“To engender empathy and create a world using only words is the closest thing we have to magic” –Lin-Manuel Miranda. Although theatre is viewed by many as simply a form of fiction or entertainment, its stories are often derived from real people and cultures, and one thing theatre cannot escape is society. I argue that through structure and language, cultural representation in theatre evokes cultural awareness and empathy. Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and Luis Alfaro’s Electricidad present stories representative of several different cultures, which give voice, and artistic opportunities, to a wide demographic of people who are statistically underrepresented in theatre.
Smith demonstrates theatre’s power to create cultural
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According to playwright, Rony Robinson, verbatim theatre is “a form of theatre firmly predicated upon the taping and subsequent ‘transcription’ of interviews with ‘ordinary’ people, done in the context of research into a particular region, subject area, issue, event, or a combination of these things” (Paget 317). By quoting each interviewee verbatim in the script, Smith allows each character to retain the syntax and colloquialisms of their respective cultures. Language is one of the most representative forms of culture, as readers are able to absorb the information through the voices of people who experienced the events firsthand. The character’s pauses, proficiency in English, and cultural references in their speech all deepen the reader’s understanding of the background from which the character hails. This is especially evident in the monologue from the anonymous female student from the University of Southern California, in which she speaks about her father, who “collects many cars” and “has about fifteen different kinds of cars” (Smith 157). Referencing her father’s cars, the young woman indicates that she is from an affluent family. Moreover, her cavalier tone in talking about the cars indicates that she is significantly removed from the devastation of the riots, which provides more information to the reader as to what cultural groups were more affected than
Every theatergoer may consider the question: What is it about performance that draws people to sit and listen attentively in a theater, watching other people labor on stage and hoping to be moved and provoked, challenged and comforted? In Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan “argues that live performance provides a place where people come together, embodied and passionate, to share experiences of meaning making and imagination that can describe or capture fleeting intimations of a better world (p.2)”. She traces the sense of visceral, emotional, and social connection that we experience at such times, connections that allow audience members to sense a better world, and the hopeful utopic sentiment might become motivation for civic engagement
Pause for a second and think about a play or musical that you have seen. Consider the plot, whether you liked it or not and if the experience was positive or negative. Think about the characters, the costumes, and the emotions that were emitted. The discourse community of theatre is unique in the way that it is so complex and there are many different parts that ultimately come together to create a dynamic whole. The term discourse community is rather broad, but John Swales in his article “The Concept of Discourse Community” gives six characteristics that define it. Swales lists them saying,
Varma, Rahul. “State of Denial: Cultural Diversity as a Resource for Alternative Globalization.” Canadian Theatre Review, Vol. 157. January 2014. Web.
The duration and cost of the production have been compared to other media which provide entertainment, such as television and film. A theatre performance is more expensive to attend than cinema. The play only lasted for 85 minutes, a film can go on for two hours or even more. This can have a big influence on why people would choose one medium over the other. Accessibility has also to be taken into account when investigating the relevance of theatre in the 21st century. Television is a medium which can be accessed from home, and usually doesn’t cost a lot of money, whereas theatre costs money and is harder to access. Although the production was Australian, the actors talked with an American accent. Bearing in mind that the play was written in America, which could make it harder for an Australian audience to familiarise with the dilemmas going on, on stage, while the themes discussed seem to be more relevant there than in Australia. Overall this play doesn’t contribute to the relevance of Australian theatre in the 21st century, due to the many other sources people can access for entertainment, and because the play seems to be more relevant for an American audience rather than an
My work proposes a broader view of the theatre-film interface, one that relies on intertextuality as its interpretive method. I believe it is valuable-both pedagogically and theoretically-to ask broad questions about the aesthetic, narrative, and ideological exchanges between the history of theatre and contemporary film and television. For example, this paper will study how the "Chinese Restaurant" episode of the sitcom, Seinfeld, intertextually reworks Samuel Beckett's modernist play, Waiting for Godot. In each text, characters encounter an existential plight as they are forced to wait interminably, and thus confront their powerlessness at the hands of larger social forces. As a pedagogical matter, this connection encourages the students to see academic culture in the guise of having to read Beckett's play for my course, not as foreign and alienating, but instead as continuous with their understanding of leisure activities like watching sitcoms. As a theoretical matter, this intertextual connection allows important ideological matters to come into bold relie...
Theatre-In-Education The theatre education industry/movement has seen some rapid changes since its initial developments and establishment in the 1960’s. However its origins mainly lie in the early years of the last century. It was the initial establishment of companies such as Bertha Waddell’s in Scotland and Esme Church’s in the north of England that thoroughly established the main roots of TIE.
Over the years, the essence of theatre has not only been to entertain, but to also allow the build up of a culture in a quickly growing uncultured generation. Regardless of the existence of so many other forms of entertainment, theatre has always established a commanding niche in most people’s hearts, and is undoubtedly the most realistic form of entertainment (Bruce 12). The acting bit of theatre performances makes things real and in their immediate contexts, allowing the audience to draw conclusions based on what they see. In a majority of cases, also, the play’s setting is such that there is description of definite subjects without which the play cannot make meaning. The above research takes into account A Number by Caryl Churchill. A great deal of issues and aspects can be learnt from the above play with diverse moral lessons, as well. It has long been proved that expression via acting is more direct than when the audience accesses literature in other means. This direct approach gives a broader meaning to a variety of issues in the play, which were not understood, say in videos. Additionally, the play A Number is full of theatrical ideologies with clear depiction and expression of every event. Theatricality and empowerment set this play different from other plays because of clarity in events’ sequence. The author also strives to express the idea of cloning in society as one main means of families’ downfall. This further comes with what literature calls the ‘fate of tragic heroes’, an indication of what is at stake when a person does things out of the ordinary to please him or herself.
“The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation,” says Stella Adler. Theater is unique and intriguing because it blends literary and visual arts to tell a story. Before Theater 10, I viewed theater on the surface level: cheesy plot lines with dramatic scenarios for entertainment purposes. Throughout the course, I have learned what it means to appreciate theater, such as understanding Brechtian and Chinese theatre; however, I believe understanding theater’s ability to convey crucial historical and social messages, such as in the production of RENT, is more relevant and important for theater appreciation.
Theatre serves to reflect society. From Shakespeare to Sophocles, a playwright’s work illustrates the different mechanics within a culture or time period or society. Theatre offers viewers the experience of taking a step back and looking in on themselves. In this way, theatre is a mirror for the world and the way it functions.
In this paper, I will be focusing briefly on my knowledge and understanding of the concept of Applied theatre and one of its theatre form, which is Theatre in Education. The term Applied Theatre is a broad range of dramatic activity carried out by a crowd of diverse bodies and groups.
“Theatre makes us think about power and the way our society works and it does this with a clear purpose, to make a change.”
Theatre will always survive in our changing society. It provides us with a mirror of the society within which we live, and where conflicts we experience are acted out on stage before us. It provides us with characters with which we identify with. The audience observes the emotions and actions as they happen and share the experience with the characters in real time.
Before I started Introduction to Theatre class, I had been only to a couple of plays in my life. Just in this semester I’ve been to about ten plays and have learned so much about the art of theatre. The information I retained from class will help out a lot in the future, but the most important part of this class was the shadowing experience of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. With being able to get an inside look at this play during rehearsal and then going to see the performance was an incredible experience. By going to the rehearsal and then seeing the show, I was able to learn and understand more on how the theatre works. From there, I could understand the long process the actors and directors have to go through before the opening show happens.
My experience watching a live theatre performance on stage was a fascinating one, most especially since it was my first time. I attended a staged performance of “The History Boys” in a small theatre called “The Little Theatre of Alexandria” at 8:00 pm on Wednesday June 8, 2016 in Alexandria, Virginia. The overall production of the play was a resounding experience for me particularly the performance of the actors and the design of the scene made the play seem real.
For thousands of years, people have been arguing that theatre is a dying art form. Many people think theatre is all just cheesy singing and dancing or just boring old Shakespeare, but there is much more to theatre than those two extremes. Theatre is important to our society because it teaches us more about real life than recorded media. Theatre has been around for thousands of years and began as a religious ceremony that evolved into an art form that teaches about the true essence of life. Theatre can incorporate profound, and provocative, observations of the human condition that can transcend time; lessons found in Greek plays can still be relevant to the modern world. People argue that the very essence of theatre is being snuffed out by modern