The Busy Body, a play by Susanna Centlivre was performed at the Clarence Brown Theatre in March 2016, and showcased a comedic performance filled with themes of arranged marriages, trickery, patriarchal society, and most importantly romance. Director John Sipes’s vision of the play successfully came to life through the stage design, costume design, and acting. It was clear that the director, actors, and designers worked extremely hard on the development of the production by paying close attention to the text and analyzing what was given to them by the playwright. The performance did not only initiate many moments of laughter, but also reminded the audience of how influential powerful figures are and how gender inequality has been a longtime …show more content…
time issue which continues to affect women and men every day. The romantic plot was also a significant catalyst to the humor found in the story which also showed us that there is no boundaries when it comes to love. The stage design of this production could be argued to be both great, but also underwhelming. The design was ordinary and simplistic to a point in which it did not match the greatness of other parts of the show like the costumes and the language of the play. What made the stage design simple and ordinary were things like the panels that represented the windows in the homes of the characters because it seemed like the designers just simply glued a blue piece of paper to the panel hoping it would look like a sky. The windows did not look realistic and it just seemed like there wasn’t much attention given to the construction of them. In the first couple of scenes, there were also some wooden flat panels that were painted to look like trees. Once again these panels did not look realistic at all and there was no dimension to them. On the other hand, there were other aspects of the stage design which could thought of as being creative, interesting, and time efficient like the three background panels which helped changed the scenes throughout the play. Those panels had a combination of extraordinary painting and dimensional objects/props which somewhat added some excitement to the average stage design. Maybe a reason why the director chose to have such a simple stage design was for it to not take away from the acting and the costumes which seems like a great decision, but at the same time it was so simple that it did not coherently match other aspects of the show. The stage design was average and did not add anything exciting to the overall production. When it comes to the costumes design, John Sipes did an amazing job in providing the costume design team the inspiration and the main concept of what he envision the costumes to look like for this production. The costume design team created some of the most beautiful clothing pieces ever shown at the Clarence Brown Theatre. What made the costumes so extraordinary were how realistic they looked to the time period the play was set. All of the female actresses wore glamorous dresses which included corsets, pushed up French cut neckline, petticoat, and small heeled shoes. The male actor wore waist coats, collars, cravats, breeches, and boots. All of those components created the outfits that people wore during the restoration era in England. What made the outfits stand out where the colors of fabric used for each piece of clothing. None of the characters on stage blended in with each other as they all wore pieces of clothing which made them unique and also helped them express their personality to the audience. The wigs, mustaches, and makeup looked absolutely stunning and helped the characters come to life on stage. Unlike the stage design, the costumes played a huge role in maintaining the attention of audience alive because they were unique, creative, colorful, unforgettable, and astonishing to the human eye. The acting in this production was mostly strong, but there were room for improvements as well.
The strongest part about the acting was how well the actors used their body movements and physical expression to disclose their character to the audience. It was evident that the director and actors worked hard in the development of the characters by showcasing their objectives not only through the language, but also with their bodies. In a comedic play like, The Busy Body, it is even more detrimental for the characters to work on their vocal variety and to correctly move their bodies in order for the text to sink in the audience’s brain and make them laugh. The language and body movements have to correlate with each other for the whole performance to make sense and be funny. A great example of an actor who did an incredible job with their language and body movements was Charles Pasternak who played the character of “Marplot”. Charles brought his character to life by accurately using his voice and body to portray his character’s emotions. Throughout his performance his voice pitch changed from low to high in order to show excitement or to emphasize certain words. His facial expression and the way he moved his body were key to bringing comedy to the show. The only aspect of the performance that needed improvements were the speech clarity from some of the actors. It is so essential for the language to be clear in any production so that the audience can clearly understand what is …show more content…
going on. Unfortunately, there were a couple of actor who needed more work in the development of the dialect and the clarity of their speech. Perfection is impossible, but it so important for all the actors to be clearly understood so that the text/language can move the audience. John Sipes’s production of The Busy Body showcased an eventful story that portrayed what is was like to be a women in England’s restoration time period.
Sipes’s vision was able to move the audience and arouse comedy through the choices of stage design, costume design, and acting. With the help of collaborators, his vision transformed into a comedic story which showed the audience that women are not just objects that can be owned by men. Women are powerful, independent, and clever enough to get themselves out of a bad situation. This story is an example of how influential society is in the way people are perceived, but also how important it is to push and break societal norms in order to become a more accepting
world.
The play Sisters, by Wendy Lill, is set in 20th century Nova Scotia at an Indian Residential School. The play focuses on a hopeful 17-year-old farm girl named Mary who was dating Louis at the time. Along with the present Mary who is currently in interrogation with, the duty counsel, Stein. She has been accused of torching down the Residential School, the place where she worked for fifteen years. There are various factors contributing to the impulsive reasoning behind Sister Mary’s act of burning down the Residential School such as, the actual truth to why she committed the sin, the contrast relationships with others that reflected upon her actions, and the overall punishment she should receive.
The ways in which Bridesmaids rejects patriarchal structures while simultaneously supporting them establishes a unique ideology: in order to meet the cultural comedic conception, these female characters reject particular standards of patriarchy, but the ways in which they do so successfully are due to their adherence to masculine norms and symbolic reversal (Buckley 19). Thus, Bridesmaids resists the male gaze and gives women empowerment to take the an active role in comedy, liberating them in the sense that it equates their humor to that of men’s, to embody new forms of feminine desire for women in cinema. In response to the men at the beginning of this essay who would say Bridesmaids doesn’t deliver this, Tina Fey has some words for them, “We don’t fucking care if you like it” (Moss).
Led by Laura Mulvey, feminist film critics have discussed the difficulty presented to female spectators by the controlling male gaze and narrative generally found in mainstream film, creating for female spectators a position that forces them into limited choices: "bisexual" identification with active male characters; identification with the passive, often victimized, female characters; or on occasion, identification with a "masculinized" active female character, who is generally punished for her unhealthy behavior. Before discussing recent improvements, it is important to note that a group of Classic Hollywood films regularly offered female spectators positive, female characters who were active in controlling narrative, gazing and desiring: the screwball comedy.
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-31. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 11 May 2011.
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
Throughout the plays, the reader can visualize how men dismiss women as trivial and treat them like property, even though the lifestyles they are living in are very much in contrast. The playwrights, each in their own way, are addressing the issues that have negatively impacted the identity of women in society.
Women and men are not equal. Never have been, and it is hard to believe that they ever will be. Sexism permeates the lives of women from the day they are born. Women are either trying to fit into the “Act Like a Lady” box, they are actively resisting the same box, or sometimes both. The experience of fitting in the box and resisting the box can be observed in two plays: Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and Henrick Ibsen’s “A Doll House”. In Hansberry’s play, initially, Beneatha seems uncontrolled and independent, but by the end she is controlled and dependent; whereas, in Ibsen’s play Nora seems controlled and dependent at the beginning of the play, but by the end she is independent and free.
On April 12, 2014 at 7:30 pm, I gratefully attended the musical Guys and Dolls at Ouachita Baptist University's auditorium. Directed by Daniel Inouye, this wonderful play is based on the story and characters of Damon Runyan. These stories which were written in the 1920s and 1930s, involved gangsters, gamblers, and other characters from the New York underworld. The premiere of Guys and Dolls on Broadway was in 1950 where it ran 1200 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical had many Broadway revivals and was even turned into a film in 1955.
A Doll House, by Henrik Ibsen, and A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, both have central themes of search of self-identity within a social system. This is demonstrated by women characters from both plays breaking away from the social standards of their times and acting on their own terms. In most situations women are to be less dominant than men in society. These two plays are surprisingly different from the views of women in society and of the times and settings that they take place in.
When deciding what element a play should contain, one must look at a large variety of options. These options can alter how the audience depicts the play and change their overall opinions. Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” is a play set around 1895 where the protagonist, Jack Worthing, takes on two identities in order to avoid social obligations. This play’s era affects how the characters are dressed and how their households appear.
Play is such an important part of the learning and growing, especially for children. Children engage in many different types of play, but the play I saw the most when I observe the children of my daycare is sociodramatic play. The book Understanding Dramatic Play by Judith Kase-Polisini defines sociodramatic play as “both players must tacitly or openly agree to act out the same drama” (Kase-Polisini 40). This shows that children play with each other and make their worlds together as equal creators. Children also work together without argument. There is also some personal play involved in their sociodramatic play. The children involved in the play worked to make a family having dinner, which is great example of how this will prepare them for
funny parts of the play by creating confusion within characters and lowering the intensity of the
After reading “The Doll House” and “Trifles”, the idea of females being inferior to men is portrayed. Both plays, are in a much older time period. But from a feminist view, females are still sometimes given the doubtful role in today’s society. Both plays, are very different, but much alike in the ways the females are treated, never taken seriously, nor are they appreciated.
According to “The Art of the Actor: The Essential History of Acting, from Classical Times to the Present Day” by Jean Benedetti, “Acting is a way of showing our understanding of the world and passing it on to other people” (1). Such affirmation has proven itself to be true if history is taken into consideration. One of the oldest forms of art and career throughout history, acting has established itself as one of the most prominent and yet unstable careers of all times. Its vast history provides anyone who dares to become an actor with a great understanding of the different societies throughout the years and profound meaning to why, despite all adversities, it is still one of the most wanted careers. More than only a job, and differently from many work fields, acting is about passion and the ability to transmit reality within fantasy. But why acting? Because it is a career related to every other existing one; and being successful in it requires more than what one would think.
...stand-up formula, “men are like this, women are like this.” It seems that there are certain unchangeable and permanent systems in place. Just as comedy has the power to solidify these assumptions, it also has the opportunity to force an audience to reconsider the reasoning behind the concepts we apply to dating. This is the central reasoning behind my creative piece, which seeks to make an audience realize how backwards this way of thinking can be.