A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Theater
September 5, 2000: First Audition
Less than a week ago, I had never auditioned for anything. Tonight, I was on stage with forty or so actors, most of whom had several plays to their credit. As I had neither a major, nor past plays to back me up, I was nervous. I survived it all anyway, and had fun despite the scary scary evaluative process.
September 7, 2000: Callbacks
The hyper-talkative freshman girl in my French class looked at the callback list before I had a chance to. She wouldn’t tell me if my name was on it, she only wanted to whine that hers wasn’t. After our classes were done, Kaitlin and I checked the list, and were both called back for both possible plays. (yeah!) The second round of auditions began at 7PM, so I had just enough time to get there after standard Thursday night wine tasting. My sister said it would bring me luck, “I would cast a cute pink-cheeked girl over a regular girl any day!”
September 8, 2000: Cast List
I’m in a play! Yeah for me! Yeah for me! I’m in a play and I have never been in one before! I have a character name and everything. I am Myrrhina in Plautus’ Roman farce “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Wedding.” My character is a drunk. Perhaps those pink cheeks gave me the edge I needed. Rehearsals start Monday, preliminary costume fitting after work today. Oh my.
September 11, 2000: First Rehearsal
I was the first one to arrive; Askanase auditorium was dark as I stepped tentatively onto the stage. A conference table sat with roughly 20 chairs guarding the periphery. My role prior to this point was that of an audience member; tonight, I entered a new world. Sitting in the glare of the harsh work lights, the chairs of the auditorium were hardly visible. I took a spot at the center of the table, not wanting to be too close to either end. I faced the door so that I could see the others as they filed in. Several of the cast members knew each other, I know them only as staples of the NDSU theater community. The group dynamic is a little intimidating; I hardly spoke at all tonight.
The ability to compare the universe to a watch allows for familiarity, which is what I believe draws agreement and acknowledgement of his argument. It is thought that, as humans, we have at least one person in existence that is aware of how to put together a properly functioning watch, and we know that a watch needs to be put together intelligently. Given Paley’s reasoning he presents that the world is also intricately made which creates a parallel between a watch in the universe, giving individuals a sense of familiarity. As such, it naturally follows that there ought to be a universe maker, or God, who appears to be the only one capable of doing such a thing. Primarily, my concern is that the intelligent maker must be God; Paley merely assumes that the reader agrees and gives no further insight on why the creator must be God. Furthermore, he assumes the universe works without proof or any real knowledge which seems a rather fatal flaw. It is irresponsible to believe that the universe works the way we assume to fulfill our desire to explain the existence of God, similar to Mackie’s objection to the cosmological argument (Mackie 171). I do not believe Paley’s argument survives Hume’s objection due to the necessity of experience. He merely uses analogy to justify his claim; the only difference is that he has experience with a watch and none in regards to the universe. Again, he is
In the memoir Night, the narrator Wiesel recounts a moment when he witnesses the most horrific actions done by men,”I pinched myself : Was I still alive ? Was I awake ? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent “ (Wiesel 32). Wiesel was thinking and questioning about his existence. While also caring for his father because that's all he has left. It's even more important because, what Wiesel experiences in camps has been near death and fight for survival. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book Night by Wiesel are, loss in religious faith and father and son bonding.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations. Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish
The American Civil War was caused because of the North and South differences in economies, disagreements about abolishing slavery and whether the state or federal government had more power. These three factors played a key role in America's deadliest war. Understanding the causes of the Civil War is important because the war was one of the most important events in our nation's history. After the Civil War all men were truly created equal, it reunited the country as one, and redefined what it meant to be an
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden. Elie Wiesel shows that the relationship with his father was the strength that kept the young boy alive, but was also the major weakness.
The Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “ There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered. This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses his faith and his relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? (67). Throughout the Holocaust, Wiesel’s faith is not permanently shattered. Although after his father dies, his faith in god and religion is shaken to the core, and arguably gone. Wiesel, along with most prisoners, lose their faith in God. Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.
The Holocaust is over and has been for about sixty years, so why are we still talking about it? Why is it still relevant in our world today? The world should have learned from its mistakes, but the sad part is that we did not. No, Hitler is no longer killing millions of innocent men, women, and children, but we are still just still just as cruel only in different ways. Night is Elie Wiesel’s factual account of his experiences in the holocaust. He brings us to a world in which not many people want to go. He tells us the true story of what really happened in Nazi concentration camps. Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor chooses to tell his story and begins to teach an entire generation the dangers of ignorance and hatred.
William Paley develops his view of the design argument through an example of a wristwatch. He has the reader imagine themselves coming across a watch on the ground. He then asks the reader how they think the watch came to be there or came to exist in the first place. Looking at the watch, Paley says that one will notice the intricate design of the watch and notice that all the parts were put together in such a way to serve a purpose, namely, to tell time. Paley believes that from looking at the watch we will be lead to think that the watch has a clever designer. The watch displays a certain evidence of its own design.
In very complex machines, missing or undiscovered parts are more likely to arise; yet, such disorder would no doubt make an individual more curious as to the objects purpose. Although in some cases, a part may seem useless, the individual would continue to question and wonder what purpose that part serves. No one could believe that the watch was assembled together with sheer luck; therefore, an intelligent designer exists. The watch is definitely not made by the principle of order and it is not believable to say or think that the watch was not invented. Design cannot exist without the designer. Every appearance of design, which exists in the watch, exists in the works of nature. While the world is far more complex than a simplistic instrument, like a watch, it is no different when compared at the base levels, especially when seeing that both are so mechanical, showing elements of order.
Paley’s analogy came about from the concept of a stone. He encountered this stone during his walk and wondered how it came about (Paley, 1802, 196). He applies the idea that since a designer must have created this stone, this designer must have created other things just like how a watch is created by a watchmaker. His analogy for a watch and its watch maker becomes his key argument because he argues is that you cannot come to a conclusion that a stone was formed by a natural process, just like how when you look at a watch it has a watchmaker(Paley, 1802, 96). When comparing it back to a stone, Paley says someone must have created it. He says design requires a designer, the works of nature also requires a designer and that designer would be God. From this Paley creates his four arguments for God’s existence from analogies, which are argument from design is based on experience, argument from design assumes that we are different in kind, but same in degree, argument from design argues from mind/ thought to design, and argument from design...
Although the American Civil War mainly occurred because of slavery, the fact is that slavery had a lot to do with economic and social issues.
The acting itself is seen as both exaggerated and over-the-top, by which past and present actors try to employ in carrying out Shakespeare’s plays (Britannica). Shakespeare meant for his audience to be engaged throughout the entirety of the play. The uniqueness and shear passion of the plays have helped in the continuum of their success.
Dating back to ancient Greek theater in the sixth century BC, acting has tremendously evolved and become more than the plays acted in the Roman period. As it continues to evolve until this day, it is important to look into history to understand the present era of the career in acting. For Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, acting is “the right management of the voice to express various emotions,” considered to be a talent rather than a skill to be taught. While growing in Greece, the acting field was supported by a lack of subtleness and a great variety of huge costumes; all played in outdoor theaters with books, the written version of the play, written by Euripides and Sophocles. Despite the expansion in Greek theaters, acting as an art began to decline during ...
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.
I had a little bit of preparation by getting some useful information about the location of the theatre and most importantly about the history of the play including the playwright, the origination of the play, synopsis, and the year it was written and first performed. Preparing for the play in this way gave me an idea of what to expect and helped with my positive experience of the play itself. I entered the theatre about 15 minutes before time with the audience sitting and chit chatting