Star of the Sea
Draíocht Arts Centre, Dublin
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Adapted from Joseph O’Connor’s 2004 novel of the same title, “Star of the Sea”, follows the journey of a chambermaid Mary Duane, landlord David Meredith, and the suspected murderer Pius Mulvey on board a famine ship in 1847 as it sets sail from Cobh to New York. This bi-lingual production from Moonfish Theatre Company, has been made accessible to non-Irish speakers through the clever use of projections, and live sound effects which creates a wonderfully impressive performance.
The deliberately sparse stage is offset by sound and visual projection apparatus at either side of the stage, where the six actors break in and out of character to operate the machinery which is so important in the
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Digitally written live on stage it was a unique visual spectacle of the production, while also giving the audience important information. There was also the use of an over-head projector in which they created shadow play, another ingenious use of technology by Moonfish. Another interesting prop used in this production were stones in which each actor would break character in order to place a stone in a pile at the front of the stage, each representing a person lost to the brutality of the Great Famine. During the play you see the pile of rocks are ever growing as names families, brothers, sisters, husbands, and wives are read out, really emphasising the amount of people lost during this period in Irish History. Rope was used to give the impression of the bow of the ship, which was an effective way of creating the essence of a ship with so few …show more content…
The six actors on set take on many different characters during the performance, which is simply done by a quick costume change to signal the change in character. An example of this is in Zita Monahan’s portrayal of the devious Pius Mulvey and her performance as Laura, David Meredith’s wife. The outstanding performances and the quick transition between characters are so fluid that you hardly notice there are only six actors playing a multitude of characters, some even having cross-gender
Looking at the convention Mulitmedia, Stibbard used sound and projections. The space Stibbard used was large and was all painted black, like a floor plan, he would draw in his props with white chalk, he would pause the play to explain what he just drew, this goes on to V-effekt. Back to stagecraft, everything was in plain view, the projector stayed on stage the entire time. The set is split into three sections, a square for Thom’s apartment, a square for Alethea’s apartment, and a corridor where the days of the week are. The lighting on set is used for location, to locate
The book A Place Where the Sea Remembers, by Sandra Benitez, is told from a variety of different perspectives. All the characters live in a small town called Santiago, a Mexican village by the sea. The community struggles with social injustice, discrimination towards women, poverty, and finding hope for the future. One example involves Marta, a 15-year-old girl, who is raped and becomes pregnant. She does not want the baby, so her sister and brother-in-law offer to take the baby. Shorty after her sister agrees, however, she finds out she is pregnant, too, and comes to the realization that she can no longer take her sister’s baby. Through this conflict, other characters are affected, too. Additional conflicts are interwoven and are ultimately
The book Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas by Solnit and Snedeker it not an atlas of roads, but a journey through the sights, smells, and heritage of the great city of New Orleans through maps and essays. Within it are the essays “When They Set the Sea on Fire” by Antonia Juhasz about the BP oil spill in the Gulf. As well as “No Sweetness is Light” by Shirley Thompson about the sugarcane industry in New Orleans. The two essays compare greatly in the concepts of deception, greed, and the cause of sickness. The artifice in these essays bring so much false hope and suffering to the people of New Orleans.
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea: True Order Exists in the Exposed Core
Alistair Macleod’s “The Boat” is a tale of sacrifice, and of silent struggle. A parent’s sacrifice not only of their hopes and dreams, but of their life. The struggle of a marriage which sees two polar opposites raising a family during an era of reimagining. A husband embodying change and hope, while making great sacrifice; a wife gripped in fear of the unknown and battling with the idea of losing everything she has ever had. The passage cited above strongly presents these themes through its content
When writing the book Into the Killing Seas, Michael P. Spradlin accurately explained the details and the historical value of the sinking of the U.S.S Indianapolis. Additionally, it's clear that he did a lot of research on his topic of the sinking of the U.S.S Indianapolis and what the remaining sailors had to deal with to survive. Switching Gears, his book is not only based on the WW2 sinking of the Indy, but The battles of Guam. He accurately described the terror people in history felt when the attacks happened.
The stage was in proscenium form so it allowed most audience members to have the same amount of viewing as others throughout the theater. Due to the theatre space being so small and intimate, it created the relevant atmosphere of everything on stage happening to be small.
When you first enter the theater, you are immediately in awe of the strongest aspect of this production: the set. The stage features a life-sized enchanted forest with “tress” as tall as the ceiling and a lit-up backdrop of a twilight sky. The tress would move around throughout the performance to make way for different scenes. In front of your very eyes, an enchanted forest would turn into the outside of a charming house with a lit porch and a well. The twilight sky would turn to a starlit sky and a soft spotlight simulating moonlight would compliment the faint sound of crickets. Suddenly the house and tress move around and you’re in a town with a little cart selling baguettes, or a lush dining room with Victorian wallpaper, a chandelier, and china displayed on the walls. The world shakes once again and now you’re in, inevitably, a ballroom. A white Victorian gate opens up to become the walls of the ballroom, and a white marble bridge and staircase appear for the outside of the castle. Adults and children alike were in awe of the craftsmanship and technology.
The lighting was also very effectively used to show the coming and going of cars on the set. The reflection of lights on the front door of the house were used resemble those of an automobile. Even the final scene had just enough absence of light that the shadows of the characters could be seen sitting around the dinner table and praying by candlelight. At the very end of the performance the candles were extinguished consuming the set in blackness in turn signifying the end of the production.
Throughout the history of the theatre its technology has helped to convey the story, amaze the audience, and to, at times, make the theatrical performance possible. Over the ages we have seen the growth of theatre shown in its technology, namely its staging, costumes, scenery, and lighting. We will trace the development and growth of these technologies from Ancient Greece through the end of the eighteenth-century.
Stanton, Sarah, and Martin Banham. Cambridge paperback guide to theatre. Cambridge [etc. : Cambridge university press, 1996. Print.
In the play, all the characters understand their parts. This did a nice job of portraying their characters. For example, Monica who played Ella know her character well that she could put herself in the role of Ella. During the show, she always kept a good pace. Next is Nathan who played Topher have a good character body
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.
Postcolonial literature often emphasizes the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, emerging at the same time that many colonies were fighting their way to independence. Postcolonial writers, especially those who are from Africa, South Asia, and Caribbean, "wrote back" to the empire to challenge the imperial assumptions that had justified colonialism in the first place. Wide Sargasso Sea of Jean Rhys is the prequel of Jane Eyre, which tells the story of Rochester's mad wife Bertha Mason. Wide Sargasso Sea is such a novel written by the formerly colonized people who attempt to “articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past's inevitable otherness” (Ciolkowski 344). It tends to correct the imagined image that the colonizer imposed on them and in the meanwhile resists and even subverts the colonizing authority. This paper studies how Jean Rhys's postcolonial text, Wide Sargasso Sea, reveals the issues of racial conflict and gender oppression under the discourse of Eurocentrism, and challenges the colonizing authority by the subversive power of black language.
Derek Walcott, acclaimed Caribbean author, writes to make sense of the legacy of deep colonial damage. Born in 1930 in the island of St. Lucia, Walcott has a melancholic relationship with Caribbean history which shapes the way he carefully composes within “The Sea is History.” Walcott’s application of Biblical allusions seeks to revise and restore Caribbean identity.