Have you ever wondered how nuns in all the classic films always seemed so righteous? How they were always portrayed as a genuine devoted follower that would live without sin. Well Charles Busch’s play The Divine Sister directed by Kate Ingram, addresses that issue, as the nuns appear more human like and riddled with concealed identities. Kate Ingram is able to emphasize these with the script, aesthetic aspects, and the cooperation of the audience. With these human emotions being portrayed, the audience can connect and understand that everyone has some sort of secret that they are burdened with, and must eventually overcome. The play takes place around a rundown monastery named St. Veronicas during the 1960’s, in a time of social turmoil. The …show more content…
“The 1960’s were a period of incredible change and upheaval. The Beatles, the JFK, RFK, MLK assassinations, the Vietnam War, hippies…” (Kate Ingram). The setting proved most beneficiary as with all the social conflicts occurring in the play it would be only fitting to put it during the most socially revolutionary time period in history. Also the fact that the play is revolved around nuns and their life allowed it to draw influence from the classics. “The play is an homage to the myriad of nun movies and plays produced thought the twentieth century including Agnes of God, Doubt, Black Narcissus, The Bells of St. Mary’s, The Singing Nun, The Song of Bernadette, and The Sound of Music” (Teresa Kilzi). This play fits with others during its timeline as it is provocative and stimulates emotions that pushes boundaries just like what was occurring in the 1960’s. For instance, the scene where Mother Superior kisses Jeremy, or Sister Walburga and her want to have a threesome with God and Sister Acacius. Those ideas would have been seen as blasphemy in any period before the …show more content…
Your ticket told you which seat you were to be seated in, and the was also a person that would direct you to the right seat. The seats were comfy, but the rows were awfully close to each other leaving little leg room. The theatre was at a perfect temperature; it wasn’t too hot or cold. The acoustics of the theatre allowed the actors’ voices to be very audible at all times of the play. Immediately when the play began with an announcement for the Pope to hopefully come and see this play, the audience started laughing. The audience was filled with other theatre students and friends of the people in the play, and also some elderly there to enjoying a comical evening. Everybody in the audience despite their differences were laughing in unison at all the hilarious scenes. I have to admit there was multiple times where I was dying of laughter. The acting in the play was superb. Honestly everyone did an excellent job. Kody Grassett’s ability to act feminine like Mother Superior was amusing and realistic. Brianna Joseph’s dancing had myself laughing hysterically. Alexandra Voelmle’s portrayal of Agnes and her ability to switch from an innocent personality to her later sinful personality was impressive. The individual performances really showcased each actor’s strong suit which kept the audience intrigued the entire time. I can relate to all the characters as each one is struggling to showcase exactly how they want to be known to the
protagonist postulant Mariette Baptiste. Hansen’s challenges readers to explore beyond his descriptive narrative to find further meaning in the themes of suffering, power, and gender. Mariette Baptist represents a prideful, young woman who challenges and undercuts the Priory of The Sisters of The Crucifixion through her eccentric faith. Mariette’s piety generates discourse within the convent about the sincerity in her disposition for a religious life. The sisters are challenged to see Mariette’s faith as real and pure. Her religious practices involving self-inflicted penances disrupt the conventional ways of the priory. Furthermore, Mariette implores herself
McGlinn addresses the third dialectic taking hold of Blanche: illusion versus reality. McGlinn points out that, like all the women in Williams’s plays between 1940 and 1950, Blanche “refuses to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion.” [Tharpe, 513]. Although McGlinn is accurate in noting Blanche’s conflict between gentility and promiscuity, the result of which is “self-defeat instead of survival” [Tharpe, 513], she fails to see that Blanche lives in both illusion and reality simultaneously, and it is this dialectic that is the slow poison which destroys her. This death-instinct gives us the fourth and last dialectic in Blanche: her struggle between death and desire.”
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.
The play is set in the 1920s when women started to receive clerical jobs and were expected to complete certain milestones in life. For example, in the scene labeled “at home” young woman – the main character – tells her mom that she is going to get married, because everybody does it, but then says she will not because she does not love Mr. Jones (Machinal). Ultimately her choice was to not get married, but in the end she does because her mom needs and wants her to get married for financial stability and the young woman feels that her destiny was to care for her mother. However, in the scene titled “prohibited”, the young woman starts deciding her destiny and chooses to cheat on her husband, Mr. Jones (Machinal). This is the moment when she realizes she can control her own destiny. That she does not have to be the happy housewife that society says her fate has to be. But there was still one problem, society still appeared to be in control of her destiny because she hasn’t decided on what her exact destiny would
For a college production, the acting was outstanding. I really felt the emotions. The lead Wendla, who was played by KyLeigh Zimmerer, was amazing. I have also seen bits and pieces of the Broadway version which starred Lea Michelle, and obviously if I were to compare the acting, the Broadway version would be victorious. However, for a college production, these actors have limited past experience, but their acting was professional. Also, when they sang the song "Those You've Known," I felt chills and had goose bumps because that was such an emotional song. You could feel all the emotions and guilt Melchior, played by Ryan Ramirez, was feeling because both his best friend, Moritz, played by Justin Noblitt, and the girl he impregnated, Wendla, died and he believed he was to blame. Moritz committed suicide while Wendla died from a botch abortion her mom for...
Theater is acting, and each actor that was involved in this production was fantastic. Page Ogle who played Dolly did a very good job being a sweet talking, yet manipulative woman in the 1890s. I would have critiqued her on just one thing, slow down!
It was good setting to get the attention from the audience and also a way to move around or change settings of the play. Although I love this play my small critic for this play was the players. Some others actors had understandable accents but others didn’t. For example, the brother of the servant his accent was confusing because he kept switching his accent from different country languages. This play was really nice it had a little of bit of everything drama, comedy, romance, betrayal. What like about this play it was how they used the dramatic structure the inciting incident and the climax. The inciting incident for this play of musical comedy murders of 1940 was guessing who the killer of the play was because there was tension building up not knowing who the murder was. The climax for this play would be for me finding out who was the murder and just being in shock how everything had change into a new scenario. Overall it was amazing show how it developed and how well an organized transition the play
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...
the play was good. The first act was a little slow and tedious but the
Overall this production was very interesting and well performed. It was somewhat enjoyable to the audience, there were times of boringness but the comedy kept the play interesting. The director did a great job of putting everything together and as a result everything was on point. The only thing to say that would better the play is to make the play more interesting to the audience so that the audience does not get tired of watching.
Since this is a review and its based on my opinion, I would have to say this was one of the worst plays I've ever seen in my life. I wasn't entertained by the play at all. The only good parts were the good-looking girls in the play. I like the main character Marisol based only on her looks. She played on ok job of acting. I realize she had a lot of lines to memorize which she had down, but she just didn't get to me. I think the costumes were ok. They had nothing special, or out of the ordinary except for the angel's wings, which were pretty nice. I didn't like the lighting or the scenery. I didn't know where the scene was supposed to be at some points.
This play is also a story about the coming of age of young women (Blo...
In the 1960’s women roles were changing they were getting more involved in the American society. While working as a journalist Susan Glaspell reported a case of a murder which influenced her to write the play Trifles. In the play, Trifles the women are being presented as weak and powerless, a murder has been committed by Minnie Wright. There are a total of five characters in the play, three of them are men and the other two are females. The males are the county attorney, sheriff, and a neighbor farmer. The women are Mrs. Peter and Mrs. Hale. The men are searching for clues to convict Minnie of the crime, while the women find the most important pieces to the crime. In the play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, the author demonstrates feminist stereotypes, representations of genders during the era when women had less power.
Whether they were a drunk or a punctual control freak, each actor clearly put a lot of thought into their work. Each actor was fully committed to every action they made and they moved with a definite purpose. Despite the definite movements and the definite character choices made by the actors, there still appeared to be a sense of forced emotion in their words. For example, the man acting as the drunkard overplayed the alcoholic, hung over, and stereotypical wobbly walk. He made a few obvious mistakes, like flubbing up lines and other things to that effect, and it appeared to be because he was trying so hard to look and act drunk that he forgot to act. The woman playing Daisy was, in fact, one of the best. She had few mistakes and played her role the most realistically out of all the actors. The blocking of the play allowed for a few characters to upstage themselves and others, which made it hard to hear some words and conversations, but besides that, the technical aspects of it were good.
...ve been suffering mental abuse by their husband. This play presents the voice of feminism and tries to illustrate that the power of women is slightly different, but can be strong enough to influence the male dominated society. Although all women are being oppressed in the patriarchal society at that time, Glaspell uses this play as a feminist glory in a witty way to win over men. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters solve the crime by reflecting on Minnie Wright’s unhappy marriage that leads her to murdering. Using the relationship between female and male characters throughout the play, Glaspell speaks up to emphasize how the patriarchal society underestimated women’s rights and restricted women’s desires.