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.
