I have always known theater simply as characters acting on a stage in its simplest terms. My experiences with theater are very limited for the most part. My first experience in theater occurred when I was in kindergarten this included me dressing up as a duck for a performance of Old Mcdonald. In 4th grade my music teacher had small groups of us perform parts of a midsummer night's dream, which also gave me a taste of theater. Also, every year in middle school and occasionally in elementary school my classmates and I watched the annual high school play. The plays ranged from the musical Grease to Charlie Brown. I personally never performed in any of my high schools plays, but I did attend each play up until my senior year. Shakespeare was widely discussed in my high school, …show more content…
Our discussion about major life events (graduation, weddings, etc.) being a theatrical performance made me realize how prominent aspects of theater are in my own life. The evidence that I looked at to write this paper was the 7 Reasons Why Theater Makes Our Lives Better by Howard Shalwitz. The article stated a lot of strong points about the importance of theater, but my favorite one relates to communication. Theater requires face to face communication and a lot of teamwork in order to work smoothly. In a society where technology takes up a majority of our communication face to face contact is rare. Theater allows people to come together and throw around ideas of every type. Face to face interaction is important for any human being. Another point that really hit home to me was the idea that theater influences the way we think and feel about our own lives and makes us take a hard look at ourselves. The morals and beliefs that are expressed in some performances can make you really think hard about how you portray yourself on a daily
For my project III ethnography I am researching and observing the Jackson High School Drama Departments production of Annie: The Musical. The importance of this community is that it makes students involved be on there best behavior in order to participate. They have to stay of of trouble and be able to maintain a GPA that is required to be in the group. This group is also important because it is an expressive outlet that allows the students to be whoever they want to be. The drama department is made up of students from kindergarten to twelfth grade that attend Jackson city schools. Every student on cast and crew each has an important job to to in order to make the play successful. However in order to be successful the members of this group have to communicate to each other in many different ways. Some forms of communication are verbal while others aren't, but both ways are crucial in order to make to production succeed. Also communication doesn't just take place on stage, it takes place backstage and after practice too. Another way the group communicates with each other is using terms that and average person wouldn't understand. Throughout this paper I am also going to explore the idea of Discourse community and relate it to the drama club.
In each and every culture theater exists. However, they are not always portrayed in the same way and could take up many different forms. What differ them from others is influenced by the convention of what governs them. What happen on stage depends on the conventions of the theater. Convention is define as “Rules governing a given style of theater, such as fourth-wall verisimilitude or bare stage. These rule should not be violated, but often are, as when actors “break” the fourth wall by delivering a line directly toward the audience” (Altshuler and Janaro 208). The condition governing the staging and performance are known as theatrical conventions, in which what the audiences agree to accept as what is real (Altshuler and Janaro 173). In comparing an Elizabethan and a modern theater to each other there are many differences and similarities between the two. By comparing William Shakespeare “Hamlet” to Lorraine Hansberry “A Raisin in the Sun”, we can see that there is a major difference between the two
I went to see Around the World in eighty Days with a very open mind as it was the first professional play I have gone to see and after I left I was absolutely stunned. After experiencing the dynamic magic that is professional theatre I became positive I would never pay to see a film in a theatre ever again. I never thought film actors and stage actors were the same but now I know unequivocally that the two are on separate planets. The vast differences in both planets truly makes one appreciate theatre for all of its’ glory. While I never thought much of or respected actors, and why would anyone; stage actors are true workers, stage actors are true artists, stage actors are actual actors.
Through the evolution of the performing art, the market and industry of performing start to rise in popularity. The concept of going to theater is cool because people are able to enjoy the visual effects of live shows that people cannot experience when watching television at home. Going to theater seems to be simple and usual but people are reluctant to sacrifice leisure time to watch shows at a theater. The differences between watching television shows at home and attending theater shows are the personal experience and the cultural atmosphere. When people are watching the television shows alone, they are unlikely to feel the powerful effect of rendering the stage. The interactions between the audience and the actors do not seem realistic on the television because the ambience does not penetrate through the screen to reach the people. Going to theater also provides the
Lazarus, Joan. "On the Verge of Change: New Directions in Secondary Theatre Education." Applied Theatre Research 3.2 (July 2015): 149-161. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1386/atr.3.2.149_1.
Every theatergoer may consider the question: What is it about performance that draws people to sit and listen attentively in a theater, watching other people labor on stage and hoping to be moved and provoked, challenged and comforted? In Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan “argues that live performance provides a place where people come together, embodied and passionate, to share experiences of meaning making and imagination that can describe or capture fleeting intimations of a better world (p.2)”. She traces the sense of visceral, emotional, and social connection that we experience at such times, connections that allow audience members to sense a better world, and the hopeful utopic sentiment might become motivation for civic engagement
“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. Throughout the course, I have learned that understanding aesthetics and sociopolitical history is essential for appreciating and applying theater in the real world. Brechtian and musical theatre styles, such as applying musical theatre in RENT, are effective methods to convey crucial historical and social messages, utilizing theater as a platform outside of the arts and for a greater purpose of positive social change.
Theater in the Elizabethan Era changed the way people lived, and vice versa. Without theater back in the 16th century, life today could, and would, be very different. The Theatre in the Elizabethan Era was greatly impacted on the different historical events that were in the Era and they were mirrored in many plays, specifically Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. Other people could argue that theater was merely another extracurricular activity people could partake in. However, facts collected over the years have shown that theater was very important to the people whether it was back in the 1500’s or now in the 21st century, theater is still a huge impact on daily life.
Elizabethan times in the 1600s was a progression for the world of the theater. A period named after Queen Elizabeth I of England, it is from this period that modern day society has its foundation for the entertainment industry. From the violence that was prevalent because of the Black Death, people turned to the theater for its poetry and romance. During this time period, there were two types of theatrical performances that were available for the people’s viewing, comedies or tragedies. These two genres were never really intertwined until the time of William Shakespeare. His play, Romeo and Juliet, is an example of both a comedy and a tragedy. It starts off as a comedy with Romeo weeping like a baby because of his love Rosaline, who did not love him back and ends as a tragedy when Romeo and Juliet, a pair of star crossed lovers, commit suicide because the lost of each other. It was also during Shakespeare’s time that writer were finally acknowledged by the people. Before this time, writers were not considered upper classman. Another group of people that began to rise into a higher social class were the actors. Actresses were not present back then because women were not allowed on stage. It was considered unladylike to have a female actor. Men played all the parts. Theater owners were dependent on actors to make them a profit. Rehearsals for the plays were fairly short, only lasting for about a week. The performances themselves would only show for three to four days.
Applied Theatre work includes Theatre-in-Education, Community and Team-building, Conflict Resolution, and Political theatre, to name just a few of its uses. However, Christopher Balme states that “Grotowski define acting as a communicative process with spectators and not just as a production problem of the actor” (Balme, 2008: 25). Applied Theatre practices may adopt the following “theatrical transactions that involve participants in different participative relationships” such as Theatre for a community, Theatre with a community and Theatre by a community Prentki & Preston (2009: 10). Whereas, applied theatre one of its most major powers is that it gives voice to the voiceless and it is a theatre for, by, and with the people. However, Applied Theatre practitioners are devising educational and entertaining performances bringing personal stories to life and build
“Theatre makes us think about power and the way our society works and it does this with a clear purpose, to make a change.”
Theatre first came about from all different cultures acting out part of their bible, or performing rituals to the Gods. It was not until the middle ages when dramatists wrote about all aspects of life. Theatre has therefore changed continuously to suit the demands of each new age for fantasy, spectacle, or serious drama.
For thousands of years, people have been arguing that theatre is a dying art form. Many people think theatre is all just cheesy singing and dancing or just boring old Shakespeare, but there is much more to theatre than those two extremes. Theatre is important to our society because it teaches us more about real life than recorded media. Theatre has been around for thousands of years and began as a religious ceremony that evolved into an art form that teaches about the true essence of life. Theatre can incorporate profound, and provocative, observations of the human condition that can transcend time; lessons found in Greek plays can still be relevant to the modern world. People argue that the very essence of theatre is being snuffed out by modern
My experience watching a live theatre performance on stage was a fascinating one, most especially since it was my first time. I attended a staged performance of “The History Boys” in a small theatre called “The Little Theatre of Alexandria” at 8:00 pm on Wednesday June 8, 2016 in Alexandria, Virginia. The overall production of the play was a resounding experience for me particularly the performance of the actors and the design of the scene made the play seem real.