As a performer, I have learned over the years that performance, theatre specifically, serves many purposes. It can inspire, build character, educate, or even distract. I have been fortunate to be cast in four shows within my collective year in Nicolet Theatre, two in my Freshman year, another two in the first half of my Sophomore year. This theatre program is an enormous part of my life and had taught me so much within my short time in it. Nicolet Theatre has taught me that character often developed in a community, that sometimes the only way we can distract our audience is to distract them, and that leadership is a privilege that should be cherished and utilized.
Nicolet theatre is the most inclusive and loving community I have ever met,
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It was a play called Moon Over Buffalo, and it opened two days after the 2016 Presidential Election, so, it was not ideal, to say the least. Nicolet Theatre is diverse and accepting, and I have never seen a cast in more disarray, due to the fact that we were now under a more than a terrifying President Elect who did not seem to care about many of us. But, Moon Over Buffalo was campy and silly, which is what we needed at the time. I was in the ensemble once again, and it is hard to play a happy and exaggerated in this show that was nothing but serious when it sometimes felt like the world was ripping apart by the seams. But sometimes our job as actors is to distract people from their plights with a goofy plot and outrageous costumes, even if it is for just a couple hours. I believe that there comes a time where actors no longer act for any other reason than that it is the only thing we know to do. The only thing we knew to do at that point was to service the audience with as distraction, and we were proud to have provided that service for our audience. Moon Over Buffalo taught me that service is not alway in the form of working in a soup kitchen or teaching, but that does not mean that it is any less
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
Powerful theater combines intellectual ideas and artistry of language with the visual power of movement and physical strength. The theater I most appreciate involves the actors’ equal commitment to their bodies as to their voices. This theater makes art of the entirety of our evolution—biological, linguistic, and cultural—and represents the ultimate artistic elevation of the human spirit. This is the theater I strive to create. I believe the director is ultimately responsible for providing the distinct, guiding perspective of a production. A strong director brings the audience a cogent, well-reasoned interpretation of the play and ensures consistency among the actors and design elements to create a production that is clear and effective. To do this well, a director must explore the history of the play and the playwright's inspiration as well as look for corollaries to the play’s style and subject in other media, culture and intellectual ideas, and ultimately, compile this information into a coherent blueprint for realizing the world and presenting the themes of the play. It is precisely this studied, integrative aspect of directing that I am most attracted to, and, I believe, that makes me a strong director.
Lazarus, Joan. "On the Verge of Change: New Directions in Secondary Theatre Education." Applied Theatre Research 3.2 (July 2015): 149-161. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1386/atr.3.2.149_1.
I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of how theater is more than a performance, but rather an art form with nuance and depth. I’ve been introduced to the Brechtian theater style, and I’ve learned more about the musical theatre style. After studying RENT, I am inspired by the various possibilities for theater beyond acting, singing, and dancing. Theater can be used as a form of activism or commemoration. Theater is so much more than a dramatic presentation. Theater can relay a greater purposeful message about society amidst the theatricals on stage. Brechtian and musical theatre styles are two efficient and ideal methods for raising awareness about social phenomenons and issues because Brecht’s style makes the audience think and analyze the purposes and themes, while musical theatre is a medium that communicates those matters to reach large
A play consists of many people. Each and every person serves a purpose to create a production. It is important that each individual has the same idea and if not, to express and contribute those ideas to the cast and crew. Each play is unique. A stage manager is a key aspect to a play. In Thorton Wilder’s Our Town, he is a man of many roles whom is far from the traditional, whether it be his purpose as a role, his manner of narrating or even how he includes the audience, he goes above and beyond his usual functions.
When Chapman's play begins, the social status of the characters appears to be a fixed matter. Lysander and Cynthia are wedded and the order of a well-balanced society (Tricomi, 1973, p354), and the younger Tharsalio openly states his lower social rank: “You'll say, I was the page to the Count her husband. ”(1,1,73). Yet, he shows no shame in expressing his desire to access fortune and higher status by marrying the countess Eudora, and moreover has little doubt in his capacities: “I thereby have one foot in her favor already; she has taken note of my spirit and surveyed my good parts, and the picture of them lives in her eye; which sleep, I know, cannot close, till she have embraced the substance. ”(1,1,74-78).
I feel strongly that the importance of representation onstage is critical to the mission of broadening the types of people that can be influenced
Technical Theatre class was a great learning experience for me. When I first signed up for the class, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I had always been quite clumsy, and I’d never been very handy; so I didn’t think I would be of much use to the set building process. However, before the building process began, the class was taught how to properly and safely use power tools. Being educated on how to handle the equipment made me feel a lot more confident. Now, I’m proud of myself because I ended up getting a lot of work done that I didn’t think I was capable of.
A mere mention of the term theatre acts as a relief to many people. It is in this place that a m...
I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of how theater is more than a mere performance, but rather an artform with nuance and depth. My knowledge on theatrical styles has expanded and some of my favorites we have studied in class are Brechtian and Chinese theatre styles. I grew up participating in musical theatre, but never had the opportunity to truly learn the history and details of the craft. After studying RENT, I am inspired by the various possibilities for theater beyond acting, singing, and dancing. Theater can be used for activism or as a form of commemoration. Theater is relevant by communicating issues to the world. Theater is so much more than a dramatic presentation. The theater that I have come to appreciate the most are the performances that relay a greater purposeful message about society amidst the theatricals on
In the seventies, we could do anything. It was the rainbow coalition, anti-Vietnam, all of those elements. And then we morphed over to where it became extremely straight-laced and non-risk taking. I think we are beginning to take risks again but within those societal norms.” Theatre only goes so far as society will allow it, as showcased by the Conservatory and it being influenced by the culture surrounding it.
“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.
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