Jones, Schechner, Bogart, Clurman

Jones talks about how everything that is happening on stage is a part of the play. Basically, lighting, form, the colors, costumes, movements, everything has a voice that sometimes speaks louder then what the actual actors are saying. It will be interesting to see how we can incorporate the elements of this into our play. The costumes will be extremely important for setting up the personality of each character.

Bogart's article put me in an interesting direction. If we need to emotionally dive into our play, I would say that it would have to be from a comedic level for sure. We want our play to be as humorous to the audience as possible, and I feel like we're making great progress towards that. When the play starts, it's going to start off with a funny sort of summary of what has been going on so far to get the audience up to date with the characters.

Schechner makes the point that during the making of a production, the interaction between the audience and the play can be fiddled with. For example, any play ever written can be changed to include the audience more or less. The script is only a guideline to follow. We are actually planning on adding our own scene at the beginning to set up the whole play for the audience since we are jumping right into the middle.

The theme, according to Churman, must bind everyone together. The comedic theme of our play will definitely bring us together. Also, along with all of the physical contact between most of the characters, it would be hard not for us to bind in some way or another. This is a very physical play and in order for us to be comfortable with that we must trust each other on stage. The physical nature of it and the comedy of it will definitely bring us together and closer to the audience.

Goffman, Grotowski, and Stanislavski

Each one of these atricles showed a different, unique approach to acting. Althoguht hey were a little dry at some points, I found teh whole reading experience insightful. Stanislavski was my favorite out of the three, his ideas and opinions were the most interesting. He mentioned that when on stage, actors should not be very concerned with their physical appearences. Basically, he's sayign taht you really should care how much of a fool you look or how attractive or anything. The most important thing is to become teh character that you are playign the role of, the depending upon who that person was, you may ahve to look incredibly silly on stage. Stanislavski, I feel, was most useful. Grotowski had a little bit of a different approach. He said that actign was more of a series of blocks, not just impulses. The thigns that don't happen is sometiems more important then the thigns that happen. I can relate to this, because I'm a person who is always lookign at what people didn't do, and why they didn't do this. It's more of the empty space that is the idea. This is sort of like my sculpture class, when teh negative space is extremely important to a piece. Goffman had yet another interesting way to look at things. He talked about how people judge others, how everyone in society judges others almost unconciously. In order to make their acting effective, actors must embody their character, not let anythign slip to be judged. All of these view were very different in tehir own ways, but they were all very useful tools for may future acting.

Bertolt Brecht

I have always been a fan of plays/movies/books that repeat almost the exactly the same thing, only slightly different each time. It really emphasizes the differences between the three plays. Repetition, in my opinion, is one of the most effective way to get your message across. Also, the idea of what lengths we go to to fullfill custom is very interesting. This boy, in two of the three plays, is killed just because custom says that he should. Isn't it better to live? I find it very disturbing that the teacher's students were able to kill the child because of custom. Where do we draw the line between custom and madness?

Stage Blood

This was a rather interesting comedy to read. It is an interesting parody on the play Hamlet. Stage Blood took the tragedy and turned it into comedy. It really lacks any sort of seriousness to it at all. The characters of hamlet were extremely serious in everything. The characters in Stage Blood were hilarious in every aspect of themselves. It was a great read, and I enjoyed the break from teh serious Hamlet.

Hamlet and Laramie

Comparing Hamlet and The Laramie project is something that is very difficult to do. On one hand, they appear very similar. Both plays are centered around a murder and in both of them the plot of the story becomes apparent very slowly. However, there are some huge difference between these two stories. First of all, hamlet is actually happening. The Laramie project is just a retelling of events, jigsaw pieces put together into a resemblance of the original picture. Also, the setting in hamlet is very concrete, where in Laramie, it changes faster and without warning. However, although the play have many differences, it is interesting to compare them. It shows that you can draw comparisons between most all plays, however dissimilar.

Oedipus

Sophocles was tryign to convey a sense of things are sometimes too good to be true. Oedipus saves the city from teh sphinx, and tehn is offered the job as king. He starts a great family and is eventually offered the kindship of another city as well. Things all seemed to be goign great for Oedipus. Then, he gets to solve this new crime in order to save the city again. However, there is a sudden change of events. Oedipus finds out all of these horrible thigns about his past, and his wonderful world comes crashing down. Sophocles shows us how even the very greatest can fall from their mountaintop.

(Sorry about the late blog. I was having troubles with my account)

Homework for 1/27

First of all, I really wish I could see "Too much light makes the baby go blind". The whole idea that the actors actually start the show with "we're not goign to lie to you" is amazing. It reminds me a lot of comedy sportz here in the Twin Cities. I think that this passage is pretty ironic in how most theatre is the actors lying to you. The characters that they play and feelings that they portrey arn't their true feelings. It goes against the normals theater conventions to come right out and tell the audience that they will not be lied to.

In the Laramie Project, there was one line that really jumped out at me. When Jedadiah Schultz said that Laramie is now "Just a noun" and how they "might never be able to get rid of that. It really made me think about whether I had heard about Laramie before Matthew. I hadn't. To tell you the truth, I really don't know anythign about it other then the fact that there was a horrible hate crime committed there. Then I thought about how I would feel if my hometown was just a definition in a dictionary. That line really brought me straight into the play. It really touched me. When theatre can accomplish that, it reaches its goal for the performance.

Both these passages have a very realist undertone. Neither one is going to lie to the audience. Both of these plays are going beyond entertainment, beyond the conventions of the past. Each one is doing something that theatre hasn't done before.

I didn't really find many muddy points in the readings. I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of the readings.

First Log

I just set up my logging program. This is my first log. It was a cold, dark night early last September when I finally realised...sorry, daydreaming a bit =).