Picasso at the Lapin Agile
From the time you enter the Falk Theatre, until the curtain rises and falls on the production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile, you are in for a treat. The play is an original work by Steve Martin with a running time of 90minutes, which feels more like 30minutes. Aside from the uncomfortable seating, this production is nothing short of wonderful. The Theatre has been transformed from a long movie Theater atmosphere to a quaint surrounding by means of risers that are placed directly on the stage. The new seating divides the old Theater in half and allows for the actors and the audience to share the same space. Not only this atmosphere that makes it wonderful but also the performances, the direction, the design and the script.
Set in France in 1904, the stage is a French bar called the “Lapin Agile”, with the action of the plot involving the characters who come into the bar and their relationship to time as well as each other. The script is an abstract look at the chance meeting of historical
figures and the role these meetings will have on the future. Perhaps one of the most attractive aspects of the script is its ability to ask the same questions of the audience that it does from one character to another. For example, the owner of the “Lapin Agile”, Freddy attempts to stump Albert Einstein with a mathematical problem that the audience couldn’t have enough time to equate. This style of fast paced dialogue and action fills the entire script fr...
...ition to costume, language and dialogue is what fixes the atmosphere and the action. In a manner very similar to Shakespeare, Calderón weaves description of the scene and of what is occurring into the main thrust of the play. In this sense, he is more than a poet, he is a dramatic craftsman who predominantly through his verse alone, creates a drama in its own right. All the clues to the plot and its themes lie in the text; the use of staging, costume, music and props can be used to enhance what lies in the script. What they give to the play is a fuller and more entertaining dramatic production. Thus, if used sensitively and intelligently by a director, these factors can increase the dramatic power of the work. The primary focus, however, remains the language, which relies on a high standard of acting in order to do justice to the subtleties of the play.
It is imperative to understand the significance of the profound effects these elements have on the audience’s response to the play. Without effective and accurate embodiments of the central themes, seeing a play becomes an aimless experience and the meaning of the message is lost. Forgiveness and redemption stand as the central themes of the message in The Spitfire Grill. Actors communicate character development through both nonverbal and verbal cues; their costumes serve as a visual representation of this development by reflecting the personal transformation of each character. In the case of The Spitfire Grill, set design is cut back to allow for the audience’s primary focus to be on the actors and their story. Different from set design, the use of sound and lights in The Spitfire Grill, establishes the mood for the play. In other words, every theatrical element in a play has a purpose; when befittingly manipulated, these elements become the director’s strongest means of expressing central themes, and therefore a means of achieving set objectives. Here again, The Spitfire Grill is no exception. With the support of these theatrical elements, the play’s themes of forgiveness and redemption shine as bright as the moon on
Cyrano de Bergerac, written by Edmond Rostand, is a play about a poetic swordsman with a bad temper, an attitude, and a hideously long nose. As one reads along in this drama, one will find that the people are different in the way they speak, dress, and socialize. With the characters in this book living in 17th century France, it is not a wonder that their customs are far removed from ours today. Cyrano de Bergerac has three cultural themes: attitude, social status, and dress. The attitude of this play is very interesting.
Cyrano de Bergerac, the Play vs. Roxane, the Movie In an effort to attract the audience of today, the producers of the movie Roxane retold the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rustond in a way that is appropriate and at the same time appealing. In order to give the audience of today a story that they can understand and relate to, the producers have adjusted and manipulated the play itself. As a result, several similarities and differences exist between the play Cyrano de Bergerac and its movie reproduction. The characteristics of a romantic hero in Rustond’s time are not equivalent to the characteristics of a romantic hero today.
Maupassant, Guy De. “An Adventure in Paris”. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Cassill, RV. New York: Norton & Company, Inc. 2000. 511-516 Print.
In another budgetary adaptation, the film crew, lacking the funds for cranes and dollies to do moving and panning shots, quickly switched between multiple shots for dynamic dialog, giving a certain frenzied feel to the dialog interactions (Hervey 38). The style this lends to th...
The script’s opening image defines the film’s POV, by using the camera to subjectively identify our protagonist’s recent affliction as he awakens paralyzed from a stroke induced coma. Jean-Dominique Bauby, a.k.a. Jean-Do, is informed of his condition by the doctor. He is unable to respond to the doctor’s questions, which sets-up the conflict that he will struggle to communicate his thoughts throughout the script. As Jean-Do looks around his hospital room, we are informed by pictures and drawings beside his bed that he was a successful editor of a fashion magazine who led a comfortable and pleasurable lifestyle. There are images of his children alongside drawings that they have made for him. There is a sense of hopelessness and despair expressed through his interior monologue when he asks, “Is this life”? There are several unified themes stated in the opening pages of the script. First, there is a bell heard in the distance which informs the reader that our protagonist is trying to somehow communicate with others, but cannot do so throug...
[8] Brown, Frederick. Theater and Revolution: The Culture of the French Stage. New York: Viking, 1980. Print.
The French Neo Classical era of theatre has influenced today’s society in a number of ways including woman’s fashion, dance, architecture and theatre performance. We have seen this throughout history and it still has continued into today’s society.
Primarily, the overall environment of the play was welcoming. The Augusta Conradi Studio Theatre building was relatively small and no more than a hundred ninety seats. The stage arrangement was a classic stage setup. The stage was presented on a proscenium stage with stairs and ramps on both sides. The atmosphere of the building was fine and felt like a theatre should have. The theater was also clean and well-polished. The ceilings were high however the temperature inside the building was a little hot. Since the theater was rather small the stage felt more like a school play rather than a big play production but that soon changed as the actors stepped on the stage.
This play brings out the differences between the upper class to that of the middle class and lower class people. Moreover, the characters’ follies and foolishness lies at the core of this drama. Deceit and lies, love and marriage are also some major themes in this drama. There are three acts in this drama, all interlinked with each other. The first act of this drama introduces us to the main characters, their complications and sufferings. There are more complications in the second act. These complications lead the plot to its climax and finally the happy conclusion in the final act. The plot of this play is based on inconsistent actions, unbelievable characters and coincidences. The plot is compact and closely knit but the audiences appreciate the play not because of its unity of scenes but due to the art of characterization employed in the play by Wilde.
Mise en scene is a French theatrical term meaning “placing on stage,” or more accurately, the arrangement of all visual elements of a theatrical production within a given playing area or stage. The exact area of a playing area or stage is contained by the proscenium arch, which encloses the stage in a picture frame of sorts. However, the acting area is more ambiguous and acts with more fluidity by reaching out into the auditorium and audience. Whatever the margins of the stage may be, mise en scene is a three dimensional continuation of the space an audience occupies consisting of depth, width, and height. No matter how hard one tries to create a separate dimension from the audience, it is in vain as the audience always relates itself to the staging area. Mise en scene in movies is slightly more complicated than that of an actual theater, as it is a compilation of the visual principles of live theater in the form of a painting, hence the term “motion picture.” A filmmaker arranges objects and people within a given three-dimensional area as a stage director would. However, once it is photographed, the three-dimensional planes arranged by the director are flattened to a two-dimensional image of the real thing. This eliminates the third dimension from the film while it is still occupied by the audience, giving a movie the semblance of an audience in an art gallery. This being so, mis en scene in movies is therefore analogous to the art of painting in that an image of formal patterns and shapes is presented on a flat surface and is enclosed within a frame with the addition of that image having the ability to move freely within its confines. A thorough mise en scene evaluation can be an analysis of the way things are place on stage in...
...cally to less formally constrained entertainments. While the classical ideal set its sights on the universal, they welcomed plays which satirised contemporary French manners and topical events, like Moliere’s.
---. “Structure in Beckett’s theatre.” Yale French Studies. Vol. 46. Yale University Press, 1971. 17-27. JSTOR. 20 Mar. 2004.
Theatre as we know it now was born more than two thousand years ago and has gone through many streams until it reached the current modernity. Among these streams is the avant-garde theatre. This theatre achieved a break in the traditional theatre and became the forefront of a new experimental theatre. Therefore it is necessary to ask how this theatre started, what impact it had on society and if this type of theatre is still common in our modern era.