plays
Random thoughts from an over-tired mind:
I once did a monologue for acting class from Eric Overmyer's overlooked play Native Speech...I played the Hungry Mother part...a kind of deranged dj obsessing on America.
Hmmm...
I'll never forget seeing an evening of one-act plays by Sam Shepard done by students at the Black Box Theater at Macalester College in St. Paul....that was probably 1984, and those plays felt like the most radical experiences I'd ever had....here's Shepard's mis-en-scene for his play Cowboy Mouth...it'll give you the raw flavor of his early stuff:
A year later I saw Romanian director Liviu Ciulei's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. There's really no way to describe the mood that evening other than to say the theater lobby had been filled with huge copies of the paintings of the Belgian painter....Paul Delvaux. To say that Ciulei took us to another world would be an understatement. Oberon and Titania made their entrance on a glass bed that descended from the ceiling. For a sixteen year old, it was eye-opening. The play, the acting, the world that Ciulei created.
I don't know why I'm thinking about theater. There's something about going to a small black room with a bunch of other people and watching a play. There's something about acting that is raw and naked.
In contrast to the hype and the bluster, the jadedness of our visual culture...a culture of which I'm a part... there's something primal and immediate and oppositional that can get expressed in plays like no other art.
Funny thing, the idea that walking into a theater could change your life.
Hmmm...
"A fucked-up bed center stage...Scattered all around on the floor is miscellaneous debris: hubcaps, an old tire, raggedy costumes, a boxful of ribbons, lots of letters, a pink telephone, a bottle of Nescafé, a hot plate. Seedy wallpaper with pictures of cowboys peeling off the wall. Photographs of Hank Williams and Jimmie Rogers. Stuffed dolls, crucifixes...A funky set of drums to one side of the stage. An electric guitar and amplifier on the other side. Rum, beer, white lightning, Sears catalogue.
I don't know why I'm thinking about theater. There's something about going to a small black room with a bunch of other people and watching a play. There's something about acting that is raw and naked.
In contrast to the hype and the bluster, the jadedness of our visual culture...a culture of which I'm a part... there's something primal and immediate and oppositional that can get expressed in plays like no other art.
Funny thing, the idea that walking into a theater could change your life.
Comments
Funnier thing, the idea that walking into a theater shouldn't change your life. Playwrights started rocking the boat with Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Aeschylus' The Persians, if not before.
There is, unfortunately, an awful lot of truly awful garbage in the repertoire. But there are also a hell of a lot of giants.
I didn't do much theater in college (at least from an acting perspective), but I did enough that I still get pumped when I smell greasepaint, or that instantly recognizable (if undefinable) scent that every theater has.
Out here the NY Fringe is up again, so a timely post.
Anyway, thanks again for the great site. (I was anonfornow re: wkcr a few days ago.)
(Amongst other things, I make theater now as well; check the (new) site if you're interested. Click the burning book to enter.)
peace
Lysistrata and the Persians.
I can't help but add Cindy Sheehan, and her protest to that mix. (Someone mentioned Rosa Parks in rereference to Sheehan elsewhere...there's something to that.)
The image of a woman standing alone...in opposition to power and war...in opposition to the status quo...in opposition to men's lies.
It's where drama and politics mix.
And it's of the moment.
I was back on campus because Rep Term XIII was going to be the last one with one of the originators of the idea, Ivan Davidson, who was to retire at the end of that academic year. I went back primarily for that--but also because of the two shows they were doing: Lysistrata and The Trojan Women. Two war plays, in the middle of a war, and both predominantly featuring female characters. They broke with the tradition of doing one modern play, and I couldn't have been happier.
I saw Trojan Women first. It's never been my favorite Greek tragedy (that would be Eumenides, on which I wrote my first master's thesis), but it was worth the trip down to Galesburg and the price of admission--and then some. Frankly, I don't know how those young women staggered off the stage at the end of the play--they'd been going full-out for more than two hours, with only a brief interval to recompose themselves.
Then they shifted sets, came back the following night, and did Lysistrata. Another outstanding production. I loved the fact that in the lobby outside the theater, in addition to the usual displays about the sets and costumes, they offered information about the histories of the wars depicted in the plays, and of warfare in the modern world. They very carefully, but very obviously, wanted to make the connection between the 2500-year-old plays they were putting on and the modern-day situation in which those productions were taking place.
I've rarely been prouder of my alma mater, or my theatre days there, than I was that weekend. (I blogged a bit on my own experiences with Rep Term, and the trip to see these two shows, here.)
That bit about the "Persians/Iraqis" is gold, and tragic at the same time...
because it's obvious we don't know the first thing about the Iraqi people...and there's no stage in D.C. or room in our Senate where that is going to get acknowledged.
The magic or theatre well done is unmatched in my life.
Interesting you should bring it up, kid.
Theatre isn't dead, it's just hibernating.
Definitly fits, "...the idea that walking into a theater could change your life."
Jesus Hopped he A Train
Performance at the Arts Theatre