The Long Christmas Ride Home by Paula Vogel is a play about a family of five, and their experience on Christmas day, as well as the future of the three children. I believe that this was meant to take place in the early-sixties to the late-seventies because of the mother’s housewife role in the play, and the way the grandfather would accept the mistreatment of his own daughter from her husband, but would stand up for the mistreatment of his grandson—a clearly sexist view that would not be accepted in today’s society. Another hint about the time period is that Stephen died from a disease contracted during sex, one that eventually killed him. This makes me think that this was before or during the AIDS epidemic. The children are Rebecca, age twelve,
1. Mr. Burns presents a unique take on the field of acting. During the first act, there was a closed off and often quiet tone to the play. The characters are all spaced out and separated even as their common conversation is being given. The only time they come closer together figuratively and literally is when they’re feeling threatened.
The dramaturgy (the study of dramatic composition of the play) is unique, in that Washburn takes an innovative approach to writing this play by attending a real-life tech rehearsal, transcribing the dialogue that occurs in the room between actors, technicians, directors, producers, etc., condenses the transcription and uses the condensed version in her piece 10 out of 12. The play intertwines dialogue between various departments of theatre (actors, directors and technicians) and various mediums of sound (use of taped dialogue, live dialogue and headset dialogue) thus creating an experience that uses all the senses. Washburn’s realistic style of script shows her focus on the view that theatre is not meant to be watched but rather heard or experiences, her play is an experience so realistic that it makes the audience question whether it is reality or fiction. She uses real-life reference in an accurate manner which led to the conception of the script for 10 out of
Final Essay ACL The Laramie Project and Hillbilly Elegy both focus on major real life issues that are good to be exposed to. Laramie Project is a play that starts very slow, giving a lot of details in the start that are not very intriguing. The story focuses a lot on character descriptions while introducing new characters at the same time. Some of the characters didn’t even have major parts but some ended up making sense.
On Thursday, November 5th, I went to go see the musical Into the Woods put on by the Shawnee Mission Northwest theatre department. Into the Woods is a play about several characters from different fairy tales that interact with each other throughout the plot. Some of the characters include: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack(from Jack and the Beanstalk), the witch, and the baker and his wife(these two characters do not actually belong to a fairy tale, but have a major role in the plot). There are many other characters from different fairy tales as well, but these are some of the characters that I found most important. The plot mainly revolves around the baker and his wife. There was a curse bestowed on the baker’s family by their neighbor,
This play does just that. It looks deeper than just an entertaining night at the theatre it encourages conversation and debate. It forces people to discuss the uncomfortable topics and increases understanding of unfamiliar situations. I watched the audience cringe and become uncomfortable, I saw the characters bring us together and tear us apart, but most of all I felt a connection, an understanding with my fellow audience members when we all walked out together still saddens by the events that had taken place. If your are looking for an intriguing night filled with a roller coaster of emotion that leads to a deeper understand of your fellow humans than this is the show for
The productions of this play were successful through stage design, lighting crewing, and acting. Those three aspects made the quality of the play stand out to me, as an audience member. The production of the set design of the play was a good effort. The set design for the play staging aims for the sweet spot between feeding adult nostalgia and satisfying a new generation of children.
On March 28th, I had the pleasure of attending the Broadway show called “The Play That Goes Wrong,” located at the Lycuem Theatre on 149 West 45th Street. On this particular Tuesday evening, I just had a vibe that something wrong was going to happen in this play – shockingly. I did believe this play will truly be memorable judging by the fun quirk of the show’s name. After watching the performance for about two hours, I can conclude that this play went beyond my expectation as its set disasters and characters amusingly caught the attention of me and the rest of the audience.
The 1920’s mobster theme creates a sort of eerie a mysterious mood for the play. Taking place mostly at night under street lamps at the end of a suspicious alley, the tone is rather ominous. The mobsters add to
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is the first live play I have ever attended. I did not know what to anticipate, especially after hearing numerous accidents occurred during rehearsals. I was a bit skeptical about it. However when the play began, the on-point accents, the rowdy fight scenes, and their fluent moves all caught my attention. The facial expressions the actors and actresses exhibited on their glowing faces made the show enjoyable.
Savannah Live was a musical preformance held in one of the oldest continuing theater halls in the nation. The theater, appropiately named the Historic Savannah Theater, origionally opened in 1818, yet do to years of wear and tear and several fires, the modern theater was retrofitted to look like its 1940s, art-deco self. Although the stage was in the traditional Proscienim style, the play was anything but traditional. The stage hall itself seemed like something right out of the hay day of Broadway, with lights surrounding the procienian arch, red velvet chairs and carpet, the hall was like a time caplse bringing me back into the 20th centry. Mimicing the transformations of the hall throughout the years, the musical took the audience on a journey through musical, and theatrical history.
As I was acting as Jason, I analysed Jason’s characterisation and worked on the delivery of my lines so that I could best portray him as awkward but well-meaning teenage boy. I asked my uncle, who had watched the play before, how to act as Jason. “Just act normal,” he answered vaguely.
The scenes consist of the many techniques mentioned above, there are two main characters are shown and the play is set in contrasting between the past and the present. There are two real locations that are the TV studio and Melbourne hotel, however the interplay of the techniques in the scenes works together to create a wartime setting. The audience awareness is developed through the historical information from each scene. Theatrical devices a re combined to create various features and have a great dramatic impact. The structure promotes the audience to watch the play because the structure of this storyboard is contrasted between the past and present that will attract audience attention, as it is an historical play set between different times.
How did they know when to stop devising? And how many ideas and proposals did they have to go through before getting to the finish line? Another question I have is what this performance has done to inspire other works, or has it? While I do still have lingering questions, I'm not disappointed that they're not answered. In many ways, I feel like these questions can only be answered through experience.
The stage directions are not so descriptive. The setting is described in two lines and the characters are little described. They are limited to describe the actions of the characters. There are sound effects such as the bell that sounds at the end of the play and lightning effects such as the fade out that occurs at the end of each