BLOG #7--comedies!

my favorite comedy out of the ones we read has to be "Philadelphia" which is partially due to the fact that i am slightly obsessed with David Ives. i think David Ives does a fabulous job of melding absurd circumstances with real characters. he is always able to combine completely unrealistic situations with people who are actually believable with is truly funny. perhaps the funniest thing about his humor is the fact that it involves a lot of "reactions" in the sense that seemingly normal characters react to their environment in funny relatable ways. for example, in "Philadelphia" Mark and Al are both pretty average guys who seem to just be having a normal experience in a run of the mill coffee shop. however, as the play progresses we realize that these two normal guys are in fact a part of this completely insane world. part of what makes this play so funny is that these people seem completely out of place in the context of this play; we as an audience do not expect Mark and Al to be in such an absurd environment. moral of the story...go David Ives!
moving on to a different comedy...when i initially read "A Bear and a Dog" i hated it. i thought the dialogue fell flat and that the whole concept was stupid. however, after i read the play aloud with enthusiasm i grasped the humor of the play more completely. when the play was read aloud the seemingly stupid jokes were instead merely perfectly simple. this taught me that when evaluation a play which i am reading or when partaking in the writing process it is extremely helpful to vocally enact the play for this allows you to really gain a sense of the structure of the piece. it is a lot easier to understand and appreciate humor when you take it off of the page and into the world as living piece of art. the play is not longer just words on a page, instead it is people and situations in the flesh.

BLOG #6!

SOOOOOOOO, one of my favorite plays that we were assigned to read was "That Midnight Rodeo." i really really liked the style of this play in the sense that little pieces of information are slowly revealed to us as we continue to read or watch the story unfold. as an audience member, i personally enjoy not completely understanding what the characters are talking about in the beginning. i like the feeling of wanting to catch up--wanting to figure out what exactly is going on. i feel that this sense of anticipation is key when writing a drama. what captivates an audience a lot of the time is simply waiting to see how the drama is going to unfold. i hate it when a play shoves information down your throat all at once with no grace or fluidity. i thought that "That Midnight Rodeo" did a wonderful job of slowly piecing together a story for its audience to appreciate. i also enjoyed how the ending was left ambiguous because i felt that it fit the tone of the rest of the play. it would not have made sense for the end of the play to work out perfectly and for everyone to know the resolution because that was not the style in which the story was presented. throughout most of the play we are guessing as to what the tension is between Bo and Cindy so it makes sense for the ending to be left a guessing game as well--will she go with the abortion or will she listen to Bo? the fact that the audience is allowed to make their own assumptions about the ending and the fact that the play as a whole has us on the edge of our seat is what makes this story such a fantastic drama.

EXTRA CREDIT #2 Celtic Cross!

okay so first off i just have to give props to my homeboy Matt Jackson! woot woot! i was really really impressed with this play. it is extremely challenging to write a play which has both plot as well as characters which carry the story forward effortlessly. not only was the storyline well thought out and well presented, but the characters were extremely believable. i appreciated that we got to see the early stages of their relationship in the beginning of the play when they were children and that we got to follow their friendship up until the very end. i believed that these two guys were best friends and i honestly enjoyed watching their dynamic with each other, especially the way they constantly gave each other shit. the play had a great mix of both tragedy as well as humor which in my opinion makes for an extremely well rounded production. life isnt one dimensional so it makes sense for this play to have both ups and downs...exactly like the real world. i was most impressed by the fact that this story was able to keep its momentum and interest for about two hours. since being in this playwriting class i have found it extremely difficult to envision the plays im writing as full length plays; mostly the stories and characters i come up with would just make a great one act. i find it refreshing to know that matt created a play which has both the depth and characters to be able to transport us to another world for a few hours. fantastic.

EXTRA CREDIT--lion king!!!!!!!

okay first off let me just say...wow. this performance literally took my breath away. the elements which were most striking to me were the costumes and the set. they were UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!! the costumes were very animalistic, however, not once did a costume attempt to conciel the fact that is was actually a human imitating an animal. the cosutumes would not have worked if the animals were made to look completely realisic. i mean come on, we're in a theater, we came here to play along with an illusion, not to be convinced that there are actuall animals on stage. the fact that the costumes were not 100 percent realistic allowed us to enter into this fantasy world without judging what we were seeing based on our actual reality. the costumes were vibrant and theatrical and were especially designed for movement and dance. for example, these huge giraffe's came out on stage at one point and im pretty sure that they were made up of a series of hoops to create the illusion of a long neck...and anywho the actors inside the giraffe's were able to bow the heads down so that they basically touched the front row of the audience. the pride of lions consisted of intricate head pieces which connected to fabric that was tied to the arms and legs. this allowed for the dance movements to push gusts of wind through the fabric allowing the costume to inflate and expose beutiful orange colors. the set was also FANTASTIC!!!!! the bone yard had a HUGE carcase which made up the whole set, pride mountain moved while people climed up it, people whould swing on vines through the scene, wires were used, it was amazing. i cannot even begin to describe how they achived some of the things they did, and while i watched the show, with every new set and costume i saw i couldnt help but think how expensive this show must be! i mean my god--it is so intricate!
whenever i go see theater it imediatly rejunivates my love to performe and my love of the arts. i cant help but want to leap on stage and sing "The Circle of Life" with those actors even though that would be completely inapropriate, not to mention the fact that i cant sing a note to save my life. basically The Lion King rocks and i f-ing love theater...lets go act!!!!!!

BLOG #5 --Amadeus!

the element which i most enjoyed about reading Amadeus is the way in which the audience is encorperated into the play. lighting play a huge part of how the audince is exposed, an example of which is on page 15 when Salieri is confronting the audieince saying "Now, won't you appear? i need you--desperatly!'...'Let me try to conjure you now--Ghosts of the distant Future--so i can see you", at this moment the dialogue becomes illuminated in light as the house lights slowly come up until they eventually reach their maximum light. this is the first moment in which the audience is blatently exposed as a part of this play and this moment sets the tone for the fact that the audience will continure to be a part of the production for the continuance of the show. another example of how the audience is used in Amadeus comes into affect in the setup of scene eight on page 37. during this moment the stage becomes converted into a theater and the characters are situated so that they are looking out into the audience as if they were the show being watched. genious! the audience continues to be used as a tool throught this play in truly innovative ways which do not detract from the general theme and tone of the play.
when thinking about how i would write play i always strayed away from the idea of including the audience because i always feared that would take the audience out of the reality of the play and force them into thier actual reality---thus completely ruining the illusion of theater. however, after reading Amadeus i have found that including the audiance can totally work as long as your play is not shooting to be completely realistic. Amadeus sets the tone for a bit of a fantastical production in the sense that the characters V1 and V2 portray the notion that this play will be a bit absurd at times. therefor, now that the tone has been acknowlaged, it is completely logical to include the audience in creative ways due to the fact that they are already acustomed to a play which is a bit out of the ordinary at times.

BLOG #4--VANYA

the thing i noticed most when reading Uncle Vanya is the fact that it is esentially a play about nothing. what drives the play forward is not the in depth plot but instead the detailed characters and their relationship with one another. what makes this play intiresting is the fact that the characters are real...they are genuine. what helped about seeing the performance was that these people came to life even more! just reading Uncle Vanya can give one a slighly dull feeling due to the fact that nothing significant happens, however, once it is seen being performed the characters become facinating to observe. the one thing that took me out of the performance a bit was the fact that the actors were so close to the audience. i ocasionally felt uncomfortable watching people squirm in their chairs a bit as the actors approached thier personal bubble. however, all in all, i thought the performance as a whole was fantastically done and allowed a seemeinly insignificant play to resonate with deth and power within its audience. i felt that the ending was a mixture of both overwhelming sadness as well as beauty for it conveyed human desperation as well as compasion. this play communicates so much feeling and emotion through the dialogue alone due to the fact that there is very little stage direction. this, i believe is something to be admired, for you know your characters are completely real when they can communicate who they are through their dialogue and actions alone. this is what i strive to be able to do when i write for i feel that i rely too heavily on stage direction and background character information to communicate the feelings and attitudes of my characters. anton chekhov does a great job of letting the characters tell their own story without needing to rely on excessive explanation in the form of stage direction. my last thought in relation to Uncle Vanya is the fact that i love that the last stage direction states "The curtain falls slowly." SLOWLY is the key word here. i feel that this simple note fits the entire theme of the play perfectly! the whole play moves at a sometimes brutally slow pace which makes it only fitting that the last moment on stage should be executed with the same tone and grace as the rest of the play.

BLOG #3 "EURYDICE"

the thing which most struck me about the format of this play was how much stage direction there was. and when i say stage direction i don't necessarily mean "move here or do that" i mean "feel this or express that." Most of Sarah Ruhls stage direction presents the daunting task for the actor of conveying a series of very complex internal emotions. for example when the father is "walking" his daughter down the aisle the stage direction states, "He is affectionate, then solemn, then glad, them solemn, then amused, then solemn. he looks at his imaginary daugher; he looks straight ahead; he acknowledges the guests at the wedding; he gets chocked up; he looks at his daughter and smiles an embarrassed smile for getting chocked up. He looks straight ahead, calm. He walks" This is a lot of information to present in text and internal emotion as opposed to dialogue! however, i fully support this extravagant use of stage notes. i for one use a lot of stage notes when i am trying to convey a thought or feeling in my writing which i don't necessarily want to explain through verbal dialogue. i feel that by writing a lot of stage notes you are able to convey the general mood of what you are trying to portray to the audience and that is what is most important. i think that the example of the fathers internal thoughts is the notion that the actor does not have to follow EXACTLY what the stage directions say because that would be next to impossible, however, the abundance of stage directions allow the actor to better UNDERSTAND what it is the character is feeling. i think that more is always better than less. it is essentially the actors choice if he wants to convey all of the stage directions in his performance, but it is nice to have the stage notes there to help the actor better mold his character if he so desires. i guess what im saying is that if i were acting i would much rather have the option of discarding stage directions in my performance as opposed to not having enough stage notes to go off of and in turn feeling lost in the script and in the character.
in terms of this play being an adaptation i would have to say that i really enjoyed it! i especially appreciate the fact that even though i never read the original play i can still fully enjoy this new version. i think it is a great idea when doing an adaptation to take the point of view from a character we did not hear enough out of in the original version. this adds a whole new amount of depth and understanding to the story as a whole and we as an audience are fascinated by this new perspective. something i noticed was that there was a considerable amount of foreshadowing in the play as well as little hints to the original version. For example, on the VERY FIRST PAGE Eurydice and Orpheus are playfully interacting with one another when she says to him "Dont look at me." HELLO?! that is totally a reference to the original version of this play when Orpheus is not supposed to look at Eurydice in order to lead her out of the underworld successfully! i always love when a play successfully uses repetition in a way that entices you and makes you connect different aspects of the story to one another. all in all i think this story was a fabulous adaptation because it was original enough to follow even if you didn't know the old story, yet it was linked to the first version well enough to be able to find both obvious and hidden connections.

Blog #2 Dialogue!

First off let me just say that i think it is much harder to write write dialogue as opposed to writing monologues because you don't get to just stand there and explain everything to the audience. instead you have to communicate information through the characters' relationship with each other. with dialogue your not just worrying about what one person is saying, but instead how they interact with other people.
When i think about writing dialogue the genre which seems hardest to me is comedy as opposed to drama. i think this is because with comedy not only do you have to worry about people coming across as real and believable but you also have to add in humor which fits with the characters and the plot. a lot of the time i feel that when writing comedy it is easy for it to come across as fake or "written" as opposed to naturally funny. even if the play is absurd the humor should still come across effortlessly and real even if the premises of the play is somewhat abstract. for example, "All in the Timing" is a play which is about a man and woman who have a series of first encounters at a cafe. anytime one of them says something either painfully awkward or psychopathic a bell goes off and the scene starts again from the beginning so that the characters have a chance to redeem themselves. this is a completely unrealistic scenario, however, the humor is hilarious because A: it fits with the tone of the play in the sense that it is over the top, and B: it is real in the sense that the humor is completely true to the characters.
i guess what im getting at is that when writing a comedic play one should focus on what the characters would actually say as opposed to just fitting in a joke. chances are that if a character delivers a line which is true to his or her personality the affect will be much funnier even if the line itself is not that funny out of context. in contrast, a completely hilarious one-liner could come across as flat onstage if it doesn't fit with the tone of the characters or the play. all in all, it is the CHARACTERS who are funny...not the lines themselves.

--caitie

BLOG #1 New Orleans Monologues, The Laramie Project, and The Vagina Monologues

I have read and performed in The Laramie Project before and it is a play which I believe is fabulously put together and therefore a striking piece of theater. The way in which the monologues are arranged in The Laramie Project works extremely well when it comes to presenting a powerful production. The monologues intertwine with each other beautifully; melding different characters in with the plot seamlessly to make an extremely captivating play. The play is formatted so that the audience will be following along with one character and then right when they are becoming fully entranced with that person the play switches to another character. However, in doing this the play never loses the train of thought or the momentum of the plot from the previous monologue. This works perfectly because we as an audience want to hear other people speak and we want to hear different perspectives but we also want to simultaneously continue to follow the story we have become so engrossed with.
What bothered me about The New Orleans Monologues was that the different monologues did not merge as well together as they did in The Laramie Project. When one person finished telling their story another person would appear onto the scene only to completely remove you from the last story you had heard; their monologue would not continue with the flow of the previous speeches. I also did not like how long most of The New Orleans Monologues were because I found myself losing interest in certain people’s stories. The Laramie Project allowed you to constantly see different perspectives of the community while still presenting it in a cohesive manner, whereas often times The New Orleans Monologues did not feel like each separate monologue had a purpose or fit together with the general flow of the play.
The Vagina Monologues present a completely different and classic style of plays presented in monologue form. Each monologue does not try to fit in cohesively with the last, instead the play is merely a composition of very different monologues whose only real connection is the fact that they are all about vaginas. I think the reason why this technique is able to work with this play without the story feeling dull is because the subject matter is so shocking. Due to the fact that each monologue has a significant amount of in your face presentation it is less important that the monologues fit with each other. One singular story is not being told (unlike the story of Mathew or the event Hurricane Katrina) so therefore the play has more freedom in relation to presenting each monologue in a disjointed manner.
The Laramie Project and The New Orleans Monologues also made me consider the idea that plays of this nature seem to work much better in monologue form. What I mean by this is that plays which depict graphic violence or a huge natural disaster are difficult to present on stage in a realistic form. If these plays were to be acted out and set in the present it would have been extremely challenging to fool the audience into believing what they were seeing was real. It is the same idea as putting on a play which is all about war; it is a huge and daunting task due to the fact that the stage is based on the notion of imagination instead of realism. I therefore believe that monologues are a great way to remember the powerful stories that need to be told but cant necessarily be acted out on stage. The stories are told with the same intensity, however, the audience is required to use their imagination which puts them on the same level as the characters; both the audience and the characters are using their minds to picture the event that is being described. The audience can seamlessly step into the world that is being presented to them. They are willing participants of the theatrical experience and they therefore do not step back and judge the production for its realistic presentation, instead they are immersed in the story itself.