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Recommended: Theatre history
In the wee hours of the morning time moved like dripping tar. The saturnine darkness slinked into every fissure, every crevice of the old theater corrupting all that it touched. A lonesome stage stood waiting for an actor, a comedian, a singer, or any artist to once again use its firm platform to entertain a new. Long had the theater lay dormant. Too many years had passed since the last play had worked its magic for an enthralled audience. Without warning the sound of sobbing broke the quiet of night. Beneath the stage a wretched man lay captive within a small cell. His hair matted, his face dirty and unshaven, his eyes were blood shot from endless tears. And then he jumped like an animal to cling from the bars. He tossed his head back to howl …show more content…
There were actors of all descriptions and sizes and experience waiting for their chance. As always, Jacob and Michele would struggle to be noticed. The two friends talked, fidgeted, and listed back and forth from one foot to the other while they awaited their turn to audition. Jacob pulled at his shirt in an empty effort to release the pent up heat. His face flushed red as he began to rant, to …show more content…
Like so many times before, Jacob and Michele waited for a chance to prove they were the best. The line had moved so slowly, but at last he and Michele had made it into the lobby. Jacob had hoped that the interior of the theater would have brought relief from the oppressive heat. He had been mistaken. The air seemed all the more stagnant within the interior. The sights and smells of people bustling about prepping for an upcoming performance filled the little theater. Jacob knew that the play he would audition for meant so much to a great many people. The theater had a historic past, but had been closed for many years. In recent months the charming little playhouse had been spirited back to life. A throng of volunteers had seen to it, and now the first play to hit its stage in over a decade at last would be cast. Jacob and Michele hoped that they would find success, and land major roles in the upcoming performance. It would mean so much to their careers that had so far
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.
I also don't own the idea, it was requested to me by the wonderful Amanda. Thank you so much! I hope I did this idea justice.
The acting for this play was successful in its goal. The actors were more than successful in making their characters seem credible and convincing. As each actor played their numerous amount of characters, I was convinced that each character was different and it wasn’t someone acting as someone else. I truly believed the actors were their actual characters. What benefited
This play shows the importance of the staging, gestures, and props making the atmosphere of a play. Without the development of these things through directions from the author, the whole point of the play will be missed. The dialog in this play only complements the unspoken. Words definitely do not tell the whole story.
At first glance, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America appear to serve as two individual exercises in the absurd. Varying degrees of the fantastical and bizarre drives the respective stories, and their respective conclusions hardly serve as logical resolutions to the questions that both Beckett and Kushner’s characters pose throughout the individual productions. Rather than viewing this abandonment of reality as the destination of either play, it should be seen as a method used by both Beckett and Kushner to force the audience to reconsider their preconceived notions when understanding the deeper emotional subtext of the plays. By presenting common and relatable situations such as love, loss, and the ways in which humans deal with change and growth, in largely unrecognizable packaging, Kushner and Beckett are able to disarm their audience amidst the chaos of the on stage action. Once the viewer’s inclination to make assumptions is stripped by the fantastical elements of either production, both playwrights provide moments of emotional clarity that the audience is forced to distill, analyze, and ultimately, comprehend on an individual level.
When my father and I first settled in the theater, I immediately scanned the crowd. On the way to the production I envisioned, as superficial as it may seem, an auditorium crammed with African Americans and college students. But to my surprise, the majority of the playhouse flooded with middle‑aged Caucasian people. With suits and dresses on, clearly they were financially well off. On the contrary, I only observed a few African American people. I expected that more African American families would attend a play that pertained so relevantly to their past. Nevertheless, the demographics still posed an interesting point about who goes to these plays.
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.
directors, and choreographers who held private auditions for the opportunity to make it in theater or even in Hollywood. The hotel, much to the maintenance department's chagrin, would be required to remove all furniture from every room on the first floor as these rooms were used for the auditions. It was a wonderful piece of business during a slow time of year. The hotel sold every guest room for a span of four days and served hundreds of lunches to all the participants. Upon entering one of the audition rooms Throwback and Silly were taken by surprise. They saw this beautiful young lady with her head firmly entrenched in the lap of a director. Apparently, these directors and producers were living up to their reputations of being complete dirt bags. Over the years, the staff learned that this was more of a common practice than anyone could have imagined. The entire industry, referred to by the operation servers as the “Empire of Sleaze”, gave everyone the creeps, and they cautioned all the young applicants to its pitfalls.
One dark rainy night macduff was running through the streets trying to control his thoughts. He passes by macbetś castle and decides to stop and speak. He realizes there are many people around the castle. He buzzes to get into the castle and the weird sisters stop macduff at the gate. They start with a regular conversation. The weird sisters start to act funny and Macduff questioned what was wrong. The weird sisters begin to explain how they were in the castle and saw Lady macbeth sleepwalking. They spoke on how she was talking about Macbeth killing King Duncan. The weird sisters believed she was upset and guilty about what Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have done. Macduff runs off.
On stage, these points were, looking at the opinions of a majority of both the audiences and the critics, presented successfully by Brook and the cast he worked with. From the prison guards who loomed in the background, clothed in butcher aprons and armed with clubs, to the half-naked Marat, slouched in a tub and covered in wet rags, forever scratching and writing, to the small group of singers, dressed and painted up as clowns, to the narcoleptic but murderous Charlotte Corday, Weiss and Brook offered a stage production that both engaged and amazed the audience, while at the same time forced them to question their role as the audience; no better exemplified than at the very end of the play, where the inmates, standing menacingly at the edge of the stage, actually begin to applaud the very people who applaud their performance, aggravating and confusing some, but forcing most t...
A mere mention of the term theatre acts as a relief to many people. It is in this place that a m...
“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.
Imagine this following scene: You are sitting in a dark, fairly crowded large room. There are hundreds of other people, in hundreds of other seats surrounding you. In front of you, there is a large stage, with people acting out a play. Lights, music, and different sound effects set the mood of the play for you to understand more clearly what is going on. With these certain conventions, viewer can get a real grasp of a story in which several actors are trying to portray. However, it hasn’t always been this easy to enjoy a play in a theater. Theatre and plays go back as far as “b.c.” times.
When discussing the poetic form of dramatic monologue it is rare that it is not associated with and its usage attributed to the poet Robert Browning. Robert Browning has been considered the master of the dramatic monologue. Although some critics are skeptical of his invention of the form, for dramatic monologue is evidenced in poetry preceding Browning, it is believed that his extensive and varied use of the dramatic monologue has significantly contributed to the form and has had an enormous impact on modern poetry. "The dramatic monologues of Robert Browning represent the most significant use of the form in postromantic poetry" (Preminger and Brogan 799). The dramatic monologue as we understand it today "is a lyric poem in which the speaker addresses a silent listener, revealing himself in the context of a dramatic situation" (Murfin 97). "The character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener at a dramatic moment in the speaker's life. The circumstances surrounding the conversation, one side which we "hear" as the dramatic monologue, are made by clear implication, and an insight into the character of the speaker may result" (Holman and Harmon 152).