that nothing is actually happening. The small talk that they have is nothing out of the ordinary for normal regular people to have in a public setting; however, it is not normal for this sort of conversation to happen on stage between the two main characters of the play. But what the audience soon finds out through the course of the play is that the small talk shared between the two had so much underlying tone that told of what and how the other was feeling about the other, or wanted to feel about the other. I for one believe that even though Emma was seeing someone else she still wanted to be with Jerry for the fact that she wanted to know if they could work out what they had together. It can also be said that Emma’s child was a constant reminder of her affair with Jerry but this can only be seen after the play because Pinter does not slap you over the head with it in the dialogue. I really liked this play, it's one of those plays you can continue read and reread and find different connections and further build your own theory on what acctually happend, but in some cases it tears down. Some of my past theories on what was to come of the two were torn down as I read through the play because of Pinters way of writing something in that seems important...but then really has no significance at all at the end of the play. Thats just frustrating!

-Joel

Sunday with George

2006-12-08T01:26:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT: Broadway Baby!
As someone who tries to incorporate bursting into song and dance with my everyday routine and encourages others to do the same, I was really happy to get “Sunday in the Park with George” with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. I was happy not only because I got to see a musical I had never seen before but because it left me inspired. I actually need to watch it again. It is a play about the artists Seurat in the first act and his fictional grandson in the second act dealing with the art industry and with the people in their lives. It starts with the stage being a blank white canvas and George creates the set around him as a painter would. And it can’t go without mentioning that Bernadette (F***ing) Peters is in the taping of it and of corse she makes it even more amazing.
For me why this made an impact was that in the first act George was honest with himself and the people in his life. When Dot became pregnant and wanted him to committ to her, George refused and told her to go with the dependable guy who would be a good father to the child. This may not be the romantic ideal most would expect from the lead in the play but for me, it was an important statement about knowing oneself and one’s capabilities and limitations. George put his art first and would not have been able to be there for the child. In the second act, we see the grandson feeling like he had to cater to the critics and feeling trapped by only being able to do the same thing over and over. Then Dot comes back alive out of the painting and tells him to move on and continue to work (in song) and let the critics figure it out for themselves. So in conclusion I will work on being honest with myself, continue to work on my artistic passions, and always do those things in song and dance because that makes life better, right?

Minimalism

2006-12-08T00:51:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT: Minimalism
We examined minimalism through Beckett’s “End Game” and Pinter’s “Betrayal.” In these plays only the bare essentials are on stage so what is left is very plain. As a person who is inspired and energized by lots of stimuli these plays can be more challenging to deal with. I had read that “End Game” was a play about nothing and in the play several references are made to the nothingness. Hamm, one of the characters in “End Game” says, “We’re not beginning to … to … mean something?” And Clov, another character, responded something like that’s a good one. It seems like nothing is left in this play and it makes people want to infuse some meaning into it or project their own meaning onto the play, which is interesting to think about.
The minimalism could be why outside of Shakespeare, Beckett and Pinter are the two most written about playwrights. Everyone wants to express their own theory about their plays. It can make the play more personal because the audience can personalize it to themselves as individuals. For my Beckett experience I was expecting a play about nothing and that is what I got. I did not partake in the infusing it with my meaning because I thought it was supposed to have none. Maybe that is why I enjoyed Pinter more.
Pinter uses time moving backwards in his play. The audience is only thrown clues and hints to important things that they only later understand to be important. Since it is minimalism and the dialogue is so scarce any action on stage becomes vital. I enjoyed “Betrayal” because of the wit and power play between the characters. The power seems to always be shifting and it is difficult to figure out who has something over on the other person. The person with the most knowledge in this play is the one with the most power. What draws me to these plays is the urge to be in one of them. It must be extremely challenging to be an actor performing these plays because you need poise, restraint, and endurance. I just want to see if I could make it through without totally screwing it up.

2006-12-07T23:41:00.000-08:00

“Fences” by August Wilson is a perfect example of a playwright’s work that parallels his own life. One could say that Wilson could be compared to the character of Cory Maxon. In “Fences” Cory was being offered by colleges to play football where he could also continue his education. When his talent was overlooked and was refused by his father he left home and joined the army. In relation to Wilson quit school because of the racism that surrounded him including being accused of plagiarism when the teacher did not believe that he could write as well as he could( ). Instead of going back to school he educated himself in the local library and eventually became quite a successful playwright. Essentially both had a dream, or rather goals, that were refused to them so they made their own pathway and created their own future. As far as the production of the play goes, we talked about how one of August Wilson’s demands when performing the play was that the director absolutely had to be a black man because they could connect to the hardships that a person of color goes through. The way Wilson wrote “Fences” tie’s into one of the developments of theatre – how many playwrights’ work tend to parallel a sliver of their life and topics of society.

-Joel

Brecht

2006-12-07T23:04:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT: Bertolt Brecht
Brechtian theory is that of which theater should be used to instruct and teach and that it should be intertwined with knowledge and questions of morals. “The theater became an affair for philosophers, but only for such philosophers as wished not just to explain the world but also to change it” said Brecht.
Theater should not just be a way for the audience to be immersed in the work. It should not be gesamtkunstwerk but rather more of the “alienation effect”. The actors should not engross themselves in the inner life of a character or just deliver lines in a believable way but rather to make it more stylized so that the audience would be aware that they are watching a performance and not be swept away by the theater. It should be instructional but not monotonous. As Brecht said, “Theater remains theater even when it is instructive theater, and in so far as it is good theater it will amuse”. The “alienation effect” should not be humorless or with no emotional investment but with some awareness of it being a performance. Kirk compared it in class to John Steward or The Colbert Report. Brecht used short episodic scenes with different locals to achieve this and the movie montage used so regularly in films is Brechtian.
In Brecht’s “Galileo” he uses little pieces of poetry at the beginning of each scene to further in the "alienation effect". The thing that seems contrary to the Brechtian thought in this play is that it is not historically accurate. Instead it seems that Brecht traded historical accuracy with some sort of moral lesson. Brecht seems to have wanted to portray Galileo as a man who would sacrifice his integrity to save himself in spite of the fact that he was right and thus denied human truth and understanding denying the world scientific advancement. The play ends with children turning away from the truth about an old woman and singing a taunting song about the women being a witch leaving the audience with feelings of injustice further making his point about the failure of Galileo.

cradle rocking

2006-12-07T14:50:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT: The Cradle will Rock
The Cradle will Rock directed by Tim Robbins is a movie that tells the story of the Federal Theater Project trying to stage a musical called Cradle will Rock by Marc Blitzstein along with several other small stories woven in the plot. It manly focuses on the question of artistic integrity and compromising your beliefs for capitalistic progress and censorship imposed by the government. The government is funding the arts by establishing the Federal Theater Project during the depression but how much authority does the government have in limiting or censoring the theater and art it is helping to produce.
In the end of the movie, the actors of the play risk being thrown out of their union for appearing in the musical after the government has stopped the plays opening, hoping the technicality of performing the play from the audience will keep them safe but never the less staging the musical in spite of fear. You have a feeling of triumph and victory as you see the actors make the idealistic choice of rebelling against censorship and making creativity and artist integrity the priority.
However, I am fearful that in real life conclusions the art and integrity is not so upheld or easily defined. The character of Bertolt Brecht in the movie says, “Artists are the worst whores of all!” and there is a great scene with the characters of Diego Rivera and Margherita Sarfatti in which Diego calls Margherita a Jewish fascist and she in turn calls him a rich communist. This scene more accurately portrays reality for me than the victorious ending. The questions of how to raise money for your theater or art or succeed in acting are difficult questions to undertake. It seems that whoever is financing the artist endeavor will think they have some say artistically or completely convinced to believe in you and what you are doing. And as an actor, you work during the day at some other business while doing student films, local theater, and maybe some independent film all while making no money or you fight and audition for the chance to use your acting training and skills to sell toothpaste or skittles. So in the end are we all just reduced to salespeople or whores?
Is it okay to become a salesperson if you believe in the project? Is it acceptable to use your skills as a performer commercially if you use it as a stepping-stone to get to a place where you are able to be in projects that you think have some importance? What does “selling out” mean anyway? Basically for me, you have to go with your gut and if you do not have a problem with it then neither should anyone else, but if you don’t feel comfortable do not do it. In the end it all is a personal choice.

A Brief Review of Subject Matter

2006-12-05T13:36:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT: A summary recap of the playwrights, theorists, and production work we've covered over the fall semester, 2006

Week 1 - Modernism & Postmodernism; Moulin Rouge; Melodrama
Week 2 - Melodrama & the Well-Made Play; A Doll House; Lawrence Levine on Shakespeare in America in the 19th Century (from Highbrow/Lowbrow)
Week 3 - Henrik Ibsen; Rosmersholm; The Lady from the Sea
Week 4 - Realism; August Strindberg; Miss Julie; the Preface to Miss Julie
Week 5 - Naturalism; Anton Chekhov; The Cherry Orchard; Brian Friel's Lovers
Week 6 - Expressionism; August Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata; Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape
Week 7 - Paula Vogel, How I Learned to Drive
Week 8 - Antonin Artaud; Theatre of Cruelty and Artaudian Theory
Week 9 - Political Theatre and the Federal Theatre Project; Cradle Will Rock and Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock
Week 10 - Bertolt Brecht; Brechtian Theory and Practice; Galileo
Week 11 - Minimalism: Samuel Beckett's Endgame and Harold Pinter's Betrayal
Week 12 - Broadway; Sunday in the Park with George
Week 13 - August Wilson; Fences
Week 14 - Postmodernism & Modernism; Tom Stoppard's Arcadia

The Rediscovery of Room Temperature Destiny

2006-11-29T21:03:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT:The Rediscovery of Room Temperature Destiny
I never would have imagined that reading a play about science and math could be this enjoyable. Perhaps that because that those things are intertwined with so many other things. The play explores the idea that we may be all destined to lose all energy, it may not be reversible, and we are mixing till there is no time left because that is what time means, but it also shows the importance of the waltz. Mixed in with the iterated algorithms, Byron, and the waltz were lines of dialogue describing a lady’s virtue as being known for "a readiness that keeps her in a state of tropical humidity as would grow orchids in her drawers in January." As Kirk said in class, it opens so many other books and there is so much involved and the amount of information is so thick that I have a difficult time knowing what to talk about. There is the math and science versus literature, the room temperature idea contrasting with the idea that everything will be rediscovered and re-imagined so not to worry, the use of time dealing with the past and present are all held within "Arcadia". Not to mention the numerous illusions that only intellectuals would know coupled with the lines of dialogue that can be equivalent to dick jokes. As I said I enjoyed all of these devices and information on some level. The idea that you can get something new and learn more everytime you encounter the play is a unique gift. I like the idea that you can fit so much into one play. Basically, I want to see a good production of this play much like every other play this semester, but unlike some of the other plays I would want to see this one more than once, even if the girl dies in the end.

...Arcadia...

2006-11-28T12:19:00.000-08:00

I honestly love the format that “Arcadia” and “Sunday in the Park with George”, the way it switches from past to present to past again and so on. I found that it keeps my attention more on what is being said at the time on what clues are given to the reader, or rather I read the what was foreshadowed and then going back to reread to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. But what I especially liked about this play is how in the last scene Stoppard found a way to inter-splice both nineteenth century and present times together in their dialogue. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve always been fascinated with what has happened in the past on the very spot that I am sitting and that is what he does; Stoppard explores this idea of “two time periods in the same place”. Other than my attention on the foreshadowing, I got so caught up in the way that the play was laid out that I failed to interpret what the play was trying to say or rather my misinterpretation of the play might be due to the fact because I didn’t pay attention to enough of the dialogue in the play. I mean at the beginning of the play, for instance, Thomasina initially asks what sex is and Septimus actually kinda goes into detail about what it is which is totally inappropriate for a 22 year old tutor to tell his 13 year old student. Then at the end of the play he kisses her on the lips, I understand that in the past it wasn’t rare that women would marry at a young age but this almost took it over the top with the inter-splicing of dialogue and stage directions, I mean if the splicing hadn’t of been there I don’t think the thought of the difference in age and positions in society would have come to mind as fast as it did. Now thinking about it I can see slithers of other plays that we have studied in “Arcadia” for example “How I Learned to Drive” and “Sunday in the Park with George”. I highly doubt that these plays had any part in Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” but I can certainly see what societal issues modern plays are focusing on now and what is popular in the way the play is laid out which can bee seen in “Betrayal”, “Arcadia” and “Sunday in the Park with George”

Joel Torres

...Endgame...

2006-11-21T12:54:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT:

I don’t know if it was the fact that I was tiered, the night before when I read the play “Endgame”, or maybe it was because I was just simply reading the script rather than trying to read and analyze it at the same time. It wasn’t till after we discussed it in class that at least some light was cast upon its meaning and what Beckett was trying to relay to the reader. I understand the concept of a play being art and leaving it up to the reader or audience member to come up with their own interpretation of it but for some reason I felt that I was missing something. I felt I needed to read the play over and over and over again so that I made sure that I not misread or missed anything. Fortunately Beckett threw a few facts into the dialogue for people like me who crave a sense of fullness in the plays they read. For example he threw in a few clues as to affirm that they were the last few living beings on earth but what Beckett did, and I hated, was he still left it open for the main character, Hamm, to be a homeless man who was delusional. My question is how was this play successful if it was hard for me to comprehend what was going on even with the script and stage directions right in front of me? Obviously some meaning would be lost and some dialogue would be forgotten about after the play was over. But what does one think when they are actually watching the play? We discussed how Beckett was good at repeating things and because of this if the reader had gotten side tracked they might skip over a huge chunk in the play when they went back to reading it as opposed to someone watching the play might make note of the repetition. So I guess in that we miss out on some aspect of the show but all in all “Endgame” was really weird and even now I am still trying to decide if I enjoyed it or not.

-Joel Torres

Galileo Man or Myth?

2006-11-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

The play was very interesting….interesting indeed. It makes a very good read, clips along at a nice pace, the characters typically have intelligent things to say. It leaves me wondering just how much of this is fact, and makes me wish history books were written in this style, how cool would that be?! I can see this making a good movie, sure it would need to be fleshed out a bit, but this on screen has real possibilities. Great text book, Oscar worthy film, but as a play? I just don’t know… The dialog is interesting, but doesn’t really evolve, doesn’t take you places, doesn’t build to an epic plot or create relatable characters. You know who you’re supposed to like, Galileo, and he’s obviously a great man but really a lousy protagonist. No catharsis is established, no moral sympathies, this is a play about events and not the people who were a part of them. That’s all well and good, but I don’t think it will work that well on the stage.

In a film camera angles and the highlighting of small actions can be used to streamline archetypal nuances, but on stage it’s nearly impossible to make the audience focus on one aspect of the stage, one hand gesture or unsure look, the things that comprise a character have to be big, obvious, and typically central to the dialog. A majority of the back-story provided in Galileo comes to us in the form of really dull and I think poorly written monologues. The dialog is nice; the character’s are obviously listening to one another and clearly have something to say. After all, this isn’t a play about action but one about interaction. Then someone decides to rant for a couple minutes about living on a farm or wool trade as a metaphor for God knows what. I like the style, I dig the prose, I just wish I knew the characters better, or at all for that matter.

Vogel will not leave me alone

2006-11-01T19:08:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT:Vogel will not leave me alone
I know that we are not talking about Paula Vogel’s "How I Learned to Drive" anymore. I know that the performance was two weeks ago and we covered it in class. I know all this but sadly I cannot stop thinking of the play and performance. It has literally kept me up nights. First, I want to look at what was good in the performance. The fishing scene, the drinking scene, and the last scene were particularly well done. The media was also very interesting. However, the things that were done well are not what keep me up at night. I first want to say that in my opinion the costume of Uncle Peck was completely wrong. I think the family should have been more tactile and throughout the performance should have tried to project a family atmosphere that showed that even though it is dysfunctional it is still happy. I wanted the humor to be played up even more than it was. I wanted Peck to be more inviting and likable. I wanted Li’l Bit to be more flirty and confused by Peck. I wanted the play to transcend most of the predictable thoughts on the subjects covered in this play. I felt that some of the choices made in the play made it into a more conventional portrayal of what we think about these situations. I completely understand these choices and see that when dealing with this kind of subject matter one wants to be as sensitive as one can. I think that protecting the audience and even the actors from this play were a part of the reason these choices were made.
Yet, for me the entire reason for reading, considering, or performing this play is that it is different and shows that someone who can love you can also hurt you so badly that you are forever changed. Vogel’s play does not cast Li’l Bit as a victim but as someone who although forever changed by her abuser, also received positive qualities from him. He taught her how to think ahead and out maneuver other people not only in driving but also in life. Peck actually empowered her with the capabilities to stop the abusive situation and free her from him. I think that not demonizing Peck is one of the best things about this play. Why do I want to show an abuser in a more positive light? I think that the demonizing of molesters and predators actually enables them to hurt more people. Statistics show that these people are usually someone that the family already knows. This means that people within one’s town, community, and even people in one’s family are the ones that are hurting children, not monsters lurking in dark ally ways. Making these people monsters makes us feel better because monsters do not really exist. If these predators are not monsters but friends, neighbors, and family members that means that people have to confront realities that they are not prepared to deal with. As a society we need to wake up and protect our children not from the boogieman hiding under the bed but from all the "Uncle Pecks" that we invite over for diner.

Please Ms. Vogel, not Atticus!

2006-10-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:Please Ms. Vogel, not Atticus!
In "How I Learned to Drive" by Paula Vogel, tells the story of sexualizing children included molestation and manipulation. But wait, the spin is that you don’t despise the molester or see him as a monster but as a sad man who has problems. The entire play is set up to make the reader question what they find acceptable. The casting of the parts is an example of making molestation not so outrageous. Peck, the molester, is supposed to be cast as someone who could play Atticus in "To Kill a Mockingbird" who just happens to be one of the most loved characters in literature. Li’l Bit is to be cast as a women who is well into adulthood rather than looking as a child so when more intimate scenes happen on stage it would be easier to swallow for the audience. The backward progression of time is another way. Seeing a seventeen year old Li’l Bit first and then getting younger and younger. The arguable most effective tool of making the circumstance not so awful is the humor. The play is really funny and enjoyable which when thought about analytically disturbs me but what can you do? Peck is not a villain but a damaged person who makes mistakes. After all, he was most likely victimized himself at one point or another. He does not just harm Li’l Bit but gives her valuable tools that enable her to grow up and eventually out maneuvering him. When thinking of the play later, the thing I liked best was that there were no real victims in the story. Li’l Bit could have been portrayed as a helpless girl who was shattered and forever ruined by these childhood experiences but instead she is portrayed as a girl who is turned into a capable women who is able to out think her Uncle Peck and move on with her life. She might have been hurt by the situation but she was able to take positive things from the relationship as well. She never gave up her power by playing the victim. Plus, Peck ends up drinking himself to death after being rejected by his niece on her eighteenth birthday so he does not get away unscathed. For me, this play says a lot of interesting things that a writer with less courage would not dare to say. It was unique without being hopeless.

Hairy yes, but ape?

2006-10-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:Hairy yes, but ape?
In O’Neal’s "The Hairy Ape", we get to see a truly American play with no more of that pesky cross cultural translation that can be so inconvenient. Instead we, as the reader, are left with Yank’s language that I had to be read aloud to understand. So besides sitting in my room reading the play aloud sounding like a crazy man it was an easier read. Yank’s language is not only problematic for the reader but also for the character himself. He is imprisoned by it, by not be able to transcend and adapt, he is left trapped. If only he did not know he was trapped. For me, this brings up the question of, "Is ignorance really bliss?" For Yank, I would say so. He is proud of what he does, equating his existence to the fuel of life that keeps everything in motion. That is, until he sees the reaction of a spoiled brat named Mildred Douglas. He has to resort to thinking or trying to think, which we all know how frustrating that is. He is then sent on a journey of finding a new archetype for which he to base his identity on since he is no longer satisfied with being life’s energy force. If Yank is supposed to represent the common man, who is actually the leader of the common man, then what are we supposed to get out of this play? Are we supposed to bury our heads and ignore others reactions to us? Is it okay to go through life accepting our roles as people? Are we all just searching for archetypes in which we can fit? Should we define ourselves by our own models or archetypes of which we should be? Should we transcend the labels we give each other and just live without labels? Should we see ourselves as others do and accept our fate to be killed by other apes and tossed aside? I would give an adequate answer to all this if only my head was not hurting from all this tinkin’.

How I Learned to Drive

2006-10-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:

The whole time I was reading “How I Learned to Drive” I was trying to figure out in my head, as well as Greg, how I would stage this play. But for some reason I kept on being pulled back into the story for the entertainment rather than thinking analytical about it. Because of the way that it was written with Lil’ Bit narrating – then taking you forward and backwards through time jumping in and out of scenes – the only remotely analytical comment I ever made in my head while reading it was ‘This would be a GREAT Lifetime movie’. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I will find myself flipping over to Lifetime to watch a movie or two over the weekend. In short I would like to see this play on screen as well as on stage and compare the two as far as would the movie utilize the male, female and teenage chorus as all the extra characters or would they find different actors for each. Looking at it from a staging point of view I would absolutely love playing around with the Greek chorus characters because it for one makes it fun for the actors and two it almost makes the audience actually step out of the traditional “entertain me” mood that many people tend to have walking into plays. It doesn’t matter who the actors are but they have to listen to what they are actually saying and take attention to the symbolism being thrown at them. Aside from being fun though I can see where it would be challenging from the directors standpoint as far as how to make the transitions through time periods and characters as smooth as possible. When it comes to costuming I would imagine that at times there would not be much costume changing for the chorus’. For example when they are the grandparents – the grandmother would simply have some glasses, a wig and something to go over the shoulders to separate the character from the next. I couldn’t imagine anything dramatic for make-up either because of the fast pace tempo of the play, especially since at times Lil’ Bit is narrating then suddenly jumps into the next scene. This play is very intriguing, it’s easy with a plot like this for the playwright to make it tasteless, I guess that comes from years of speech competitions and every Dramatic round you went into there was bound to be someone doing a piece about pedophilia or rape. But Paula Vogel did a tremendous job with the script; it’s one that you don’t want to put down till you reach the end.

-Joel

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-10-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

I never thought I'd read a play about tits, cars, sex, and little girl love written by a woman, but I totally just did. How I Learned to Drive was a really good play, or at least, a really good script, it will be interesting to see it on stage. Given I don't have much faith in the directorial candidate...but we'll see...I was so consumed by the dialog that I didn't really bother to create staging in my mind, and looking back I have on idea how I'd go about it. Like the chorus, would they have quick mini costume changes? Or just posture? Do they wear all black? Or street clothes? Maybe the entire cast wears street cloths, maybe do the whole thing really minimalist like that version of Uncle Vania (sp?) we watched. And her transitioning through the stages of puberty, I dunno, you could leave the audience to figure it out by their own devices, but how often does that ever turn out well? A big fat never.
The symbolism of the playboy posing, the parallel of learning to drive a car with the coming into womanhood...or manhood as it were. The way that Peck strips her of her freedom but at the same time gives her "the keys" to the only release she now has. It's all cool and symbolic and stuff and things that I could probably talk about in this meditation at length, but then, It's all stuff that the play kind of spells out for you, we get it, why blab on it? As it is I can't really think of anything terribly deep to talk about here, no realizations/revelations or otherwise. Really the only thing I'm left wondering (aside from how to stage) is if this would be classified as postmodern or not, lets discuss it shall we?

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-10-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Having talked about the Cherry Orchard I feel as though I actually understand it. I defiantly read most of it as a drama, which it obviously isn’t. In addition I read it rather quickly and we’ve now discussed that it is in fact a play of pauses….soooo I messed up, but I’m back with it and within the realm of comprehension. Yet, I still don’t like the play. Sure, some of the random things they do are funny and are meant to simulate snippets of actual speech to establish a sense of realism but for me most of the dialog establishes a sense of bewilderment, and not in the good way. I never felt any form of attachment to the characters, they were off in their own little worlds being incredibly weird. Like bleating, or peanut eating dogs, or talking to book cases, or crying about EVERYTHING, or being in love or engaged but not really being in love or engaged and then your mom gives gold to a poor guy when she can’t afford food and the only sane one is the Firs and that’s jus because his idiosyncrasies are explained by the fact that he is senile and hard of hearing. BAH! I dunno, I think there are comedies that to a much better job of both randomness and true character realism. Given, this is a very early work, and there is something to be said for it in that respect, but I wouldn’t go so far as to put it on a pedestal of any make or model.
Lovers was good, I liked the script, and the stageing, and it was good and stuff yupyup. Joel, as always some mighty fine reading aloud, indeed you seemed like a real narrator. Though…your right arm never moved, didn’t it get tired cocked up like that? And falling, wow man, get some legs that work. The blocking in the first act was a little suspect, but I’m not sure what exactly could have been done differently, it just didn’t seem to flow well. Perhaps it was a product of this being Ann’s first show, which, good lord go her. Or maybe there just isn’t any way to make two kids sitting on a hill interesting to look at for 45 minutes. There’s just something about plays centered around people “doing nothing” that I guess I’m not open to enough. I don’t need action, I’m more “cultured” than that, but I do appreciate a plot line with some twists in it and characters with depth who have meaningful interactions, is that so much? Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to go watch my soaps.

Chekhov

2006-10-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

When Firs wonders onstage my first reaction to this was laughter, I mean they forgot to take someone to the doctor when that person was ill. But when I realized he died with the symbolism of the two sounds from offstage, my reaction quickly changed. This play deals a lot with the ending of an era such as the one of the surfs being freed, it stays consistent with keeping this idea of many era’s ending lingering in the background throughout the play. The first time we hear the sound of the “cord breaking” Firs informs us that the last time he heard that was when the serfs were set free which marked the end of Lopakhin’s family working as slaves. Later when we hear the sound of the cherry trees being chopped down marked the end of Ranevsky’s family in that house as well as the beginning of a new era when Lopakhin starts his new path to becoming a rich man rather than a peasant.
I for one love when symbolism is used with such manor in entertainment, whether it is in a movie, play or music, I guess it makes me feel like I caught something that someone else might not have. But when eighty-seven year old Firs wonders onstage I automatically started laughing, just like one does when reminiscing, then when he died I realized that he represented the house and the memories that came along with it -- because he was usually the one who commented on how it used to be in the good old days. It was only right for Chekhov to end the play with the sound of the cord snapping and the cherry trees being cut down marking the end of an era/memories and starting new ones with everyone going their separate ways.

-Joel

Poor Firs

2006-10-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:
I absolutely think that plays should be seen and not read if at all possible. “The Cherry Orchard is a great example of that for me. The tragedy of the play seems easily enough understood when read but for me the humor was not apparent. When I thought about what was actually happening it was funny, but I think the impact was lost on me.
I just remember thinking that if I saw some of the things that happened on stage it would be funny but just reading the humor was not as obvious. The humor in this play seems very important to me in the sense that it is needed to help get through the play and when you are sitting in a quiet room reading about extravagant women who are building up debt and once serfs buying the property where one’s family used to work it is less than hilarious. A play about futility is not the quickest read anyway.
It probably is my own fault for getting frustrated with the characters instead of enjoying them, but I can almost guarantee that seeing a production would have been more enjoyable. Not that this play is only a comedy but rather a combination of drama and comedy. I mean the last thing you see on stage is a forgotten old servant lying down to die but basically what it comes down to is I would rather see a play than read a play and now I have to find a production of “The Cherry Orchard”.

med 3

2006-09-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:

Forgetting that we were supposed to read the preface, I went ahead and read the play. But after reading what John had to say about Mr. Strindberg, I could not agree more. From the play alone one can see that Strindberg had a biased opinion, more often then not, referring to the male character in the play as the victim. At one point when Julie is flirting with him he replies with an “I’m only a man” response. But as I’ve said in past entries, many playwrights’ works are related to something they themselves have experienced. For example when John said that Strindberg had a prejudice about woman, he was exactly right because after reading the biography section of “Miss Julie” one finds out that at around the same time he wrote this play he was also in the process of going through a divorce or at least a hardship in his first marriage that eventually lead to their divorce.
In further reading of the biography section one sees that both he and his wife were involved in alternate relationships while still married to each other. Likewise in the play Jean is supposed to be engaged to Christine, the other servant, and he ends up declaring a love for Julie that he has had since he was a child. Then after she says to him that she has no money, he in a way changes his mind as if the only reason he was coming onto her was for her money. I can’t remember where I read it either in the play or the bio section but it is explained that men do not need women that they can survive on their own but women need men. If in the play, this would be a public stab at his wife at the time and also portray how he feels towards women. My question, regarding the course, is from going from point A to point B – do the change of styles in plays parallel society as it changes? For example in “Hamlet”, Hamlets’ mother married the king for the good of her son, guaranteed placement in high society, is similar to the holding of women on a pedestal – innocent to what is actually happening – as it was in early Shakespearian society. Yet down the road we see the equalization of both genders in our present society, an example of this would be “Closer” and the language that it uses to bring both genders to the same level.

-Joel

preface for miss julie

2006-09-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:
Reading the preface for “Miss Julie” was my first experience with Strindberg. I found him to be judgmental, misogynistic, and undeniably interesting. Instead of feeling appalled by the things he said, it just made me laugh. He has harshness about him that I am not repelled against because he is open about it. I don’t know if that is because of the time period in which he lived or not, but either way I found it intriguing. It just seems that in present day not many people have the courage to be as honest as he was about his feelings and beliefs. Also, Strindberg seemed very intelligent and even though he had a prejudice against women, he tried to write his lead female characters with more than one dimension.
I really liked the idea of having all these different factors that would all lead the character to choose the action we see on stage. It does reflect reality in the sense that there is not always one easy simple answer to the motivation behind our actions. It is more complex because people are more complex. Strindberg also tries to show that people should not just be categorized into boxes or “characters” to make it easy for us to label them through making his characters on stage characterless. Instead, he makes his characters on stage more like a stew of many things. And these characters are even harder to define because Strindberg gives the actors improvisation, pantomime, and dance to use how they see fit. Thus, he insured that the characters would be different with each actor that portrayed them. Strindberg might be a lot of things but boring is not one of them, and that is why I can’t seem to dislike him.

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-09-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Not quite done with Lady from the Sea yet, just got done with act 3 and the stranger. Wow, that was nutty, I have absolutely no idea how to interpret the portrayal of that character. Is he scary? Dressed in black, scratchy voice, maybe “wet from the sea”, does lightening strike when he exits? Or is he just normal, just a guy, and the fact that he still instills such terror in Ellida is what makes him so creepy? Not sure. I really do enjoy this play more than Rosmersholm, what can I say, I’ll take hard core drama and a cast of deranged characters over internal discord any day. Given playing utter fear on stage tends to look rather silly for some reason, especially for prolonged periods of time, but I think it ads to the melodrama. Given, I’m not done yet, but it seems to me that this is certainly a melodrama. Whereas Rosmersholm employed some post modern techniques Lady from the Sea feels oddly akin to a soap opera. It’s a really fun read, with feverish dialog being cut short by an entrance, cliff hangers at the end of every line, a baby with evil ocean eyes, and secret motivations dictating everyone’s actions…I’m sitting here waiting for the evil twin to show up.

It is a lot more fun to read, no question, but I would be curious to see these two staged. I think Lady might give it all away to easily, might come off more corny and hokey than terrifying and nerve wracking. Rosmersholm keeps you guessing, in fact, it tells you so little that the only thing one can do is guess. Every fact the play gives you to work with could easily be a lie, and likely is one! Who does that! Ibesen I guess…Less declaration, more intrigue, and if the players are good, if they can make clear the rampant mental struggles the characters are going through, I think it could well be far more engaging. That’s not to say Lady is any easier to stage, far from it, with lines and characters such as these you really have to sell it. If Rosmershom misses the mark then it just comes off as boring, Lady has the potential to be an utter disaster of Days of Our Lives proportions. All around I’d say these plays are some rather tricky stuff, I’ve enjoyed both, and look forward to discussing them.

DDAII Meditation 2

2006-09-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:DDAII Meditation 2

What I have found interesting is the more I read from Ibsen and the more I learn about his life in class the more I see a parallel between he and his work. I realize that most writers’ works are based on what they have experienced in their own lives whether it is first hand or indirectly, for example a story they have heard before. But in class we talked about how Ibsen and a fellow playwright/director had parted ways because one had broken down told officials what they wanted to hear, so the result of the conflict was that both wrote plays with regards to the situation with an ending that paralleled the effect it had in their lives.

Likewise in “Rosmersholm”, one can see the parallel to Ibsen’s own life throughout the text. Going off of what John said, it seems as though Ibsen was in fact depressed when writing this play and “A Doll’s House” because of what happens in the conclusion. Maybe that is why Ibsen was so good at what he did because he knew from first hand experience how to portray each character. Honestly his work is so effective that it put me in a somber mood really fast or rather the mood the characters were feeling.

What I also found interesting is in one particular scene (act 2) Kroll begs Rosmer to continue on what his family had brought to the town but Rosmer declines because he wants to break away from the “gloom and darkness” that his family had brought to the town for a long time and “shed a little light and happiness”. Yet what Ibsen does is try to pull him back by Kroll saying it would be a “challenge for the last of the family line,” almost like a Darth Vader – Luke Skywalker sort of relationship. But one has to see that in those lines Ibsen might have been shedding a bit of light into his own life – trying to break away from his past – as the darkness, or depression, tries to pull him back. One might say that like Rosmer’s response to Krolls stab in the play, Ibsen wanted to “take part…in the battle of life.”

-Joel

Was Ibsen depressed?

2006-09-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:
From the beginning of the play, the “white horse of Rosmersholm” let us know that the characters are going to be haunted by their past. Was Ibsen depressed or what? I guess that another wonderful criticism from Ibsen was not what I was in the mood for when reading “Rosmersholm”. I understand he had a problem with social convention but is double suicide the answer? Apparently it is. The thing that I have been thinking over recently, especially with this play, is that when dealing with social convention and the pressure to conform, are we the ones who cause the most damage to ourselves?
Rosmer and Rebecca certainly were. After all, their critics would not have killed them. Rosmer was miserable and plagued by guilt, and living in Rosmersholm seemingly infected Rebecca with guilt as well. Guilt is something that is self-imposed. Their critics did run negative stories in the paper but compared to death, doesn’t seem so bad to me. Rosmer could have just dealt with the consequences, but self-destruction was easier.
Are we so ingrained with a social standard that defying it means death, even by our own hand? I don’t deny that their may be consequences, but are the worst penalties self-imposed? How far can one go into social rebellion without being swallowed by one’s own guilt? Do we want to find out? After all, Rebecca was driven to persuade a mentally ill woman to suicide. Do you have to reject all social pressures or can you keep a code of ethics and morals that overlap with what was ingrained in us? I guess Ibsen is pretty good at this playwriting thing and getting you to think but no more double suicide.

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-09-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

I can see how A Doll’s House would have caused quite an uproar during it’s time, but it just doesn’t have the same punch today as it did then. The dialog is just soooooo tedious, and I feel that a majority of the plot is a little to hodgepodge. What is the significance of Dr. Rank dieing and his love for Nora? So that she realizes a man would give up his honor for love? Wow, talk about dues ex machina, and Mrs. Linde being in love with Krogstad…it just all seems to easy, to convenient. Nothing builds up to these revelations, there aren’t any hints, they just kind of drop. So much happens in the last act that I wonder what the hell the point of the first two were. I dunno, this play bores me is all, in terms of construction I just don’t think it flows nearly as well as most other plays that I’ve read. Look at, say, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, not a lot happens early in the play, but tension is building, something secretive is going on you can just feel it. Then, when everything blows up, you’re ready for it, it’s crazy and amazing. Here when everything falls into place I felt like, “oh, ok…neat?” Get what I’m trying to say?

Ahhhhhh the Shakespeare article, how terribly long and poorly organized it is. Really, the points he’s making are substantial, and he has great proof….lots and lots of never ending proof…but I had a hard time following where the article was going. He jumps around dates and places so readily that my understanding of the time periods is close to none. I’m very very confused as to when things happened in relation to others, in fact, I have no idea, and that was probably the most poignant effect the paper could have had. Kirk, perhaps you can straighten me out a bit.

2006-09-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

Like Kirk said about the Moulin Rouge “…either you like it or you hate it,” I for one belong to the first group. I have voiced my interest in class as being the technicality in, and transitions to, scenes as far as blocking, lighting and choreography. In short I am interested in the spectacle of the production because I feel that in the end it can make or break a show, for example any show “on ice.”

But as far as Moulin Rouge goes, the director more than satisfied me in the spectacle aspect. What first got my attention was at the first of the movie was when the picture takes you through the alleyways and gutters of Paris to show the dull and dark ways of the streets. Yet as the lead character recites his dialogue it quickly takes you back through those same alleyways showing what the lead character saw through his own eyes when he first arrived in Paris. What is genius about this sequence is the fact that the director successfully matches the picture with the tone of the voice the character is using to portray what he sees. In the beginning, after living in Paris for a year, he finally sees Paris for how he feels, and then as the actors’ voice brightens so does the color as the pace through town goes faster and he sees Paris as an artistic town flowing with culture coming at him from every street.

What also caught my eye is that when showing the lead female character the lighting on her face always varied to show her mood. I realize that initially every movie does this but what the director does differently is that he does it so obviously that it is hard not notice it, which ties into how we discu

Braz too

2006-09-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:
Well I guess you could call this a meditation and a response to Greg. I also got stuck on the topic of Baz and his films. I have seen Romeo and Juliet and its been a while but its feel is incredibly similar to Moulin Rouge. Once again he plays upon pop culture references but by remaining true to the script of Romeo and Juliet is limited to using symbols rather than incorporating it into dialouge. I found it interesting how he managed to visualy manipulate Shakepeare's words into a gang war involving the ever so popular ecstasy, directly around the time that raves took root in our 'subculture'. He made it into a story of teenagers of the 2oth century without changing a word. And somehow through a creative combination of intensified life, and almost overload of the senses with color and pacing, he spoon feeds us an almost ridiculous subplot that we gladly eat up, be it because we secretly or almost shamefully identify and want to take part. He seems to stroke the imagination of every audience member, and as Kirk was suggesting, by making reference to current culture allows the audience to pretend their involved, putting themselves in the classic love story that they had always envied. He combines the old yet familiar with the new and popular. He has a way with playing with the audience and using the human memory to his advantage, as a tool to manipulate... almost tapping into the 'collective unconscious'. As Levine argued well, Shakespeare next to the Bible is dear to the hearts of the American culture and this in combination with the new scare provides a powerfully entertaining story.

Meditation One

2006-09-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:John Lackey
Meditation One
In Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll House we see a well crafted and interesting critique on the institution of marriage that was pushed on the characters through social convention. As a critique, it did the job so well in reference to me personally because I hated Nora and Torvald’s relationship from the very beginning. My argument is that instead of having a pure critique on marriage, a question of marriage that leads to the reader to ambiguity and more questions than answers would have been more interesting.
One of my problem’s with the marriage of Nora and Torvald is that it has no redeeming qualities. It is a marriage based on deception, lack of communication, and no real intimacy. These are people are content, until the end, to play roles of a happy couple instead of being a happy couple as Nora states in Act 3, “I’ve been your doll wife”. As a critique it works very well because the marriage is so awful that the only way the play was redeemed for me was that in the end Nora was finally honest, with herself and her husband, and left. The problem for me is that marriage is not always just a deception between two people who are willing to go along it. As a very serious social institution, I see marriage as something with benefits and hindrances. I think a more realistic view point would have been to show people who had both awful and redeeming qualities about them and their marriage. That way, if the marriage was both horrid and wonderful it becomes a personal question based in reality that the audience would be left with instead of a pure critique.
In “A Doll’s House” Mrs. Linde and Nils Krogstad seem to be a couple that seems to find actual happiness in one another, but the relationship is unsatisfying for me. After all, Torvald hits the mark when he said of Mrs. Linde, “Dreadful bore that woman is!” And Krogstad is the villain in the play that is blackmailing Nora in the first place. The people whose relationship is not completely unpleasant are themselves unpleasant. Mrs. Linde is always being condescending to Nora and Krogstad shows no real positive qualities until the relationship with Mrs. Linde prompts him to. My interpretation of marriage or relationships is that they are not just deceptions that should be thrown away or the answer to your problems that will make you a better person. It is something more balanced with positive and negative attributes which is why the actual question of marriage is more difficult to answer than social convention or a critique of social convention could provide.

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

2006-09-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Baz has a truly amazing ability to create a parody that is so artfully constructed that it can stand alone as a work completely separate from that which it parodies. Moulin Rouge is the ideal example; it plays on the gilded age, cheesy period romance films with highly predictable plots as well as the Broadway style musicals these plots typically build themselves onto. Yet every clichéd and canned character is taken to an extreme, their boundaries are pushed so far into caricature that they become something entirely original.

I don’t know how he does it, I just know I wouldn’t categorize Moulin Rouge with any of the film types it parodies….maybe musicals, but really, it doesn’t quite function like one, the plot devices are all wrong….I can’t really explain it, maybe someone critique and shed some light?

Anyway, what really interests me in terms of our reading correlating with Baz is his interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. Anyone see that? I really should watch it again, it’s been a long time, but it is quite neato. He uses the script, verbatim, but twists the setting and presents it as a post modern gang war. It’s kind of a parody, there are a fair amount of humorous moments that toy with the line-age, but then, it can be assumed that such acts of silliness would have been present in the original performances. He doesn’t take anything away from the original intent of the play, yet it seems so different from other versions I’ve seen, or been in for that matter. The words are easier to follow, the story more compelling, it’s not quite Romeo and Juliet as Shakespeare wrote it, but it is at the same time. In a sense, he does then what he later did with Moulin Rouge, play off of what we know and expect to make something we’ve never seen before. He’s good….he’s very good….

Introduction (Fall 2006)

2006-09-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the blog-based on-line discussion area for THEA 143, Development of Dramatic Art II, taught at Austin College in the Fall of 2006. This blog is designed to address issues and ideas relating to the history of theatre from the 19th century to the present day.

I'd like to establish several basic rules for the discussion:

(a) maintain respect for all participants at all times; when you wish to argue, make your point substantively, and be sure that you have made every attempt to understand the original post to the best of your ability;

(b) stay on topic; any and all connections are welcome (and on many browsers, you can include these connections in the form of hyperlinks or images), so long as they ultimately connect to the subject or discussion at hand;

(c) if you are a student in the course, BE SURE to keep a BACKUP COPY of any and all posts that you make; I would suggest that you compose your remarks in a word processor and simply paste them into blogger, as this host cannot guarantee the safety of data posted to its site;

(d) cite absolutely any and all sources for quoted or paraphrased material.

We'll make up the rest as we go along. Enjoy!

Death of Comedy:

2006-02-14T05:45:00.000-08:00

This book seems to be pretty interesting so far. It starts out by talking about the mythic concerning the origin of comedy, saying that the base-word can mean either "Night song" or "village song." He then goes on to the examples of Old Comedy. His examples show that the old comedies are based mostly on sex jokes and political satire. I think that this has changed little today. It seems that the primary way to get people to laugh, in movies such as Anchor Man and The Wedding Crashers is to throw in nothing but a series of sexually awkward situations resulting in as many jokes about sex as possible.
Like these films we see toady, his Segal's examples of humor show just how bawdy something needs to be to be funny instead of just awkward. He shows the examples in chapter three of the men behaving homosexually and the results. He also shows the example of the great comic playwright having intercourse with his "tragic muse" and uses that to mock people. In all, the point seems to be that sexual comedy combined with satire of important individuals was the primary way to get people to laugh.
I feel that this is still true today. How often did we hear jokes about the promiscuity of the nation's former president? Or jokes about the homosexual tendencies of some artists? It is still the prevalent form of humor in society today, not much has changed in four thousand years.

Cradle WIll Rock

2005-12-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

So, I enjoyed Cradle Will Rock immensely. I found it to be both very entertaining and informative at the same time. It really goes into detail about how the people in the theatre company felt betrayed because of outsiders and forces within pulling them apart and lying about how they stand for something when they obviously do not.
One thing that really got under my skin though was their portrayal of Conservatives as know nothing whistle blowers throughout the entire piece. It just seemed too much. They made it seem as though they cared nothing for the work that the project was doing and only wanted to stamp out the communist effort which never existed in the first place.
The actors that they chose really brought out the characters as well. John Tuturo was brilliant and really brought out the person he was trying to play. His relation to his children and wife also came across loud and clear, as did his relation to his children and his dedication to his work. Hank Azaria was also amazing as the starving, half-crazed composer, and Bill Murray as the fallen Vaudeville ventriloquist was brilliant. Though there was no bad performer in the show, these were the ones who really stuck with me.
Finally, the moment where they begin to perform their parts from the seats is a touching moment. The cuts to the mural being destroyed and the images of the actors doing their part illegally just really get the heart going. I also found it interesting that the last thing remaining of the mural was the syphilis cell which was the main problem to begin with.

Sunday in the Park

2005-12-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

As far as musicals go, I really enjoy this one, it is witty, charming and just generally fun. You get to see the dramatic change in the characters from the first to the second act, and it really is astounding. The play really could have ended with just the end of the first act, and indeed the first act goes on long enough that it seems to be the end of the play when it happens. Instead, the second act answers a question, which is what would have happened if George had lived. Would his originality have been maintained or would he too have become a slave to the salon?
Also, to have the painting talk for itself in the beginning of the second act I found to be funny. What would a painting really say after it had been hanging in a gallery with people staring at it for the better part of a century? Quite comedic, and yet touching at the same time, because it is through this that we learn of the tragic demise of George. Then, to bring them all back in perfect harmony at the end too was just as powerful and touching as it was to have them come together in the first act.
Though I have no idea what a Chromaloom is, it does manage to pave the way for the fact that had George lived, he never would have been as creative or original as his first work, and we see this in the second George, who literally feels like a cardboard cutout of himself. Each time someone tries to talk to him, a new cutout pops up and he ahs difficulty keeping them all together on stage. Interesting concept.

Cloud Nine

2005-12-08T11:49:00.000-08:00

(I turned this post in to be graded, but realized it was not posted on the blog, so here it is)

I think Churchill’s Cloud Nine deals with some of the most controversial subjects that we’ve encountered this semester. The characters in this play present ideas about topics ranging from sexuality to incest to racism. Looking at the original cast list, it is interesting to notice the difference in roles an actor is playing between the first and second acts.

In the first act, Jeffrey Jones plays the part of Clive. Clive is the head of household, the alpha male. He is working for Britain serving in a type of military for the British colonies in Africa. Clive is masculine and strong. He is a hypocritical man in the sense that he gets upset when his wife Betty has feelings for another man, yet he sleeps around with other women. In act two Jones plays the role of Edward, son to Clive and Betty. At this point Edward is an adult, and a homosexual. After leaving a relationship with a man named Gerry, Edward moves in with his sister, Victoria, and her female lover Lin. The three of them proceed to sleep with each other and Edward declares, “I think I’m a lesbian” (p. 80). Edward is very effeminate and enjoys taking on roles traditionally held by women.

I find these casting choices, such as Jeffrey Jones (there are others that are similar), interesting. I think these choices further emphasize Churchill’s discussion of sexuality. Characters such as Edward are struggling to find themselves and create an identity. It would be interesting to watch an actor play contrasting roles such as Clive and Edward. Clive seems to have more of a sense of who he is and what he wants, while Edward is experimenting and discovering how to define himself and what he desires.

cloud9

2005-12-07T18:48:00.000-08:00

Cloud 9
This play made me think of One Flea Spare because it dealt with barriers and with taboo situations. It goes farther One Flea in its’ attempts, and is more abstract. Some of the barriers dealt with are those between genders. Not just the idea of sexuality is discussed, with several homosexual characters, and Edward claiming he wants to be effeminate and that no one will let him, but also that of gender, when young Edward is to be played by a girl. Also Betty (young Betty) is to be played by a man, and irony is employed when Betty says things like “I just want to be the woman Clive wants me to be” (not direct quote). Young Edward wants to be a girl and tries to play with dolls and sleep with men. Grown Edward is Gay and wants to sleep with his sister. Incest, definitely taboo.
Age barriers are challenged as well. Baby Cathie in act 2 is to be played by a grown man, which also deals with gender issues, but imagine a grown man acting in such ways as a four year old girl. Irony is consistently used that would be missed in the reading if you didn’t know who was playing what character. If you didn’t know that Cathie was to be played by a man then you wouldn’t see the irony in the fact that she insists on wearing dresses and that her friends call her a boy.
The slave is played by a white boy in blackface. This is ironic because he says he is whiter than black, and renounces his black heritage. This is also controversial because of the racial barriers in America.

Cloud 9: Gender whats that?

2005-12-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

I found this play to be truly controversial and amazing all at the same time. I have to say that this was one play that I will never forget. In having Edward being played by a female, I first thought that this was to make fun of how he thought he was gay, or that his father some how that that he was a he when it was really a she, but this was not the case. Although it was very comical to find the men playing women’s roles, and some women playing men’s roles, I feel it was done as a reflection to their inner selves that they were told to repress. For example, the Queen is played by a male actor; in the beginning she is very submissive to her husband and mother. She was to be a good daughter and wife. But the king on the other hand was very mischievous in his adultery and attacking people because he thought they needed to learn a lesson, when there was really no reason at all (poor village people). So in having the double standard of having the males able to commit adultery to the fullest, and it being ok for them, but no ok for women, it makes an interesting point for the casting choice. The male Queen is told at early age to suppress her sexual urges and that she can’t live without a husband. Her outward appearance shows that she could live by herself only if she would accept what her true self is, an independent, free person, who has desires. In this sense this female has the urges the same as any man, and her outward appearance is a man.

Cloud 9: Confused

2005-11-30T19:16:00.000-08:00

So, after reading Cloud Nine I was confused by the characters in the second act. I didn't understand how the playwright could say that Act II took place 100 years later "...but for the characters it is only 25 years later." Why? Did the playwright think that by setting it in the 1980s the sexscapades would be easier to handle, that it would be ok for a sister and brother who are struggling with their sexuality live with the same woman? I mean, that really isn't very easy to deal with anyway, let's think about this...homosexual incest, not a combination society is prepared to deal with even if the brother wasn't "sleeping" with the women. If we're supposed to believe that things like child molestation, homosexuality, and extramarital affairs are commonplace in the 1880s, why can't we expect them to be ok in 1905? I understand that the playwright was trying to follow some semblance of a historical background but to play with time in a way where it doesn't make much sense seems odd to me. I wonder if there were any other ways she thought of dealing with this time gap?

Sunday in the Park with George

2005-11-30T17:43:00.000-08:00

I loved this musical, not just because I absolutely am in awe of Bernadette Peters but because of the theme of it, which I saw being bringing life to art and art to life. I was amazed at the opening scene when the play started with a blank set...and it wasn't a completely dark set, it was white! This really brought the page to the stage. I was incredibly impressed by the set design. Also, the eventual addition of the various set pieces (trees, boats, people, dogs, etc) was absolutely incredibly. Then, when contrasted with the ending of the second act where George is standing in the same park with all the buildings and they all just seem to melt away and go back to white. Gah! I was in love.

Arcadia: Thomasina's Discoveries

2005-11-30T17:30:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed reading this play; I was fascinated by the structure of the plot. I think the interweaving of the time periods not only showed how little life has changed (in search of new knowledge) but how things can be explained by the past and the present. I saw this clearly in the scene where Thomasina and Septimus along with Val and Hannah are discussing the second law of thermodynamics. I didn't really understand what they were talking about until their conversations came together and completed each other. However, I had one question while I was reading the play, was Septimus wary/afraid of Thomasina's discoveries because they were radical or because they were discovered by a young girl. I would have to conclude that it was because they were radical because Val says the only way she could have really discovered what they thought she had unless she had a calculator. It was a very interesting play that incorporated various forms of knowledge and sexual tensions.

Arcadia: Labyrinth

2005-11-30T13:48:00.000-08:00

I was reading through the Arcadia Hypertext and noticed a footnote to a line that I had not given much thought before. In scene 3.1 Thomasina says, “We must work outward from the middle of the maze.” The footnote that follows explains that Thomasina is referring to garden labyrinths. These garden labyrinths are designed in such a way that a single path leads to a central space signifying spiritual enlightenment or bliss. Thomasina has figuratively reached the middle of the maze due to her revelation that mathematical equations can be used to plot irregular shapes found in nature, such as the apple leaf.

The comments in the footnote encouraged me to think how the other characters in Arcadia were related to the idea of the maze. Valentine is using equations to discover answers to the grouse populations. He is following the path of the labyrinth in order to reveal solutions at the center. Thomasina is working the opposite way. She has the knowledge and is working to find ways in which to prove her solutions. Bernard thinks he has reached a solution concerning the mysteries behind Lord Byron. He attempts to prove his discovery by forcing facts to fit. However, Bernard finds out that he has been mistaken and his efforts to navigate the labyrinth prove unsuccessful.

Arcadia

2005-11-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

I was deeply moved by this play. I enjoyed the diverging time lines, and how at the very end, the two periods are reconciled. To have these two completely different time periods on stage and talking (though not interacting) together was an intense image in my minds eye.
What really got to me though was that we are exposed to Thomasina's last night alive at the end, and she is dancing with Septimus, a man for whom she has obvious feelings. Also, since we know that Septimus spends the rest of his life trying to prove her theories, becoming a hermit, it shows the two had something going on, that he was so devoted to her, even after death.
the double waltz at the end too ties the time periods together, having a double-cast character waltzing with Hannah while Thomasina and Septimus dance their final dance in the background. Powerful mental images abound there.

Sunday=super neat set!

2005-11-17T01:50:00.000-08:00

This is such a good musical with such a good score. I really like it lots.
Anyway.
The set for Sunday was impressive. I like the way things move in and out through the stage floor and from the wings, and even from the grid. Super neat. It adds an ethereal, dream-like quality to the production that would be lost without it. It also adds fluidity to the scenes, no boxy stage hands moving things clumsily in and out, but things that can flow easily like in an artists mind, he can rearrange the landscape at his will. This is and interesting trope in Sunday…, the idea of the omnipotence of the artist. George (the 1st and the 2nd) often changes around the scenery or the layout of a situation, or adds in his own elements. He doesn’t take to real people in real scenarios, because he can’t do this manipulating. The only times he is interacting with individuals one on one, he seems easily misunderstood or frustrated, or they do. George II takes advantage of the casual (slightly drunken?) smile and blank look in mingling situations while his mind wanders away. George the first seems merely to avoid others. When he gets into a situation he can’t art his way out of, he may turn his back on the audience or retreat some other way. At the end of act one we see that perhaps all of these people are controlled by George on a larger scale. Perhaps he is using his art, and incorporating these specific people as a means of adapting to his own environment by forcing them to adapt to his. He is putting them all in his own image, deciding what they should do, and there is power in that.
There is also a very comic element in the way things and set pieces can be maneuvered. The silent soldier is an example. Also the cocktail versions of George are humorous. All in all, damn good production.

Arcadi's themes

2005-11-17T01:36:00.000-08:00

Arcadia
I love how this play deals with the aspect of mistaken historical truths. There are people constantly thinking and rethinking the past as a way of defining their present. It is interesting to see history being rewritten and rethought as often and in the method of science. Knowledge is constantly gained and lost and found again through the course of history. Thomisina and Septimus discuss this when they talk of Cleopatra, and the great library being burned. Thomisina is lamenting the loss of so many great classics and scientific and mathematical knowledge, while Septimus approaches from a different angle and is more practical about the issue. “Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost again will have their time again.” He tries to teach Thomisina of the permanence of knowledge and of certain truths. He touches on the fact that our human lives are just a piece of this long story, “the procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march.” This is a theme of the play. Recurring knowledge, and truths that stay true throughout the impermanence of time.
One such truth is one that of the knowledge being slowly gained and fought for, knowledge such as mathematical proofs. Valentine is using the same type of math that Thom does, only she did it a hundred years prior and without the aid of computers. He can’t believe it at first, but, she was doing the math correctly and with true informed intent behind it. Thom and Valentine are just two of people along the march of mathematical knowledge.
Another such truth in the play is more social, and it is that of the forever love triangles that people get themselves into. There are too many triangles and squares and pentagrams of love scenarios and of perported love scenarios between many or all of the characters. Everyone is sleeping with someone or desired by someone or in love with someone. Even the supposed mute genius gets the girl in the end.

Brainstorming Presentation Topics

2005-11-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT: Some suggestions on presentation #2

The purpose of the second presentation (a group presentation) is to address some significant theory, practitioner, or movement in 20th century (or contemporary) theatre in sufficient detail that the class can (a) obtain some sense of that theory or artist's significance to theatre history and (b) retain a clear sense of what might be of interest to them for further research and why.

The suggestions I propose here should not be approached comprehensively, but rather as the starting points for research. The presentations themselves should make a point of being selective and concise, illustrating through concrete and specific examples a key segment of the larger subject.

For example, a presentation on Psychological Realism (or the Stanislavsky System) would be best focused on a particular practitioner, teacher, actor, or the method itself, but not all of these; hence, any one presentation should NOT attempt to describe both Stanislavsky's life AND his system. It would be quite sufficient to try to articulate the system itself - particularly since that system changed over the course of Stanislavsky's career.

Choose a subject that interests you sufficiently that you and your collaborators will have reason to make yourselves (within the span of time available) experts.

Some suggestions (specific examples are not comprehensive or exclusive):

Particular directors (e.g. Anne Bogart, Trevor Nunn, JoAnne Akalaitis)
Particular artist/theorists (e.g. Peter Brook, Eugenio Barba, Augusto Boal)
Particular teachers (Jerzy Grotowski, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler)
Genres (Performance Art, Political satire, Farce, Improv)
Venues (Vaudeville, Burlesque, The Little Theatre movement, Regional theatres)
Trends (Historical reconstruction, interpretations of Shakespeare, marketing schemes)
Innovations (psychology and theatre, computers and theatre, virtual reality)
Technology (theatre design, architecture, lighting/sound control)
Business (government funding, corporate sponsorship, audience response/development)
Government (censorship, national theatres, agitprop)
Culture (theatre of cultural/racial identity, cultural appropriation)

I realize I've thrown the doors wide open - the range of choices may seem overwhelming. I'm more than happy to discuss prospects with you to help you narrow your focus considerably.

Arcadia: Knowledge that Kills

2005-11-15T07:18:00.000-08:00

The main thing lusted for in this play is knowledge. There is knowledge of three kinds: mathematical, historical, and sexual. Even though some characters are curious about all three, it seems they cannot have all three at once and be successful at the other two. They must either have historical and mathematical or sexual, they cannot be mixed. In the case of Thomisina, she was very brilliant in her mathematical skills, as well as some historical aspects, but she was not very knowledgeable in sex. Although she was very curious abut sexual knowledge, she only kissed and danced and was told the bare minimum about it. When she wanted to embrace sexual knowledge and could no longer resist “a body in heat” with Septimus, she ironically died in a fire before fully discovering sex. Her counterpart in the play, Chloe, is her opposite. Chloe embraces the sexual knowledge, as Thomisina could not. She is after Bernard, and we discover later in the play that the two have some sort of relationship. While she experieiences sexual knowledge, she is not very brilliant in math or history. Chloe is almost the reincarnation of Thomisina, who had already experienced a life of scholarship, so she decided to go down the path she could not fully follow in her previous life. Apparently you have to choose your strong points in this play, or be destroyed. Bernard also proves this as he is humiliated, partially because he did not have concrete evidence to his theory, when Hannah disproves his theory. Bernard is destroyed; I think it is partially because of his thirst for wanting to understand both history and sexual knowledge.

The Music Man

2005-11-14T22:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this was the first time that I could watch this movie in a long time without wanting to throttle someone, but personal grudges aside, this is reallya good representation of the traditional Hollywood musical. It has flash, it has decent music and it has a hamed up ending.
The thing that I object to actually is the ending. In the show, the ending is jsut the kids on the stage playing their insturments, there isn't any realy closure, and I actually kind of like that, it gives the audience the opportunity to decide for themselves what they think of Harold Hill. For example, was he a positive or negative influence on the town? Did he really bring the town together, or did he just make a buck and try to make an unsuccessful getaway?
The cast was a really good choice, espcially for Marcellus. The way that he pulls off Shapoopi is great, and he is second to none.
Overall though, I still dislike this movie version: the proverbial two-by-four is abound throughout it, especially the train scene. What is for the actors arguably the most fun scene to pull off has been smashed and mashed with the immages of the train and additional sound effects which are not necessary. We get it, they are making the sounds of the train themselves. Another approach that I liked which is absent in this version is to have Harold Hill himself singing in the train scene: obviously not one of the major parts, but to have him singing the song as well lends it a bit more oomf.

Arcadia: Tortoise

2005-11-08T06:57:00.002-08:00

It’s so hard to write about these really good, interesting plays, so I’m going to write about the tortoise.
The tortoise, like many of the objects on the table, is consistently present in both time periods, but, unlike the other objects on the table, is explicitly dealt with by the characters as an object in both time periods. I think tortoises are cute. In both cases, the tortoises are owned by quirky mathematicians in their mid-twenties who both have problems dealing with their emotional/social lives. At the beginning of the play, Hodge only connects with women through sex. Gradually, Thomasina’s love of learning allows Hodge to form a sort of semi-platonic, semi-romantic connection with her. After she perishes, he becomes a hermit. See, see, Symbolism! He’s in an emotional shell like a tortoise. And he lacks mobility like a tortoise.
Now let’s look at Valentine. As Bernard points out, naming the tortoise “Lightning” is a “joke that consoles,” that makes light of an obstacle (1529). Bernhard sees that the name of the tortoise is similar to the label of fiancée: the tortoise will never be fast, just as Valentine has little hope of wooing Hannah. These “jokes” show how Valentine’s world is based on making an understandable picture of reality, just as he does with the grouse. However, he also knows that reality can never be completely predictable and understood. The whole concept of mathematics therefore becomes sort of a joke that consoles: a way to grasp and claim the real world while acknowledging that it will always slip through our fingers.

Sunday In the Park With George

2005-11-08T06:57:00.001-08:00

White. A blank page. So many possibilities.

Fires In the Mirror: The Muslim Leader

2005-11-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

I hope it’s okay that I’m not posting on The Music Man.
When watching Fires, I took particular interest in the speech from the black Muslim leader in the section called "Seven Verses." I thought that this speech seemed to project the character over the actress moreso than any other of the monologues. In effect, I could forget that it was Anne Deavre Smith and believe that it was the Muslim leader. This particular monologue was very layered: it is a combination between rhetoric and conversation, a more formal interview. I got the idea that this guy was used to making these ideological comments, but also that he was confiding certain elements to the interviewer as a “sister.” He even draws the interviewer in as two examples of loss of ethnic identity. Even his gestures displayed a combination of rhetoric and conversation: he uses opening sugar packets to put in his tea as a way to emphasize his points. This type of communication gives the audience the impression of a very polished speaker, good at connecting with others.
The appearance of the black Muslim leader also added a layer to what he was saying about the loss of African identity of “the Black Man in America Today.” Although this man has probably changed his name from a Western name to an Islamic name, his dress and voice, as Smith presents him, seem to come from the corporate “white” world rather than the Black culture. His air is slicked back and very straight, and his voice seems to have more of a Midwestern feel than a Brooklyn or African American texture. Even his movements seemed jerky, exhibiting a sort of Western, capitalist robotic mentality. He is definitely strikingly different from many of the black activists in the rest of the play. We see that his own identity is a complicated mix between the stereotypical “white world” and “black world,” even though he implies that he searches for a solely black ethnic identity.
I really did not like the lighting change at the end of the monologue when the character began talking about the African, instead of the Jew, as the “chosen people.” This change to darker lighting, in effect, seemed to demonize his message. I didn’t need this to see his contradictions and narrow-mindedness. I could tell that he really doesn’t have a good perception of the Jewish culture or scripture without the negative lighting. The change was essentially superfluous to the monologue. On the other hand, I did like the rest of the set and light design on this piece. The use of a reflective surface and long, plain table made subtly gave the environment a calm, but eerie quality.

The Music Man and . . . Marxism?

2005-11-08T04:30:00.000-08:00

Having been in a production of The Music Man, I'm inclined to say that my position is a little biased. Having to sing "76 Trombones" over and over and over again with a cast that on the whole isn't *that* musically inclined can take its toll on a person. And yet, while watching it, I couldn't help but start to softly sing along with some of the tunes, and all night long when I got home I had "Till There Was You" stuck on repeat in my head.

What, really, is there to like about The Music Man, or just musicals in general? Stripped of the oh-so-realistic song and dance numbers, we've got a swindler who comes into a small town, gets everyone's money for a band he won't teach, seduces the only person in town he knows will out him, and at the end when he's exposed . . . he still has his money! I mean, okay, he did bring the Buffalo Bills - I mean, the schooboard together, and he finally made the spitting Ronny How- sorry, I mean Winthrop talk, and I guess he did get Marian to come out of her shell and go the footbridge (the hussy!), and he did give that hoodlum Tommy a purpose in life (to get it on with the mayor's daughter through the use of his big conductor's stick), and also generally uplifted the spirits of all the River City-ziens . . . but does that really make him a good guy? Well, apparently so. At least thats what Hollywood would have us believe.

Now, re-insert the song and dance numbers and it transforms this story into one great big, laughable, hug-fest. It's okay that the citizens of River City are had by Harold Hill, because man! has he got style! He's not really a swindler, he's just . . . charming and over-enthusiastic. Of course, all the trouble in town can be fixed by a marching band! Why didn't I think of that before?

There's only one explaination: false conciousness. Movie producers (and, by extension, any financial backer) want to distract the masses. All of the bad things that Harold HIll does are tinted rose-colored by the glare of the spectacle. We can forgive him, because he really is charming. You *want* to believe what he says (casting on his part, was excellent). Song and dance make light of the naughtiness. The audacity of what Harold Hill is doing is undermined by the general happiness of all the songs.

Two main messages recieved are "hey, forget about your problems, look at all the shiny pretty things here!" and "bad things can happen to good people, but they can all be fixed by breaking out into song - it could happen to you, too!" Theres really a lot of crap going on in the world, and musicals are a nice, *effective* way of presenting the problems as solvable. Are there any musicals that don't end happily? Really, are there? Don't get me wrong, I adore musicals, and I would even put myself through The Music Man again. They just don't have much other purpose than being a happy distraction.

The Music Man

2005-11-07T23:24:00.000-08:00

Oi... ok it's really hard for me to find a movie that I don't like, but when it comes down to it, I just didn't like this one. Perhaps it's because I was just in a wierd nonmusicalwatching mood, or perhaps because I was surrounded by haters of the film, but lots of pieces just rubbed me the wrong way.
First of all I couldn't really connect with the main character. Although he was very charismatic, all I really saw was a jerk that a) wanted to screw over a town b) didn't care who he stepped on on the way and c) just wanted some ass. He completely lost me when he did the song basically saying he just wanted an easy girl to mess around with and not have to worry about being forced to walk down the aisle. This man just wanted ass!!! Oh yea and all at the end when he decides to stay for Marion, but for me I was just pissed at him for most of the movie.
Also, I expected the cheese factor to be pretty high, but man, this was ridiculous. Even bits of the coreography was just so cheesy I just rolled my eyes and decided to daydream. And at some points I just found it distracting. I stopped listening to the song all together just to watch the ridiculous faces and moves of these poor townspeople. I just had to stop and laugh at them.
Despite all my criticism, I admit the nostalgia feeling was prevelent. Every once in a while (mid crack up...) I'd remind myself that this was the style of the time. There are several great entertainers of the past that probably just wouldn't fly the same way in present day, and to me this movie of the musical seems to be one of them. Now I stress the 'to me' in that previous sentence, because I know this play is done ridiculous amounts of time around the country, but I wouldn't really want to watch it too many times.

The Music Man: Wow go town

2005-11-07T21:53:00.000-08:00

This is one of the most interesting things I have ever seen. I cannot say that I particularly liked it. Because of the want for love and the attainable, the music man learned to be a decent human being. It is kind of like that saying "love conquers all." Well the librarian definitely changed, not purposefully, the bad boy. Although he was conning the entire town, he did bring wonderful aspects to it, he taught them to believe in themselves and be proud of themselves. Although he did little work, all that the town’s people truly needed was a jump start in confidence. And it seems like in the end, he made a small town become very prosperous in many other aspects once he lifted their spirits.

The Music Man...E-gods!

2005-11-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

I guess I should start this post off with the comment that I appreciate musicals, even bad ones; if anything, I appreciate the form of a musical, the combination of plot and music and acting is great. However, there are some musicals that I just don't understand why they are considered American classics. This might be one of them. I enjoyed The Music Man's Americana kitschy-ness, but my God, I don't think even the Jolly Green Giant has ever seen so much corn. This musical is so incredibly corny that there were moments where I just stared at the screen in amazement. One of these moments is the famous ending where the band has a parade down the main streets of River City. A few questions: a. where did they get the snazzy uniforms that magically appear on them, b. how did the band multiply so quickly, and c. how did they learn how to play "Seventy Six Trombones" when they couldn't even really play "Minuet in G?" I was watching this with other people and my roomie and she said, "Oh c'mon Mary, it's movie magic!" Oh, and another thing...little Ronny Howard's lisp, it went from trouble with s's to particular trouble with t's as well. I was a little confused, I understand it was supposed to emphasize his problem with words but that was just a little too much.
One thing I noticed was that an episode of Family Guy uses the situation where Marion and her mother are talking while the little girl is playing the piano. I thought it was hilarious and showed how well known this musical is. Even if I originally didn't know it was from this musical I thought it was interesting that the creators of Family Guy think America is cultured enough to recognize it. The episode is "Brian Wallows, Peter Swallows" (Season 3) and it's within the first 5 minutes of the show. Hilarity!

The Music Man: American

2005-11-07T19:42:00.000-08:00

Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man is indeed an entertaining show. The colorful sets and costumes, the memorable music, and big chorus numbers such as ‘Trouble’ and ‘Seventy-six Trombones’ continue to please audiences. The show’s entertainment lies not only on the music and bug dance numbers, but on the connection to what once was American town life and culture.

Many references to literature are made throughout the play, especially in the lyrics. In ‘Sadder-but-Wiser Girl for Me’ Harold Hill says “I hope, I pray, for Hester to win just one more A,” alluding to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Marian declares that she wants “Not a Lancelot” in ‘My White Knight.’ Later in the song Marian states that “And if occasionally he ponders what makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great, him I could love till I die.” Previously in class it has been discussed how Shakespeare was well known among Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This literate quality is something Marian finds appealing in a man.

Wilson depicts American life through the ‘Wells Fargo Wagon’ number in the excitement among all the townspeople as the Wells Fargo Wagon approaches. The Wells Fargo Wagon was how American people living in smaller towns received household items and accessories and gifts. The value of marriage presented in the way Marian’s opinions are little noticed by the other women of the town who are married.

Perhaps Wilson captures these aspects of American life in order to focus on a bigger message that pertains to audiences to this day. It isn’t one’s successes that matter, or the devotion to one’s job, but rather the people with whom you choose to love and build relationships.

On Musicals

2005-11-07T12:09:00.000-08:00

SUBJECT: The Music Man

Stephen Sondheim's work, particularly the award-winning Sunday in the Park with George, continues to draw admiration from the critical and scholarly community as well as the public.

The intellectual and aesthetic value of an American classic - which continues to make its rounds of community theatres and high school stages, as well as a recent, successful Broadway revival - might not seem as self-evident. After all, Meredith Willson's The Music Man can seem like an unreflective paean to parochial small-town American life, not unlike Our Town. The Broadway revival certainly counted on nostalgia to draw its audience (like so many Broadway revivals!), and it's becoming impossible to even see the film any more without having to penetrate so many folds of Hollywood's self-reminiscent wrapping. (When I was growing up, the film would be shown on TV every year around the 4th of July - an annual television event, like The Wizard of Oz and It's a Wonderful Life.)

So what do you make of this musical? Is it substantive, or fluff? Is its strength in its ability to entertain and engage an audience? Does it aspire to any higher goal than simply telling a story with a moral? Is there poignancy in this play? Or is it a vehicle for catchy songs? What is this musical for? Why do it? Why see it?

Consider (for your meditations, if you like, and certainly for class discussion) whether this show is typical of the American Broadway musical, and how. More to the point, consider whether there is anything worthwhile to be had in watching "Seventy-Six Trombones," or in talking about it. I suspect there is ... what do you think?

Yerma: Why should I care?

2005-11-01T07:11:00.000-08:00

I have often cited in my critiques that people tend to go on emotional rants rather than express thoroughly developed thoughts. I may become a victim to my own criticism.
I have many serious problems with Yerma that mainly spew directly from the script, but the main problem I have is sympathizing/caring/ being invested in the lead character. To me, Yerma is a whiny narcissistic idealist who is more annoying than compelling. Let’s examine these accusations one by one. I don’t think anyone should have a problem with whiny: she talks A LOT. Juan is constantly saying lines like “Have you finished?” (112). She is narcissistic in that she is totally focused on one goal, getting pregnant. When she cannot accomplish this goal, she unleashes this disappointment on her husband. I tend to enjoy characters who, like “real” people or at least intelligent people, have many things they wish to accomplish and must balance their needs. Lastly, Yerma is an idealist. Ellen really got this point across well. Her narrow vision causes her to idealize her goal. She pretends to be an expert on all things baby-oriented. When Maria talks about nursing, Yerma remarks, “But those things don’t hurt!” (120). Yes, they do Yerma. Yes, they do.
Now you may be saying, “Yerma’s only trying to fit in to her society, her husband’s such a jerk, etc” and I agree with most of those statements. But that doesn’t make the play any more interesting or multi-faceted. People are more than just “products” of their society. I hate plays with the premise “This is where the assembly line of society (or the farm of society in Lorca’s case) went wrong” with out anymore to it. The story just isn’t interesting if I can fit the character in such a tight mold. Why should I care?

Yerma

2005-11-01T07:04:00.000-08:00

This play is a tragedy about a woman who wants so much for a child to make her marriage bearable. She says herself that she has no desire for her husband. “I don’t love him, and yet he’s my only salvation! For honor and for family!” Very dramatic. This is one sign of the melodrama in the play, it is all about heightened emotions and unrequited love and lust and wanting, nay, glutinous desire. Yerma is glutinous in her desire for a baby. Why does she want a baby though? Not out of love for her husband, that is for certain, but rather to fulfill some family obligation she perceives. It seems usual that a wife may want to have sons to please her husband, but Juan makes it clear that he doesn’t mind being childless, and that he finds neither of them at fault for this situation.
Juan wants to live in piece with his wife, and wants her to stop accusing him and berating him about children. He wants to control her too. He doesn’t like her to leave the house, doesn’t want her to go into town, so he, in effect, wants her caged up. This s counter intuitive to the fact that he doesn’t want children, though. For Yerma has nothing to spend her time in the house doing, or not enough to require all day every day. Juan even says “the streets are for people with nothing to do”, but Yerma has nothing to do, and he doesn’t want her on the street. He wants to maintain the appearance of normalcy, and since not having children is not normal, Yerma is expected to behave in a way that is silly, spending all day in a house empty of life.
Yerma is trying to escape a marriage that is loveless, and desire less by having children to distract herself. She wants to build a relationship with her husband through the sons she bears him, but she can’t. Juan wants peace with his wife, and he is satisfied in the relationship without love or a connection stronger than the physical. Till the end he seems only interested in the physical, trying to have sex with her in the temple. Yerma doesn’t ant children just for themselves, though, or she surely would have run away with the pagan woman’s son. She wants to form the love bond with her husband. She wants everything. She isn’t willing to give up her family honor for children, and isn’t willing to give up the want of children for the sake of her marriage’s sanity. This is her downfall, her lack of willingness to concede any of her wants.

betrayal? ehh, not really

2005-11-01T06:58:00.000-08:00

I would like to start this post by saying that I like Pinter and Beckett and Mamet. I like them all lots and lots.
Betrayal is a story about a man and a woman having an affair with one another. The name of the play is kind of strange because it is so dramatic a word “betrayal” and the play itself seems very mundane in comparison. There is very little melodramatic action or dialogue in the play, and the characters all seem pretty relaxed about the whole affair. This is especially the case of the husband of the adulterous wife in this story. He seems a little less than betrayed when he and the male involved finally discus the situation. This is, I think very telling of Pinter’s work. He discusses some broad topic, betrayal, and creates an image of what that might lead to in the play. Audiences walk in expecting something dramatic or fast paced, some situation leaving one lover scorned while the others involved in the triangle walk away scot-free. This isn’t the case however. The play approaches the topic of betrayal with unsettling calm amongst the characters.
The lover in this case, Jerry, is very shocked when he finds out that his best friend, Robert, reveals that he knows of the affair. He is further startled to find out that Robert has known for four years. He expects/expected Rob to be angry or explosive, and he seems rather bored with the whole thing. There is a surprising lack of tension from Robert in this case, and in the play in general. This lack of tension between the characters is what adds tension to the play. The audience is confused by this, or intrigued.
Another way Pinter removes tension, is to start at the end of the story. You know already how the story ends between the lovers, and there isn’t any huge dramatic problem between them, they seem rather more like old friends than lovers. There are things still to wonder about, though, like the patronage of her son, and how it all began. But there is no huge explosion of emotion that a title like “betrayal” entails.

2005-11-01T05:44:00.000-08:00

Yerma was interesting to watch as a show. The ending though is what caught me completely off my guard. I was expecting the usual fairy-tale ending: for her to either leave Juan and go for Victor, or for Juan to finally concede and give her the child she has desired for the entire play. However, that which caught me the most off guard was after she killed him.
When she kills him, she doesn’t say that she killed her husband, she says she killed her son. I thought that this was odd, yet appropriate. Throughout the play, she has refused to have an affair, and has defended her own virtue, despite the assailing from her husband and his sisters. Even unto the end, she refuses someone who can give her a child, and she stays with her husband, will not. She holds on to the hope that he will change his mind.
Also, I feel that she is justified in killing him. He was attempting to rape her in the end, and she acted in self-defense. In addition, he was not treating her with the respect that she deserved at any point in the play. He is always accusing her, and worrying about his honor over anything else, rather than trying to make her happy. Though, in his own convoluted way, by not giving her children, he believes that he is making her happy because he feels that children are a burden rather than a blessing. Nevertheless, Yerma had every right to defend herself as she did, and Juan deserved death.

Yerma: Music

2005-10-31T21:58:00.000-08:00

From the perspective of participating in Yerma, I found the use of music to be very important to the production. Music helps tell the story and further allows Lorca to develop his poetic writing style. The music in the production helped to create specific moments as well as transition from one moment to the next.

Lorca beautifully pieces together the poetic words for the songs he has written throughout the play. Lines such as “And the moon is weaving braids in my hair” (p.115), “For the mountains of your white breast” (p.115), and “There are bitter weeds on the hill” (p. 133) evoke brilliant images in ones mind. Joel Mott composed and adapted the melodies of the songs in the production from the melodies included in the script. The melodies that were sung in the production supported and accented Lorca’s language.

Music helped to create certain moments onstage, such as the moment between Victor and Yerma during Victor’s song as well as the moment during the Washerwomen’s song. The guitar music aided scene transitions and also helped transition from moment to moment within a scene. An example of this occurs when the guitar music picks up right before the revelers enter the stage for the dance sequence.

After hearing audience comments about the play, I think the music was performed pretty well. Our guitarist, Eric Hungerford, was very talented and there were good voices within the cast. I do think articulation could have been better during the singing. Some people who saw the show commented on how they couldn’t always understand the words that were being sung.

Yerma: The Maddening

2005-10-31T20:33:00.000-08:00

Yerma is one of the most classic examples of old Hispanic culture's ideal wife. A wife that stays at home waiting to take care and want children. Unfortunately Yerma is never given the chance to fulfill her roll in this culture. She slowly finds herself lost in her role in life. Where does she belong, why is she alive if she cannot do what she was put on this earth to do? The problem may have been that Juan was sterile, but her honor prevented her from finding another man to see if this was the case. Slowly but surely she begins to lose herself in her own mind's trauma. She finds herself loosing the original persona she had, and intensifying her own insanity. In the first act we see how jealous she is of Maria and her child, she hides this but it is apparent that it is driving her crazy. Later Maria says she avoids Yerma because she cries whenever she has the baby around her. Yerma also talks of how she thinks she is becoming a man, because some of her tendencies are those of men, such as visiting the oxen. The first snap from reality begins when she hears a child screaming when Victor has finished his song, Victor cannot hear anything, but Yerma is truly convinced that there is a child. She finally loses herself to her madness when she kills Juan for only wanting her and knowing that she wanted a child, but he did not. Ironically she destroys her only chance for a son, because she is unwillingly to find another man.

Yerma's Sudden Ending

2005-10-31T16:10:00.000-08:00

Yerma was interesting because, as Christopher Maurer says in the introduction, "nothing happens (p. x)." The plot can be summarized - and not even in much oversimplification - as Yerma constantly bemoaning her lack of child to her unsympathetic husband until she suddenly - and somewhat anticlimactically - kills him. The ending itself, in the last five minutes is where any actual action seems to be, and it is the death of Juan.

I have mixed feelings about this ending because while I think that it embodies the despair and frustration that Yerma feels, it happens so suddenly and without much, if any, resolving event (for the play ends simply a paragraph after Juan's death) that I feel almost like I'm left hanging. It feels like something else should happen.

At the same time, I can see that leaving the audience in that sort of limbo where Yerma's actions cannot be changed, is evidence of Yerma's concluding remark: "I myself have killed my own son! (p. 188)" There will be no resolution to her conflict of wanting a child, now that Juan is dead.

Maybe I just don't like unhappy - or at least unresolved - endings, and that’s definitely the ending that Yerma has.

Betrayal and Endgame

2005-10-31T15:28:00.000-08:00

Throughout my reading of Betrayal, all I could think about was how it seemed like a more realistic representation of Endgame. The settings were different, and the content of the dialogue was different, but all in all, they were very similar.

The pauses in the stage directions are the most obvious likenesses. Both Pinter and Beckett want their characters to communicate just as much, if not more, through their silences, as through the words they speak. While descerning meaning behind Beckett's silences can be difficult because of the almost nonsensical flow of conversation and pretty much barren plot, Pinter's silences in Betrayal are loaded with memories and unspoken suspicions and accusations. Admittedly, there is not much of a plot to Betrayal either, but at least the relationships between the characters are more defined, and the setting is relatable. The first scene places Jerry and Emma, former lovers, meeting together after several years apart. The conversation is slow and polite. The pauses that fill the dialogue can be used by the actors to generate a variety of emotions; awkwardness, perhaps, or regret, or nosalgia.

Another likeness to Endgame is the simplistic set. Beckett calls specifically for a bare room with two window, and little else. Pinter is concerned more with the action between the characters than with their surroundings. Each scene begins with a very brief description of the surroundings: "Scene Two. Jerry's House. Study. 1977. Spring (p. 13)." Pinter doesn't give any indication as to what Jerry's study might look like, but leaves that decision up to the director. The set could be elaborate or sparse, but by leaving out any specifics, Pinter shows that his concern is with the characters.

Betrayal also has few characters; Endgame consisted only of four. Pinter limits the dialogue to the three involved with the love-triangle he describes: Jerry, Emma, and Robert. This too, is important: Pinter is not concerned with any outsider's opinion of the affair between Jerry and Emma. Does Jerry's wife have suspicions? If Robert was having affairs, then perhaps Jerry's wife is too, and everyone is playing everybody. Do Robert's partners know that he is married? All of these viewpoints are excluded because he wants the focus to be on only these three.

Jon's Response to "Betrayal"

2005-10-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

I thought that this was an interesting play. I found the style and order to be wonderful. The beginning almost feels like an acting exercise, with the characters seeming to repeat each other and go in loops incessantly. And then in the second scene, when Robert enters and we find out that he doesn’t care about the affair because he knew already, felt like a powerful moment. Then to have the play going backwards in time, so that the audience can see the progression and dissolution of the affair was exceptionally powerful.
I found it interesting though that we never meet Jim’s wife in the entire play. She is often mentioned, but never actually seen. The same goes true for both Jerry and Robert’s children. Children, which are the stereotypical symbol for innocence, are totally absent in the play. Interesting since the audience knows that no one in this play is entirely innocent.
The final scene, with what seems to be a rape was also exceptionally good. To have the audience see that Jerry had been lusting after Emma for so long and how he almost forced her into the affair works. Especially concerning the final stage direction: “Jerry grabs her arm. She stops still. They stand still, looking at each other” (63), her rape is implied.

Betrayal: Squash

2005-10-27T05:31:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed Pinter’s consistent mentioning of squash up to the scene in which Robert and Jerry are having lunch after Venice. Jerry and Robert are always saying, “We really must play, haven’t played for years” (Pinter 47). We get the idea from these repetitions that the game of squash never really got played. It happened in some distant time period “years ago,” probably before the affair started. Robert has an entire speech in which he idealizes squash as the ultimate form of male bonding. For this reason, I think the squash lines mesh well with the lines about Jerry and Robert being “best friends.” The absence of the squash game indicates that there is a distance between them, preventing them from really engaging in the act of friendship. Robert may be thinking, “If only we could play this game of squash, we could figure this whole affair thing out and be real friends again.” The squash game is also an image of the character’s shallow, lower-upper class mindset. They hinge their entire lives around parties, diners and squash games. Even the affair is merely a series of appointments. These people look for meaning and normalcy in mundane rituals of luxury, and fail. They are as cold and empty as a metal pot.

Betrayal: varied reactions

2005-10-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

I wasn’t sure how to react after finishing this play. I suppose I had multiple reactions. I was intrigued by the story line, wanted to know why certain things happened, and wondered in certain scenes of the play if the characters were really meaning what they were saying.

I thought the story line looking into events in the past was interesting and effective in this play. The reader/audience is allowed to see crucial points in the development and the life of the affair. One such moment occurs during scene 5 in Venice. The audience sees exactly when Emma told Robert of the affair with Jerry as well as the way in which she told him.

I wanted to know why Emma lies to Jerry in scene 1. Why does she make up the story of telling Robert about the affair the night before seeing Jerry? She even makes up false details about Ned waking up and having to put him back to bed (p.29). Was Emma afraid of what Jerry would do if she told him that Robert has known about the affair for four years? I wanted more answers.

There were instances in the play in which I felt the characters were saying one thing, but really meaning of implying another. In scene 5 when Robert says “Betrayal,” (p.78) I think he is hinting at the affair. His suspicions have been raised since seeing the handwriting in the letter the day before. Robert is trying to question and test Emma to make her confirm or disprove his notions. Emma’s reply to Robert’s statement of “Betrayal” is “No, it isn’t” which is a way of denying the affair. This bantering continues until Emma finally admits to the affair, saying, “We’re lovers” (p.84).

Betrayl: Pause

2005-10-26T21:06:00.000-07:00

The pause was so effective in this play. In the first scene it showed the first sexual tensions and awkwardness between Emma and Jerry. Because of the pause we realize before they talk about the affair, that they were having affair. When Robert and Jerry speak with the pauses we notice that there is tension between them. At first I noticed an awkwardness, and of course great guilt from Jerry, but than I began to wonder if Robert and Jerry had had an affair. Especially in Scene 2 when Jerry says, "Without consulting me. Without even warning me. After all, you and me ... (pg. 37)." Throughout this whole play, we realize the relationship of the character through the very important pauses put into the script. For example, the reader can notice the overwhelming emotions of Emma and Jerry have for each other, they pause when they speak but then you get a feeling of a sudden rush of emotion from their lines. They know what they are doing is wrong, but they want to have each other so much. The pause just adds more emotional and romantic excitement and energy to this, as well as let the reader know that there may be some hesitation in their actions.

Betrayal: Meh, it was ok.

2005-10-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

I did not really like this play, but, I like how the playwright uses regression to tell the story of Jerry and Emma's affair. Pinter starts off with slight hints of the affair and slowly moves back through time to show us how it all started. What I did not like was the choppy dialogue. However, the dialogue closely represents how we speak everyday in normal conversations. In a play, choppy dialogue does just what it says, chop up the action of the play. I felt hurried and rushed through the play even with the inserted pauses. I felt like I did not need to take the time to figure out why a character said what they said because it was just mindless banter, with a few exceptions; an example of this is the scene in which Emma and Robert are talking about the letter from Jerry. I just didn't find myself getting into the play.

Endgame, a super neat play

2005-10-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

One of the things I find most interesting about Becket in general and Endgame in specific is the way he challenges the form of drama and the audiences perceptions of drama. He alludes to the play so often in a Brechtian style that can’t be overlooked and is referred to in the intro. The metaphors that pervade this piece are also very interesting. He was so open with his references and allusions that it seems like it begs to be critiqued and disected at the same time as challenging that system of analysis.
With Clov, the only mobile character, constantly pacing back and forth, forgetting something, going back and forgetting again, it seems interesting to write in the specific direction that he have a terrible limp. There is a lot of empty time on stage without dialogue or motion. Long pauses between sentences, thought processes being seen on stage, and the long walks back and fort between the windows by Clov. This would be very uncomfortable for an audience to sit through. With a blank set, this adds even less stimulus to distract the audience. The beginning of the play is a long sequence of Clov walking and moving about, when he finally speaks it seems as if he may be referencing his own actions and the thought that has to be running through the audiences head “it must be nearly finished.” The sequence of his movements has to take at least two minutes, if it is done as written, this must be very uncomfortable for an audience, and thereby very provoking. Discomfort leads to thought, when there is no distraction, there is thought and a real message is being heard.
I don’t know the message that Becket was trying to speak, if any tangible one. But he certainly is challenging the standards set forth by others. “I use the words you taught me. If they don’t mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.” this is my favorite line in the play because it makes me think of so many other parts of life. I get the image of a person struggling against the hypocrisy of a system he no longer understands. I think a lot about this play. It must drag out so long when performed on stage. I would love to see this produced.

Galileo Figaro!

2005-10-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Somebody had to do it. Anyway, I’m really going to talk about Brecht’s Marxist tendencies seen in Galileo (that’s a bit obvious, too.)
Galileo’s ideas of heliocentrism are constantly being compared to the religious and political structure of his time. In the peasant’s April Fool’s pageant, the balladeer sings, after talking about the sun spinning around the earth, “And from that time all beings here below/ Were in obedient circles meant to go” (852). He then lists different classes of people, beginning with the Pope. In essence, the priority shown by God by placing man at the center of the universe also echoes in the hierarchy of the church and feudal society. The peasants make fun of the chaotic world Galileo’s theories suggest, though also delighting in the fun of disorder. Similarly, Marx’s theories of social class also seem idyllic and unattainable to the common man, though they provide some sense of hope. Galileo corrects this misconception in his dismissal of the pamphlets. However, the Church and feudal lords still fear his theories because of their anticipated effect on the common people, just as the governments of Brecht’s time feared Marxism because of the corrupt Communist organizations and regimes. During Galileo’s time, Europe was divided in two between Protestants and Catholics, just as Europe was divided after WWII by capitalists and communists.
Towards end of the play, Galileo gives a long speech, acknowledging that he does have a political sentiment with the common people; that he has betrayed “the plight of the multitude” by allowing the authorities to “abuse” his science. He sees science’s goal as “to ease human existence,” but acknowledges that, if abused, science can create “new drudgeries (859).” Likely, Brecht wants us to learn the same of his Marxist political thought: it must be applied in a way to ease human suffering: not create chaos or dictatorships. Brecht also saw theatre, a companion to science, in this light. Both Marxism and the epic theatre are telescopes that allow us to “train [our] eyes on [our] tormentors” and thus make the world a better place by promoting such critical thinking (859). Reason, according to Brecht, is the true revolution. If people stop seeing each other as witches, we will get along better.

Galileo

2005-10-18T06:45:00.000-07:00

This is a play about people too afraid of the world around them to allow for an change in the supposed order they have created for them selves. Galileo is not afraid to tell the truth and to question the commonly accepted facts. That is the conflict of this play. Galileo’s daughter Virginia is caught in the middle of this struggle and loses a fiancé in the process. I think this is incredibly unfair of Galileo to her and I don’t think his turning around at the end was anything special. The whole play he advocates the morality of truth and that ignorance cannot prevail, then he takes it al back in his recantation. I don’t find it impressive that he continued his work on the side, because like he said he didn’t intend to, it wasn’t his plan, he was just afraid. There is nothing noble in fear. There would have been nobility in sacrifice for what you believe in. what is the good in having a belief if you are not willing to die for it? And Galileo was not, his dedication to science and truth was bollix in the end. I think Brecht’s goal of demonizing (a strong word) Galileo comes through somewhat, but more prevalent is the notion that Galileo is just a sad old man.

Galileo: Poems and Performance

2005-10-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

During class this past week, the characteristics of Brechtian theatre were discussed. The technique of actors not being wholly immersed, making the narration made visible, and the Gestus are all aspects of Brechtian epic theatre. Brecht’s use of these ideas is apparent in Galileo, at the beginning of almost every scene.

To start the scenes in Galileo, Brecht has written small two or four line poems. For example, at the beginning of scene six, “When Galileo was in Rome/ A Cardinal asked him to his home/ He wined and dined him as his guest/ And only made one small request” (p.845). These little poems add to the presentational aspect of the play. Each scene is introduced, indicating what is about to happen during the scene. These episodic units are an excellent example of Brecht incorporating the Gestus.

The poems add to the ensemble and performance of Galileo. The actors and audience are not immersed in what is occurring onstage. The audience is seeing the story unfold onstage from the outside.

Galileo: Science

2005-10-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

The world of science so very interesting, unfortunately in Galileo's era, and in the play, the public did not want to accept new innovative ideas. In the play the people backing Galileo in his studies only want to make a profit, and they think that the only way to do so is to invent not to study new theories of the world. The curator is a great example of this when he says, "Don't say bosh about something that astounded the Chamber of Commerce. Our city elders are businessmen. Why don't you invent something useful that will bring them a little profit (1.1.)?” Toward the end of the play Galileo also has a remarkable monologue that describes his world's view on new science, "Word is passed down that this is of no concern to the scientist who is told he will only release such of his findings as do not disturb the peace, that is, the peace of mind of the well-to-do. Threats and bribes fill the air. Can the scientist hold out on the numbers (12.pg 859)?" It is almost like he is saying that in order to fulfill himself in his chosen career he has to whore himself to the aristocracy who support him. He has to please them almost like a trained animal might, and hide the research that could change the world because it may upset some people because of the change in society or view points it might provide.

Galileo's Interest

2005-10-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

I have taken many courses here and in high school that pertain to Galileo Galilei’s works. Galileo was a fascinating man who contributed greatly to the “Age of Rationalism.” I think Brecht uses him as a character because he started a movement in re-working old philosophies and theories.

This revolution of ideas is something that Brecht is very fascinated in, even though Brecht sees Galileo as a perpetuator of self-centered interests; he writes about the theatre as a means of instruction. (1684-1685) What this play is trying to accomplish is showing people that we are in constant need to examine and re-examine “truths.” Galileo says, “What we find today we will wipe from the blackboard tomorrow and reject it – unless it shows up again the day after tomorrow.” (851) Galileo is saying that the truth is constantly changed by new innovations, and the only way that it can remain truth is through evidence.

These sentiments make us wonder why Galileo would deny his own beliefs; Brecht believed he did so, “…To save his skin.” (835) I think that Galileo understood the concept of a heliocentric model was far too advanced for not only religious people to cope with but also those who place their faith and trust in a God who would create a world specifically for them. I say think, because this is dealing with a real person and we can have no real understanding of his actions, therefore, all ideas are speculation. Brecht even makes a point of this sentiment in the play when the Little Monk is talking with Galileo about how his parents would be affected by Galileo’s discoveries; he says, “What, then would be the use of their patience, their acceptance of misery…No, I see them begin to look frightened…They would feel cheated…There is no meaning in our misery.” (847-848)

On Galileo

2005-10-17T21:45:00.000-07:00

For background information on the life of Galileo, click this entry's title to link to the Wikipedia entry on the famed astronomer. You can also simply enter this address into your browser: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei".

Galileo: Ill-Suited

2005-10-17T20:26:00.000-07:00

Brechtian style emphasized the verfremdungseffekt, or the alienation effect which called for actors to withhold themselves from fully becoming their characters. As a part of allowing the audience to see the show as a show, or allowing them to “see the frame” of the production, actors were instructed to perform in a manner that “conveyed the awareness of being a performer rather than the involvement of being a character (p. 833).” However, upon reading Galileo, I couldn’t help but feel that many aspects of this play seemed to be written in a manner that invited a more emotionally involved cast.

The introduction states that Brecht intended to condemn the character of Galileo for his betrayal to science (p. 835). However, Galileo is written as such a multifaceted character, that I cannot see how one wouldn’t feel pity for him. The scientist is fairly carefree in his scientific pursuits at the beginning of the play, energetically jumping into any experiment that catches his fancy. We see early on, though, that he is not above altering his findings (such as his “discovery” of the telescope (p. 839), in exchange for his funding. And at the end we see that he regrets having given his recantation when he says, “ I have come to believe that I was never in real danger; for some years I was as strong as the authorities, and I surrendered my knowledge to the powers that be, to use it, no, not use it, abuse it, as it suits their ends. I have betrayed my profession (p. 859).” This statement and the setting of his lonely, blind, imprisonment provokes pity from the observer.

The stage directions as well, from certain movements of characters, to the opening set-up of a scene are also more suited to a production that would strive to ensnare their audience; in essence, immerse them in what they are seeing. In particular, the scene with the street performers (p. 852), has such detailed stage directions for the extras, that, were they to all be followed precisely, it would feel more like the audience had been dropped into a Venetian street corner, rather than watching the portrayal of one on stage. Such detail, to myself, seems indicative of an understanding of personal motives and emotion of the characters, which Brechtian style does not ignore, but tries to separate itself from. This is doubly accentuated when it is even the lesser, extra characters that are given such direction.

Play Selections 1

2005-10-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT: Presentation #1 (On plays not on our syllabus)

So far, I've received two proposals and accepted both:

Jeremy Saenz: The Foreigner by Larry Shue
Michael Brahce: Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Please note that your presentation should address the significance of the playwright, if only in passing, as well as the significance and value of the play.

I look forward to future submissions.

~ The Cap'n

Brecht and Artaud: Observation vs. Proposal

2005-10-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

Not only do Brecht and Artaud obviously have different views on how theatre can work, they also have different concept of the applicability of there ideas. Artaud tends to make near-absolute statements such as “We must get rid of our superstitious valuation of texts” and eventually proposes “a theatre of cruelty” (1688, 1689). He constantly uses the phrase “I propose” in order to state the need for implementation of his ideas. Brecht is speaking of a movement that he sees already taking shape in the theatre and wants to enlighten the reader about this movements various uses. He does not believe that the epic theatre is universally applicable, but concludes, “The epic theatre is the broadest and most far-reaching attempt at larger scale theatre” and then admits that it has limitations and difficulties that need to be worked out (1686). The reader does not get the idea that the epic form is necessarily “better.” The main point at which Brecht becomes as forceful in his approach to writing as Artaud comes in talking about studying the scientific and professional background of a writer’s characters, stating, “But in my view the great and complicated things that go on in the world cannot be adequately recognized by people who do not use every possible aid to understanding” (1685). Artaud’s essay is a proposal, while Brecht’s reads as a light observation and recommendation. Artaud’s ideas spout from within while Brecht draws from what he already sees. I find Brecht’s less iconoclastic and more passive approach a more easily accessible platform for intellectual consideration and debate.
I point out these differences in approach as important things to keep in mind when writing or talking about both authors. Though Brecht obviously disagrees with Artaud in the statement I quoted above about understanding, I do not think that on the whole Brecht is concerned about whether you agree with his opinions or not. Therefore, we cannot treat these texts as a debate on the practices of theatre since the approaches are not of the same persuasive style. Rather than saying “Brecht conflicts with Artaud,” we should say, “Brecht’s concept of epic theatre differs in this respect with Artaud’s proposals.” Their separate approaches must be taken into account.

Brecht: Theatre and Science

2005-10-11T07:02:00.000-07:00

While reading Brecht’s Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction, I happened to pause on the following statement: “Art and science work in quite different ways: agreed. But, bad as it may sound, I have to admit that I cannot get along as an artist without the use of one or two sciences” (p. 1685).

I found Brecht’s statement interesting, especially after having recently discussed the idea of art and science being closely interrelated while studying Leonardo da Vinci another class. The more I thought, the more I realized that a production could not be possible without the use of science.

Like painting, theatre is just as much a visual art. Leonardo discussed ideas of light and shadow, the science of optics, and the attempt of the artist to make his painting appear real. These aspects can easily be applied to theatre. Audience members react to what they see on stage. It is up to designers, directors, and actors as to how much the audience sees or does not see. A playwright may write in a way that parallels everyday life. He may decide to depict a world that is completely absurd. In either form, the audience must be drawn in to what is happening on stage.

Science is very much a part of the stage function and design. Without new discoveries in science, technology is unable to advance. The ancient Greeks must have known about the properties of sound in order to have built their great amphitheaters. Electricity allowed for performances indoors during the evening. The sewing machine made the creation of elaborate costumes easier and power tools make the construction of great sets more efficient. Indeed, theatre is what it is today because of advancements in science.

Though art and science differ greatly and artists would like to think they need nothing else but their ideas and creativeness, Brecht admits that for an artist to completely and effectively function, he must turn to science for aid and understanding.

I agree with Brecht

2005-10-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

I agree with Brecht, and like his idea that the theatre should not be a place solely for instruction. Though the theatre can be used for instruction and to make people learn, this should not be its sole function. I think that his use of sarcasm is especially apt when he is talking about this idea: “Were they sending us back to school, teaching us to read and write? Were we supposed to pass exams, work for a diploma?” (1684) He mocks those who take the role of the theatre as a tool to educate the masses, and I agree with this approach. To try and force people to sit, watch a show and learn can be done subtly or overtly, and when it becomes too overt, the audience is lost, and really just stops caring. No one likes to be constantly hit in the face with the moral two-by-four for two hours or however long your play is.
Also, I enjoyed his little bit about the epic versus the dramatic. I thought it was interesting that in his time, these two ideas seemed to be separated. Though I think that this has changed dramatically in the modern world, where almost any epic work can become a film, I agree with him that to try and separate these two ideas is an act of fallacy.

Brecht

2005-10-11T04:14:00.000-07:00

Although I found I had to trudge through Brecht’s writings, one point that hit me very strongly was his idea of the theatre becoming an “affair for philosophers, but only for such philosophers as wished not just to explain the world but also to change it” (p 1684). This struck me for a variety of reasons. First because I agree with the idea completely. I believe that many (not all) times, a play can teach/instruct the audience. That’s not to say the audience must be beaten over the head with someone else’s set of morals or ideals, but a performance can have a main hope that the audience walks away with new ideas. However, I also found it interesting that Brecht says that the theatre “became” this way. That left me asking the question, when exactly did this change occur? Even in the early stages of theatre, performances were often meant to teach the audience something, such as in the plays of ancient Greece where people were taught to honor the gods by being shown the consequences of not doing so. And although these weren’t exactly new ideas to the Greeks, they were probably taught in unique ways. Brecht’s idea of the stage ‘beginning’ to be instructive seems to not take into consideration that oftentimes that was its only purpose. Such as in the wagon plays of Medieval theatre, where the sole purpose was often the church trying to educate the common people of bible stories. Was this not instruction?
I was also quite glad that Brecht discussed the fact that although the audience IS meant to be learning from a play, they were also meant to be amused. No one really enjoys being beaten over the head with a baseball bat of ideals, and although a play can be painful and upsetting to watch, it is a far cry from a simple lecturing of ideas where they are set neatly on a platter and served. The lesson is instead learned in so many more interesting ideas, such as being shown an example of these ideas, or the consequences of not tending to them. Through this method, some form of entertainment takes place. A play should be amusing, not strenuous. “Theatre remains theatre even when it is instructive theatre, and in so far as it is good theatre it will amuse” (p1685).

Cradle Will Rock: Birth through Destruction

2005-10-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

I found that throughout this movie, many of the new developments rose and died from the rise and fall of other developments. For example, the play of this radical new director, could not come together until the federal theatre, as well as the cast, was beginning to crumble. When all thought that hope was lost to see the cast perform or even the play be seen, the play was given new life and prospered greatly. The poor actress of this movie, the one portraying a prostitute in Cradle Will Rock, was at the lowest and dirtiest point of her life ( her destruction point) but from this she was reborn a stage hand and then a great actress. We can even trace back the destruction- rebirth cycle to the poverty that had to occur in the movie that led to a rebirth of many jobs for the poor and led to cheaper and more economical prices so that all classes could obtain and participate in anything they wanted.

Antonin Artaud

2005-10-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

In his essay “No More Masterpieces,” Artaud proposes the idea of a “theatre of cruelty (p. 1689);” a theatre that would “treat the spectators like the snakechamer’s subjects and conduct them by means of their organisms to an apprehension of the subtlest notions (p. 1689).”

I really like this idea of a “visceral” theatre. Watching a show and experiencing a show are two completely different things; this is a main concept behind Artaud’s “theatre of cruelty.” He wants the audience to be in the center of the spectacle, and he wants to spectacle itself to be so strong that the audience will literally be shaken to its core. Artaud also says that the sensations that the audience should experience should have a sort of violence to them because “it summons up supernatural images, a bloodstream of images, a bleeding spurt of images in the poet’s head and in the spectator’s as well (p. 1690).”

I think this is possible without blatant violence; One Flea Spare had some pretty visceral moments, such as the orange scene, or the doll-burning scene. Even the close seating helped create the “experience-“ you couldn’t get away from the scenes in front of you.

The Role of Theatre: Artaud and Brecht

2005-10-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

Artaud mentions in The Theater and Its Double that, "...The action of theater, like that of the plague, is beneficial, for, impelling humanity to see themselves as they are..." I thought: yes, theatre is the brutal mirror of life. It is the mirror that shows us the imperfections and blemishes that we so desperately long to cover up.
Then I read Brecht's Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction and was intrigued. Brecht mentions that theatre is a place to inform people about social issues that may not be freely discussed (p. 1686) It's almost as if he sees the theatre as a "soap box" for the debate of social, political, and economical issues; the keyword here is debate. Who is to say that one person is so enlightened as to present all of the facts to an audience, and then for the audience to interpret them appropriately?
I tend to agree more with Artaud because the theatre is an expression of life, the side of life we don't always see or tend to avoid. The product of the theatre doesn't always educate us; sometimes it acts as a cathartic purge of emotions. It's not a mechanism for "venting their problems" (1686) but a reflection of the problems being commonly faced.

One Flea Spare: Orange-gasm

2005-10-04T19:20:00.000-07:00

The thing I remember most from the production of One Flea Spare is the smell of the orange. Two seconds after Bunce shoves the orange on to Mr. Snelgrave’s finger, the sweet smell hit me. I felt this was extremely powerful, because of the sexual imagery of Snelgrave’s finger in the wet fruit that was literally dripping on the floor.

Seeing a production on stage is always much more interesting than, say, film or in text, because it’s a 3-D experience. But when all the senses are engaged, its even better. You couldn’t help but feel like you were in Snelgrave’s place, with the overwhelming scent of the orange surrounding you. And while the audience couldn’t feel the wet stickiness, we heard the juice falling to the ground, and we had an indication of just how juicy this orange was.

Bunce’s intense stare at this moment, was also extremely effective in communicating the intimate nature of this act. The air seemed to thicken while he stared at the stuttering Snelgrave. Talk about intimacy.

One Flea to Spare

2005-10-04T00:45:00.000-07:00

SUBJECT:One Flea Spare

What was my verdict? Is play that takes the experience of a family, the Snelgraves, and puts us into the heads of people of the time. Without a direct reference to time in the play, we are taken back at this time in history through wardrobe and language. The little intricacies add to this but the play could be adapted. Often times you could sit back and say that this play isn’t real because the characters are unfamiliar, or simply you cant relate, because you don’t believe that “real” people act similar. This could lend itself to modern interpretation through the creation of a similar atmosphere.
The atmosphere is what is most important. All around people are dying, but the audience is exposed to the world outside of the Snelgrave’s house through non-sympathetic comments. Death is just too common for it to have an overwhelming burden on the characters, but it is always on their minds. In
Act I, Scene Six Mr. Snelgrave asks Bunce if he is afraid of death while talking about other things just moments earlier.
What we learn most about the characters is through the moments when they are reaching for hope. I say reaching, instead of sharing their hopes with the audience because certain moments portray weakness in the characters. Even in the weakness I think the charters reach for hope, just like anybody else. The characters reveal their weaknesses because they want hope returned. One such instance is when Bunce reveals to Mrs. Snelgrave how his little brother died by being crushed. He tells her, and we learn that this is one sadness that he carries within himself. No matter how much he travels or all of the experiences there can be some that stay with him, such as his brother’s death. At the very end when she kills herself, we can assume that he will carry this with him, although at the time he was just going to leave. Both these deaths were not deaths by the plague. I’m not sure why specifically that is important, but it is also of no coincidence that the deaths were not of the plague. The other example of hope was Morse’s belief that she was special. The death of her family, and the existence of the plague (once again the world around) made her grow up faster. She was forced into this life and didn’t have a chance at a complete childhood, although still immature. Her hope is that her life means something despite death all around. Her mother told her that she was created out of a star. A star fell out of the sky fell and a piece of it created her.
I like the play but at times I found myself asking if it was important to be as provocative as the playwright was at certain times. In retrospect it made all the little moments such as Bunce’s story or Morse’s story about the star more important because they were moments that were uncharacteristic of the role. There are so many different angles to take when writing about this play, although I only addressed two. Many similar situations arise, and life sometimes throws characters together and then they leave as different people.

One Flea Spare - scene length

2005-10-03T22:12:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed the production of One Flea Spare. I had read a few reviews of the play, so I knew a bit of what to expect, but I really didn’t know much of the story besides the basic introduction. Although I did like the production, what bothered me the most was the length of each scene. It seems (according to our script copies) that Katie didn’t really cut much of anything out, and yet it felt as though she did. The scenes seemed as though they could have gone on longer, or even started earlier, and I felt as though I didn’t get enough time to get fully emotionally invested in each scene. There were two or three places where I felt as though I was going to cry, yet the scene changed or the action changed quickly so that I didn’t get to the breaking point. The only exception was the scene in which Darcy dies, and I cried like a baby… I feel like this is because we got to see her full death, and she was just left on stage and fully present in the audiences mind. I enjoy scenes like this better, because if I get to that breaking point I really am fully absorbed in the scene, whereas if I don’t, I feel as though I have been robbed in a way for the chance to let out my emotions with the characters.

One Flea Spare: Unsuspected laughs

2005-10-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

Talk about a play full of emotions and sexual tension!

Though some of the scenes were at times rather uncomfortable (both the “orange-gasm” scene and the feeling up scene between Bunce and Darcy come to mind), I found myself enjoying the play-even for a second time around. I thought the individuals involved in One Flea Spare did a commendable job in presenting Naomi Wallace’s play.

What was surprising to me was how much I found myself laughing. After hearing a bit about the plot of the play, I figured I’d probably end up leaving the theatre very sad and a little depressed. I did not expect happiness to be an emotion experienced very much at all. I think the humor in this play helps to alleviate some of the intense sorrow that would be felt by audience members otherwise. Scenes such as the toe-sucking scene and the scene where Morse is playing with the dolls next to a tied-up Snelgrave are scenes where I remember laughing quite a bit. Laughter in these two scenes lightened the weight of the seriousness that was occurring at the same time.

I also found it interesting to see and hear other audience members’ reactions. Some people laughed quite a bit, some squirmed in their seats or turned their heads during uncomfortable scenes, others seemed to have their eyes glued to the stage. I attended both the Friday night and Sunday afternoon showings and noticed different audience reactions between the two shows. I was aware of how the audience members were laughing at different parts. I was one of the only people who laughed at certain parts Sunday that received lots of laughs Friday night.

Just think-if the audience had such varied emotional responses throughout the play imagine what the actors must have gone through in performing such a dramatic and thought-provoking play!

One Flea Spare : lovers and comic relief

2005-10-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Wow, I definitely loved this show!! It was serious, yet had its comic relieves at exactly the right time for me. I am very sappy when it comes to what I read, so the whole Buntz and Darcy love connection totally hit me. I was so sad when I found out that he was going to leave her, but I know it was because he was scared that in the real world it would not work out because of society's views and rules. Buntz to me was in love with her, even though she might have been in an accident. When Darcy came in mad with disease and then died I felt like this was the separation she could handle rather than have Buntz just leave, and in a religious, sappy way, I felt that they could unite in the afterlife with healthier bodies free of disease and society's views. I do have to say; thank God that Kabe was put in this play because he was hilarious!! It was kind of ironic to see a lower class individual have power that could control any manner of person, rich or not.

One Flea Spare

2005-10-03T18:09:00.000-07:00

So, being in the play, I knew that this play had potentially humorous moments, but I didn't realize just how many there were. While I think that the tension of the situation makes the audience want to laugh at anything they can, I think that as a good playwright, it is necessary to put humor in even the most dramatic situations. It is easy to see that drama falls apart without humor, look at soap operas, and vice-versa, a show that is nothing but a series of jokes isn't that funny without some dramatic element to tie them all together. Although overall a tragedy, this play definitely had some great laugh lines, which until we did it in front of an audience, I never realized where they were. Never at rehearsals did I laugh at the lines, but when it was show time, I was ready to burst out at a few of the lines, and it became difficult to control myself.

One flea spare.

2005-10-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

When I first read this script I overlooked so much of the comedy and drama and the subtleties that a performance brings out. I love this script, it is amazing and there are so many possibilities and it was an amazing show, and yay for the show.
Anyway, back to business.
I really like the whole concept behind being trapped in a house, actually in two rooms, with people you don’t even know and the fear of the disease. I thought it very poignant of Katie to make, in her director’s note, a connection between this play and the situation in New Orleans. People do crazy things when they are trying to survive. At some point you have to stop mourning and just live. People need to find distractions. I think a scene that displays this system of methodical distraction that the people set up for themselves is the scene between Morse and Kabe. He walks out calling the death tolls for he city, and then ends up sucking Morse’s toe. One of Kabe’s lines is when Morse is mocking the dead and he snaps at her, telling her how many dead he had piled up for that week. He has a dramatic pause, then transitions back into the sex talk. He has formed and alliance with Morse, and he exploits it to keep things interesting. I think this scene is very important for the audience, because they are all laughing and having a good time, when the actors bring it back to the seriousness of the situation, it makes it more dramatic, and adds to the discomfort.

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

The Ghost Sonwhatahappeneda?....ok not funny...

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE! *sung out loud*

Further more on Pinter

Pinter

Sunday with George

Minimalism

Brecht

cradle rocking

A Brief Review of Subject Matter

The Rediscovery of Room Temperature Destiny

...Arcadia...

...Endgame...

Galileo Man or Myth?

Vogel will not leave me alone

Please Ms. Vogel, not Atticus!

Hairy yes, but ape?

How I Learned to Drive

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Chekhov

Poor Firs

med 3

preface for miss julie

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

DDAII Meditation 2

Was Ibsen depressed?

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Braz too

Meditation One

THEA 143: Development of Dramatic Art II

Introduction (Fall 2006)

Death of Comedy:

Cradle WIll Rock

Sunday in the Park

Cloud Nine

cloud9

Cloud 9: Gender whats that?

Cloud 9: Confused

Sunday in the Park with George

Arcadia: Thomasina's Discoveries

Arcadia: Labyrinth

Arcadia

Sunday=super neat set!

Arcadi's themes

Brainstorming Presentation Topics

Arcadia: Knowledge that Kills

The Music Man

Arcadia: Tortoise

Sunday In the Park With George

Fires In the Mirror: The Muslim Leader

The Music Man and . . . Marxism?

The Music Man

The Music Man: Wow go town

The Music Man...E-gods!

The Music Man: American

On Musicals

Yerma: Why should I care?

Yerma

betrayal? ehh, not really

Yerma: Music

Yerma: The Maddening

Yerma's Sudden Ending

Betrayal and Endgame

Jon's Response to "Betrayal"

Betrayal: Squash

Betrayal: varied reactions

Betrayl: Pause

Betrayal: Meh, it was ok.

Endgame, a super neat play

Galileo Figaro!

Galileo

Galileo: Poems and Performance

Galileo: Science

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE! sung out loud