A structure for improvisation of the absent void (or, Bacchae Unabridged)
-Ugoran Prasad
Act. 1
A bare stage, a mirror floor, ocean deep, breadcrumbs everywhere, we left our sinking ship outside. We arrive in the theatre, not to symbolize but to be the absent void, that is an open space that we occupied for this Dionysian self-intoxication, right after the flashlight; then appears, orphaned once, a bare stage, a mirror, comes into being by surrendering to, ocean deep, time, breadcrumbs everywhere. We can see people are gathered in a circle like a tribe, like a religion, like a karaoke night out, like a graduate seminar. We look closer and we realize they are we and we are gathered in a circle like a tribe, like a religion, like a karaoke night out, like a graduate seminar. Someone from the group starts to cite a rambling monologue out of a badly written semi autonomous play, in homage to Artaud. In total stillness, relative to residues of convulsive movements here and there, others begin to dance. All of us begin to see (I promise that I use this verb responsibly) how in paralyzed stillness
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Someone:
He stops for exactly 13 seconds (he looks at his watch) while he closes his monologue with a poor prescriptive line.
Act. 2
Release exactly 13 subway rats from all sides of the stage before we repeat the whole Act 1. The rats eat the crumbs, pornographically. At the end of this act, the silence takes longer than 13 seconds. Now, it is 1 minutes and 30 seconds. Act 3.
Release exactly 13 soldiers from all sides, each to kill a rat with a bayonet, before we repeat the whole Act 1. The executions are efficient and hilarious. At the end of this act, the silence is 13 minutes.
Intermission
The ice cream truck is on stage, enjoy. While an underage ice cream merchant attends to the customers, a dozen of piglets orderly exit from the back of the
"This critical circle is not close enough to the stage to see the actors' faces and catch the subtler by play" (Fitzgerald 1). The metaphor of the Dance sets up a critical underlying theme of the story.
In the play “Circle Mirror Transformation” by Annie Baker took place at an acting workshop in small town Vermont. Annie Baker presented the characters to the audiences by them getting to know each other in the almost uncomfortably intimate way. In the play, the characters underwent the emotional growth and the knowledge about each other personal issues. Although theater is only pretending yet the play suggested that it is the best way to get to the truth.
Imagine my trepidation, then, when I walked into this church, with its high, vaulted ceilings and an enormous, emaciated, and slightly malicious-looking Christ figure suspended thirty feet among my head. As I came through the entrance, the prelude began. It sounded like nothing less than the soundtrack to a horror movie, as the slasher is about to leap out and dice an innocent schoolgirl. The organ wailed in threatening, building minor chords and did nothing to allay my trepidation.
The Carlisle Dinner Theater was radiating with laughter, the clapping of the audience's hands all in sink, and all different whistles filled the theater. As the bright red curtains closed, I walked off the stage and thought to myself, how on Earth was I so lucky to get where I am today?
I have confronted and challenged myself in other realms of my life. Last spring, in Harvard's Agassiz Theater, the lights were dim and the audience hushed as a cool cube of ice melted over my tongue. Through the crack in the curtain, I noticed my friends huddled in the rear of the theater. A moment later the music roared and I leaped on stage with my troupe. Dressed in our radiant costumes, we feverishly danced, skipped, and clicked our sticks in near perfect harmony.
In Euripides’ tragic play, Medea, the playwright creates an undercurrent of chaos in the play upon asserting that, “the world’s great order [is being] reversed.” (Lawall, 651, line 408). The manipulation of the spectators’ emotions, which instills in them a sentiment of drama, is relative to this undertone of disorder, as opposed to being absolute. The central thesis suggests drama in the play as relative to the method of theatrical production. The three concepts of set, costumes, and acting, are tools which accentuate the drama of the play. Respectively, these three notions represent the appearance of drama on political, social, and moral levels. This essay will compare three different productions of Euripides’ melodrama, namely, the play as presented by the Jazzart Dance Theatre¹; the Culver City (California) Public Theatre²; and finally, the original ancient Greek production of the play, as it was scripted by Euripides.
On the night of March 5th, it is believed that a small group of boys began taunting a British soldier. Over the boys’ nonsense, the soldier battered one of his oppressors with his musket. Soon after the alleged incident a crowd of about fifty or sixty people surrounded the frightened solider. The enraged crowd of people sounded the soldier, encouraging him to call for backup. Soon after calling for help, seven soldiers along with Captain Preston...
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.
“...who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” Shakespeare penned these words for the tragic king Macbeth, as he contemplated mortality and its seeming insignificance. But in the world of anatomy, once the actor quits his role, he continues to speak. Anatomists, students, the morbidly curious: all have flocked to dissections for centuries searching for answers. Unknowingly, audiences flock to theatres for the same reasons. Theatre, in the same way as dissection, searches for answers within the human self. Sometimes these answers are concrete, like the location of the heart or the rationale behind suicide; other times they are more metaphysical, like the weight of a human soul, or standing against the desires and influences of societal norms (Roach). As curious, sentient beings, we crave answers, especially to our own inner workings; theatre and dissection are both tools used to explore and discover these ideas and answers.
When the lights come up the audience is immediately thrown into an old and dingy movie theatre complete with popcorn strewn across the floor. It is within this set that deep social commentary is made throughout the
The music starts. The curtain opens up. Actors walk out onto the stage facing the audience. The lights shine down on them. They have the audience's undivided attention. There I stand, in the wings. Watching.
With both hands resting lightly on the table to each side of his white foam cup, Otis stared into its deep abyss of emptiness with his head bowed as if willing it to fill again, giving him a reason to enjoy the shelter that the indoors provided. I could almost touch the conflict going on inside of him, a battle of wills as if he was negotiating with an imaginary devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. I sensed a cramp of discomfort seizing his insides, compelling him to flee, then a silent resolve, as if a moment of clarity had graced his consciousness.
Today, we are accustomed to a sharp division between the dark world of the auditorium and the over bright world of the characters. On the contrary, the Greeks were familiar with audience, chorus, and characters, all united under a dazzling sun
I picture myself center stage in the most enormous and fantastically beautiful theater in the world. Its walls and ceilings are covered in impeccable Victorian paintings of angels in the sky. A single ray of light shines down upon my face, shining through the still, silent darkness, and all attention is on me and me alone. The theater is a packed house; however, my audience is not that of human beings, but rather the angels from the paintings on the walls come alive, sitting intently in the rows of plush seats. Their warmth encompasses my body, and I know at that moment that it is time to begin.
A mere mention of the term theatre acts as a relief to many people. It is in this place that a m...