We saw our final show a few months ago, 100 Saints You Should Know, and I was completely blown away by it. Finally, we had an original piece that was written for the stage. No adaptations from books, short stories, or interviews. This was what I had been waiting for- an enjoyable, straightforward play.
When I studied abroad in St. Andrews, I would see the weekly student shows for free. Some were certainly better than others, but going to the shows was something fun to do with my friends. It was free and only a mile walk into town (we also had plenty of time since taking two classes was considered to be a full course). After I came back to the states, I hadn't been to any plays until Toby started this project. I suppose it was because I was too lazy to look up shows in Atlanta and couldn't have really afforded them anyway.
One of the questions that Toby asked us when we first began if it was important to cultivate theater audiences, and I'm not quite sure what the answer is to that. Overall, I had fun going to these multiple shows and seeing some plays that I would not have seen on my own. I think I probably will see more shows in the future. In fact, I saw Kristin's awesome play a little while ago, and I head on NPR that Rita Dove's new play just opened. I'm still not sure if cultivating theater audiences is a noble, worthwhile goal, but I will be paying more attention to Atlanta's theater scene.
Showing posts with label theater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theater. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Women + War
What an awful show. Truly, horribly, awful. In my first post, I tried to reserve criticism of Around the World in Eighty Days, a mediocre show, but I cannot hold back on Women + War.
I was excited to see the show (it's based on interviews from Atlanta-area women who have had experiences in various wars). I was expecting a thoughtfully produced play, something akin to The Vagina Monologues, but what we got was confusing and laughable. There were a few powerful moments in the handful of monologues, but the rest of the play was composed of choral readings, interpretive dancing, and black rocks being passed from actor to actor. It's not the actors' faults; I'm sure they were only following what the director told them to do. However, I do have to wonder what the director was thinking. Why put in superfluous "artistic" touches to stories that are already powerful enough on their own?
I'm reminded of a student I had who would write long, nonsensical sentences with vocabulary straight from the thesaurus. When I asked him why he did this, he admitted that he didn't know what he was trying to say either, but he thought it sounded good. He hadn't thought that his readers might be equally confused and frustrated; he just thought they would be impressed.
Directors, high school students, and everyone in between, aim for clarity in your artistic endeavors.
I was excited to see the show (it's based on interviews from Atlanta-area women who have had experiences in various wars). I was expecting a thoughtfully produced play, something akin to The Vagina Monologues, but what we got was confusing and laughable. There were a few powerful moments in the handful of monologues, but the rest of the play was composed of choral readings, interpretive dancing, and black rocks being passed from actor to actor. It's not the actors' faults; I'm sure they were only following what the director told them to do. However, I do have to wonder what the director was thinking. Why put in superfluous "artistic" touches to stories that are already powerful enough on their own?
I'm reminded of a student I had who would write long, nonsensical sentences with vocabulary straight from the thesaurus. When I asked him why he did this, he admitted that he didn't know what he was trying to say either, but he thought it sounded good. He hadn't thought that his readers might be equally confused and frustrated; he just thought they would be impressed.
Directors, high school students, and everyone in between, aim for clarity in your artistic endeavors.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Edgar Allan Poe
Our class recently saw the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe performed at the Center for Puppetry Arts. Now, I'll admit my love for puppets. I've been a lifelong Muppets fan, and I often put on my own puppet plays from the staircase balcony in my childhood home. However, my views of puppetry were very limited. I was excited to see the show, but I was expecting something along the lines of hand puppets or marionettes moving about a tiny stage with the actors hidden behind a piece of scenery. How wrong I was.
Rather than hiding, the actors moved freely about the stage along with their puppets. I never once, however, felt like the actors were overshadowing the puppets. The show was so incredibly seamless, and the actors became an extension of their puppets. It was a very clever way of performing Poe's works, many of which contain little dialogue. The actors became the narrators while the puppets performed the actions of the stories.
I also liked that they used several of Poe's short stories and poems and blended them into one longer performance. It became a riveting mash-up of his works. Mash-ups are quite popular these days in music, and the T.V. show Glee uses them frequently. It would be a fun and exciting exercise to have my own students create a mash-up of their own and perform it for the class. The students would have to find common themes or ideas that tie the various works together, and this would give them a chance to see how the same author, or different authors from the same movement, have common threads that run through their works. I could easily see taking several Harlem Renaissance poems or Flannery O'Connor short stories and creating a longer work to perform in front of the class.
I might even make them use puppets.
Rather than hiding, the actors moved freely about the stage along with their puppets. I never once, however, felt like the actors were overshadowing the puppets. The show was so incredibly seamless, and the actors became an extension of their puppets. It was a very clever way of performing Poe's works, many of which contain little dialogue. The actors became the narrators while the puppets performed the actions of the stories.
I also liked that they used several of Poe's short stories and poems and blended them into one longer performance. It became a riveting mash-up of his works. Mash-ups are quite popular these days in music, and the T.V. show Glee uses them frequently. It would be a fun and exciting exercise to have my own students create a mash-up of their own and perform it for the class. The students would have to find common themes or ideas that tie the various works together, and this would give them a chance to see how the same author, or different authors from the same movement, have common threads that run through their works. I could easily see taking several Harlem Renaissance poems or Flannery O'Connor short stories and creating a longer work to perform in front of the class.
I might even make them use puppets.
The Canterbury Tales
After our class workshop, Toby took us all down to see the Canterbury Tales at the Shakespeare Tavern. I had been to the Tavern before and enjoyed their production of Romeo and Juliet, so I was looking forward to the Canterbury Tales.
What we saw didn't disappoint me; the play was funny, energetic, and well produced. Some of the tales were more enjoyable than others, but overall I enjoyed myself. What really stood out about the play, however, was that fact that they took several of the tales and updated them into various modern settings.
The idea of adaptation fascinates me. I'm not one of those purists who deplore the idea setting Romeo and Juliet in modern L.A. or turning Julius Caesar into a Western (Harold Bloom, I'm looking at you). I think it's perfectly fine to allow directors their creative licenses, and changing the setting of a familiar story often brings a new understanding to the work. The version of The Canterbury Tales was interesting to watch. I like the disconnect between the Middle English coming out of the actor's mouths while they wore business suits or carried a machine gun because it forced me to think about the tales in a new way and see the connections these older stories have with more contemporary books, movies, and plays.
Updating and and adapting a story into a new setting can be incredibly helpful for our students, allowing them to deepen their understanding of the play. Reading a play can be incredibly difficult, especially Shakespeare. With only dialogue and a few stage directions, the students often have trouble visualizing and comprehending the action of the play. It's perfectly fine for students to act out Caesar's death with foam swords if the purpose is to give the students the chance to see how Caesar is killed and the betrayal of realizing Brutus is there. It is not a "dumbing down" of Shakespeare (again, Harold Bloom, I'm looking at you). Likewise, seeing a familiar play in a new setting forces the audience to re-think their perception of the play and make new connections and understandings of the material. It's Intertextuality at it's finest.
What we saw didn't disappoint me; the play was funny, energetic, and well produced. Some of the tales were more enjoyable than others, but overall I enjoyed myself. What really stood out about the play, however, was that fact that they took several of the tales and updated them into various modern settings.
The idea of adaptation fascinates me. I'm not one of those purists who deplore the idea setting Romeo and Juliet in modern L.A. or turning Julius Caesar into a Western (Harold Bloom, I'm looking at you). I think it's perfectly fine to allow directors their creative licenses, and changing the setting of a familiar story often brings a new understanding to the work. The version of The Canterbury Tales was interesting to watch. I like the disconnect between the Middle English coming out of the actor's mouths while they wore business suits or carried a machine gun because it forced me to think about the tales in a new way and see the connections these older stories have with more contemporary books, movies, and plays.
Updating and and adapting a story into a new setting can be incredibly helpful for our students, allowing them to deepen their understanding of the play. Reading a play can be incredibly difficult, especially Shakespeare. With only dialogue and a few stage directions, the students often have trouble visualizing and comprehending the action of the play. It's perfectly fine for students to act out Caesar's death with foam swords if the purpose is to give the students the chance to see how Caesar is killed and the betrayal of realizing Brutus is there. It is not a "dumbing down" of Shakespeare (again, Harold Bloom, I'm looking at you). Likewise, seeing a familiar play in a new setting forces the audience to re-think their perception of the play and make new connections and understandings of the material. It's Intertextuality at it's finest.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Improv
We recently saw a show at the Alliance Theatre from the Second City acting group. It had an extremely long title (something about peaches dropping and rolling everywhere), but I'm not going to bother with that right now. Part of the show was scripted and part was all improv. Although the show was overall very enjoyable, the best part was definitely the improv. It was fun to see the actors make up hilarious situations on the spot.
The whole point of the grant Toby got is to figure out how to use what we are seeing in the theater in our own classrooms. Naturally, I had no idea what to do. I thought about using improv techniques to teach indirect characterization or to have students imagine a character from a book in a new situation while still retaining the character's traits.
Both of these ideas seemed profoundly lame.
Today, however, Randy from Dad's Garage came and spoke to us while we workshopped at ASC today, and he gave us several, useful ways we can incorporate improv in our classrooms. The one I'm most excited about is the story telling one word at a time. Here is an example:
Person 1: The
Person 2: cat
Person 1: ate
Person 2: some
Person 1: Doritos
Person 2: and
Person 1: then
Person 2: barfed
Person 1: it
Person 2: all
Person 1: up.
As you can see, it's not exactly great or intellectual story-telling, but it can help students think creatively and get them to think critically about how stories are told (and incorporate exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution in their own works). I'm leaving today hopeful and excited about using improv techniques in my own classroom.
The whole point of the grant Toby got is to figure out how to use what we are seeing in the theater in our own classrooms. Naturally, I had no idea what to do. I thought about using improv techniques to teach indirect characterization or to have students imagine a character from a book in a new situation while still retaining the character's traits.
Both of these ideas seemed profoundly lame.
Today, however, Randy from Dad's Garage came and spoke to us while we workshopped at ASC today, and he gave us several, useful ways we can incorporate improv in our classrooms. The one I'm most excited about is the story telling one word at a time. Here is an example:
Person 1: The
Person 2: cat
Person 1: ate
Person 2: some
Person 1: Doritos
Person 2: and
Person 1: then
Person 2: barfed
Person 1: it
Person 2: all
Person 1: up.
As you can see, it's not exactly great or intellectual story-telling, but it can help students think creatively and get them to think critically about how stories are told (and incorporate exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution in their own works). I'm leaving today hopeful and excited about using improv techniques in my own classroom.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Around the World in 80 Days
This is my first foray into blogging, and I'm quite hesitant about the whole deal. Dr. Toby Emert invited a few of the Agnes Scott College MAT grads to participate in a year-long professional development opportunity this year in which we see several plays around Atlanta and discuss ways we can incorporate drama into our classrooms. As part of the deal, we have to blog about our experiences, which sounded fun at first, but now I'm having second thoughts. I enjoy reading blogs, but actually writing one myself for potentially anyone to see is intimidating. I don't like the thought of putting myself out there and being vulnerable to criticism.
Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to my actual post. Recently I went with Toby and the other Scotties to see Around the World in 80 Days. I cannot fathom the courage it takes for the actors, directors, and crew to put on a show and open themselves up for criticism, which is why I won't comment in depth about the show itself. It was alright, but it's not a show I would see again. We live in such a culture of negative criticism, yet we forget how much work it takes to create. What I most enjoyed about our group's visit to the the Balzer Theatre at Herren's was getting to talk to the crew and theater director before the show and getting to tour backstage. I hadn't been backstage since my theater days in high school, and I had forgotten how much work it took to put on a play. I wish that more people could have experiences like this before seeing the final product. Sure, it might take away some of the awe of seeing a play, a final version of a film, a finished novel, or any other form of art, but it would enhance one's appreciation of the work that went into creating that art. It might also take away the knee-jerk reaction to criticize what went wrong rather than praise what went right.
Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to my actual post. Recently I went with Toby and the other Scotties to see Around the World in 80 Days. I cannot fathom the courage it takes for the actors, directors, and crew to put on a show and open themselves up for criticism, which is why I won't comment in depth about the show itself. It was alright, but it's not a show I would see again. We live in such a culture of negative criticism, yet we forget how much work it takes to create. What I most enjoyed about our group's visit to the the Balzer Theatre at Herren's was getting to talk to the crew and theater director before the show and getting to tour backstage. I hadn't been backstage since my theater days in high school, and I had forgotten how much work it took to put on a play. I wish that more people could have experiences like this before seeing the final product. Sure, it might take away some of the awe of seeing a play, a final version of a film, a finished novel, or any other form of art, but it would enhance one's appreciation of the work that went into creating that art. It might also take away the knee-jerk reaction to criticize what went wrong rather than praise what went right.
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