Is it a musical? A play? It’s more like a Circus!
On March 1, 2001, I had the great opportunity to see a very unique Off-Broadway variety show named De La Guarda, written, directed, and designed by Pichon Baldinu and Diqui James. The theatre presenting this show is the Daryl Roth Theatre, which is located at 20 Union Square East, just a few blocks from Baruch College. There were many interesting moments in the show that one would be definitely surprised if he had no prior knowledge about the show. What makes this show the most interesting is that it is not traditional theatre whatsoever. Everything is changed, including the area where it is performed. There is no real plot, but there are many artistic scenes throughout the show. Although there is no real plot, the performers present a wide range of emotions from one part of the show to the next that makes the audience members crave for the next emotion. It is a definite attention getter and everything including in the show, such as props and the performers themselves, makes the audience a part of the show.
From the moment an audience member enters the theatre, he is welcomed with refreshments and waits in the basement until an usher calls the audience to come upstairs to the main performance area. Since the tickets purchased for the show say “General Admission,” there are no assigned seats and the audience is left standing in a large dark square room, with four black walls and a white ceiling. The once empty room becomes filled with people waiting for the show to begin. Ushers remain in the room to guide the audience to move from one area to the next because the performers may need room to perform later in the show.
At 8pm, the show begins from the ceiling. Shadows of flying people grace the stage above. The directors’ attempt to make the mood as serene as possible is established through the music and the props. There is a dreamlike music playing that puts the audience in a peaceful mood. Raindrops slowly hit the white paper ceiling and little balls, that seem to be magnetic, are placed by the floating people above. The little balls move all in different directions and finally stop forming a big mass of balls. Little props, such as little horses and dinosaurs, are placed on the white paper and the performers play with them to make the audience amused.
If there is truly tradition to be found among the great theatres both on and off Broadway, then certainly the Sullivan Street Playhouse and its long running production of The Fantasticks rates as one of the most celebrated of New York theatrical traditions. Maintaining its place as the longest running production Off Broadway, The Fantasticks remains an enchanting and insightful tale of both young love and bitter disillusionment. It also reminds one, in this age of spectacle and the mega-musical, how powerful and truly inspiring theatre itself can be. Clearly, one of the great strengths of this production and a large part of its appeal for audiences over the last four decades lies in the fact that both the story and the style of presentation compliment each other so completely. Here we find the non-essentials are stripped away, and we are left to rely simply on the imagination of both the audience and the performers to create a magical evening.
Ever heard of a story that sings of the “Angel of Music” and the “Phantom of the Opera”? A tale that once you have listened to the sweet melody that you will realized that you've pasted the “Point of No Return”? This love triangle has captivated multitudes ever since the 1910 original Phantom of the Opera was published in France by Monsieur Leroux, although most story lovers recall the musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber or the motion picture adaption. Although this story has been entertaining people for over a century, in this new era have prerecorded voices and movements begun to overshadow the talented performers of live theater? Although “The lavish screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera (2005) only deepened the damage” of the dislike of musicals made into film “with non-stars in the leads and an unimaginative production,”(Musical),which version, the live performance or the film, makes the story more attractive? To answer these questions, permit this essay to analyze two methods of storytelling: 2011 live performance Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall and the 2005 film, and decide if music and story lovers everywhere have too “turned from true beauty”.
He also greets and dismisses the audience at the beginning and end of each act. The stage manager interrupts daily conversation on the street. The Stage Manager enters and leaves the dialog. He is also giving the foresight of death in the play. His informality in dress, manners, and speech, connects the theme, universality, of the production to the audience.
The theatre can hold up to 1500 and more people, so each performance is in front of a huge audience. Many members of the audience can watch from the grounds directly in front of the stage. Up to 3000 people can stand there to be exact.
Lights, camera, action! The light switches on, and shines brightly in the center of the stage. Two people walk towards it, these are actors that were told to come out at this exact moment by the director. After days of intense rehearsals. The two young actors burst. “We are tired of working for you” the two participants yell towards the director. The director in a surprising manner walks up to the stage, stares down at the performers and laughs. “You are going nowhere; I have your contract and your pay, now back to your positions!” The performers stand and continue their roles with no opinion in the matter. The camera turns off, the shadows of the actors disappear. The common person stands up and is face to face with the director. The director
The director’s concept was again realized in a very creative and simple way. The stage crew did not have time to literally place trees on the stage, or to paint a border that elaborate—the light made the slatted walls look real and really allowed the audience to become a part of the experience.
I attended the Reel abilities film short program on Sunday, October 30, 2016. I took my husband with me to the film. This film was held in Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh, PA. This was the first time I was inside this building. We arrived at 3:30 and could get a parking space close to the building. The door was locked and had to buzz in and was informed that it wasn’t working for some reason. Once we got up the stairs we was greeted and everyone was so nice. There were a line of people getting tickets, but I could skip the line due to pre-order tickets. Once we got out tickets we went down a hall into a room like a theater and a stage in front. The seats were very uncomfortable. It was a full house this night.
Angels in America is a play by Tony Kushner exploring themes of identity, power and stasis versus change in the setting of McCarthy era San Francisco. The play looks at homosexuality and homophobia, race, ethnicity and the AIDs crisis through exploring motifs of religion (especially Judaism and Mormonism), politics and law. This essay will explore how these themes could be examined and expressed through stage magic and circus arts in the context of a production inspired by Part One: Millennium Approaches of the two part play. A circus interpretation of Angels in America raises issues of casting skills and practical stunts performed live, demands consideration for set requirements and digital effects, music, and for style of process devising work. Kushner’s playwright’s notes for Angels in America describe “moments of magic”, referring to the appearance and disappearance of characters on stage, hallucination sequences and the dramatic conclusion of the play featuring an angel crashing through the ceiling of a small New York apartment. He states that “the moments of magic are to be fully realized, as bits of wonderful theatrical illusion – which means it’s okay if the wires show, and maybe it’s good that they do, but the magic should at the same time be thoroughly amazing” (Kushner, 1992, p11). It was this statement of aesthetic that inspired me to apply the themes of the play to creating circus and classic stage magic.
Mysterious, fun, dramatic, and contemporary summarized the main genres of music played. Occasionally, pop music from China played, to put a modern twist on the performance. To me, the music resembled adding cherries to the cake, as it added theatrics to the show. I also liked the lighting component. This department used different colors that represented the emotions of the story. Such as (Blue: calm, Green/Yellow: Happiness, Red: War, White: Peace and freedom). This enhanced the background scenery of the stage as well as the props. I had undergone quite a few emotions during this performance. Such as fear for the performers safety, shock for the stunts, and even anger for the show being too
The front stage, usually called the proscenium is an area that is equated to a picture frame. All the action taking place in the drama takes place within this frame and anything that exists beyond it is a part of the backstage. The backstage is the area from where the action is controlled, such as the control of props, costume change or introduction/concealment of characters according to the demand of the dramatic situation. The arena is the area from where the audience views the drama taking place on the stage. Now once this basic structural distinction of theatre space has been understood, what remains to be discussed in depth is how this space is manipulated, in tandem with gestural space and the space that the actor’s body sculpts in the process of enactment, to produce a certain kind of impact on the
Although I arrived just five minutes before the musical started, I immediately noticed the colorfully decorated theatre and watched as the background dancers and singers walked across the lobby in their elaborate 1960s-era dresses and suits. The performers then continued down into the side aisles of the theatre to wait for their cue to ascend the stage. Once I took my seat, the show began with a juvenile boy band playing backup music for a haughty doo-wop artist at a fancy cocktail party. Suddenly, the band literally began to march
LitLive Theatre Co. The stage manager, Kaelia Franklin-Winterstein, wore a number hats for this production; she was the official stage manager, a production manager, and a producer. For the sake of this paper, and her own sanity, we will stick to her role as the stage manager. The second performance I so gratefully got to see was Something
Actors were expected to memorize hundreds of lines at a time. While one play could be performing, actors would be practicing lines for their next show. Play writers also began to make roles for the actors in the theatrical pieces. The theaters that actors performed in were roofless so that the sun could be used as lighting. Theatrical shows were held in the afternoon because it provided the best amount of light for the show. When the people gathered into the theater, the different classes of people were separated by where they could afford to sit and watch the show. The lower classmen were situated on the bare earth where it was dirty and smelly because it was never cleaned. The owners’ of the theaters found it less expensive if they did not keep high maintenance of their establishments. Higher classmen sat under a roof and for a penny more, they could buy cushions for their seats.
He sets the play on a simple stage that could be anywhere. There is a staircase of three steps forming a semicircle, with two archways at the bottom. Curtains part in the center for entrance and exit. A table and chairs on the left serve as the only furniture.
...m, though they are quite safe behind a large facade of iron bars. This technique corresponds to the menacing way that the characters address the camera throughout the performance, and creates the necessary feeling, for the viewers, that no such barrier is available to protect them as they are drawn in uncomfortably closer to the inmates by Brook’s camerawork. We begin to question whether or not the soliloquies, spoken directly into the camera instead of to the protected aristocrats who originally played our ‘part’ of the audience, are still merely just a theater convention, or if the insanity of the performers is used as a catalyst for we, ourselves, to feel threatened directly by what is spoken. We also begin to question whether or not the inmate is even looking at the camera to address the audience, or is simply insane, and addressing the air around them, adding yet another layer to such complex characters. Creating such questions within the audience’s mind also seems to create, for most, the aura of discomfort and skepticism that Brook was aiming to achieve, and reached quite successfully.