Geordie Brookman’s adaptation of Chekhov’s play, The Seagull, the first play of its type to focus on how events affect the characters rather than the events themselves, draws many mixed reactions. Set in the 1950s it depicts the lives of a group of bored, rich socialites and their workers, with most being unhappy with their ‘mundane’ life. The story is very slow paced with the focus being on the tangled relationships between the characters. The position most characters are in towards the end of the play stays unchanged from the beginning, leading some characters to take drastic measures causing them to lose everything. This production explores many relevant themes and issues such as suicide, depression, insanity and unrequited love by using effective techniques in set design, music, lighting, costume and characterization to create a play with realistic characters and a plot that transcends generations.
A major decision in the set design was the use of a traverse stage, which is a theatrical stage in which the audience is on two sides of the stage, facing towards each other. This meant that rather than performing to the audience the actors were performing to each other. The design of the stage also made for easy exits and entrances for the actors, as well as incorporating a visible off stage area, showing a dining table and piano. Minimal props were used during the production therefore focusing more on the actors and the emotions portrayed which carries with the theme of Chekhov’s original play.
Brookman along with Cobham and Cregan were able to use lighting and music throughout the play to intensify scenes as well as separate the changing of acts. Throughout the changing of acts the lights were dimmed with the characters sing...
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...lay the audience applauded willingly, with a few audience members crying at the sudden and emotional ending.
The Seagull depicts many issues including unrequited love, suicide, depression and insanity, all of which are relevant in today’s society. Brookman’s excellent use of techniques allowed the audience to really connect with the emotional aspects of the performance. This was achieved through many different aspects such as music, lighting, costumes and characterization. All in all the production still represents the emotional and relationship problems many people still face.
Due to the focus being more on the relationships and emotions of the characters rather then a lot of action scenes, as well as some of the mature themes, I would recommend The Seagull for those aged 17 and above. In my opinion it was a truly enjoyable play that is a must see performance.
The play, “Riley Valentine and the Occupation of Fort Svalbard”, by Julia- Rose Lewis is an exploration of the resilience of teenagers. The play is heavily symbolic and supports the dramatic meaning of the show. Throughout the Queensland Theatre Company’s interpretation of this play, the director, Travis Dowley, expresses forms of dramatic elements to articulate three types of manipulations. These manipulations include the manipulation of body and voice, space and the creation and manipulation of dramatic mood. Through these types of manipulations, it portrays the dramatic meaning towards the performance. Although, the use of space throughout Travis’s performance allows the audience to identify this dramatic meaning.
It is imperative to understand the significance of the profound effects these elements have on the audience’s response to the play. Without effective and accurate embodiments of the central themes, seeing a play becomes an aimless experience and the meaning of the message is lost. Forgiveness and redemption stand as the central themes of the message in The Spitfire Grill. Actors communicate character development through both nonverbal and verbal cues; their costumes serve as a visual representation of this development by reflecting the personal transformation of each character. In the case of The Spitfire Grill, set design is cut back to allow for the audience’s primary focus to be on the actors and their story. Different from set design, the use of sound and lights in The Spitfire Grill, establishes the mood for the play. In other words, every theatrical element in a play has a purpose; when befittingly manipulated, these elements become the director’s strongest means of expressing central themes, and therefore a means of achieving set objectives. Here again, The Spitfire Grill is no exception. With the support of these theatrical elements, the play’s themes of forgiveness and redemption shine as bright as the moon on
The Music Man made interesting use of the technical aspects of theatre. Sound was used appropriately, as music from the monitors did not overpower the voices of the actors. Lights, however, did not leave any sort of impression on me. Hardly any lights were utilized to enhance the mood were present. This caused for less emphasization on spectacle than what would be expected of such a dramatic play. Although, intricate costumes and set made up for the dull lighting techniques.
O’ Brien, Tim. The Seagull Reader: Stories. Joseph Kelly. 2nd Edition. “The Things They Carried”. New York. W.W.Norton. 2008. 521 pg. Print.
Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird, a “sort of” adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, had its west coast premiere this past weekend at the Experimental Theatre at UC Santa Cruz. Directed by graduate student Katie Burris, Stupid Fucking Bird stars undergraduate students Hugh Coles as Con, Michael Logan as Sorn, Siara Woods-Lindholm as Emma, Lucas Brandt as Dev, Grant Palmer as Trig, Ivy Strohmaier as Mash, and graduate student Dani Zuccolotto as Nina. In this “sort of” adaptation, the play ruminates on many of the same themes as it’s predecessor, and isn’t necessarily a “modernization” of The Seagull, but is more so a new, extended exploration of Chekhov.
“The Nina Variations” were performed by Nipissing's Theatre Arts course this week. The play is based on the final scene of Anton Chekov's “The Seagull” written by Steven Dietz. After being asked to write a new adaptation of “The Seagull,” Dietz could not stop thinking about the final scene between the two, and he has said “I could not focus on the rest of the play at all. I was mesmerized by the magnitude of this single fateful encounter” (Burns). He never wrote the adaption of “The Seagull” and instead created forty-three different variations of the way the final scene could end between the two. The scene is between Treplov, a playwright who is desperately in love with Nina, who is desperately in love with another man (who happens to be Treplov's mother's lover). The play portrays the forty-three variations of the final scene between the two, and the outcomes range from a happy ending, with both characters admitting they are in love with each other, to a hopeless ending where Treplov breaks Nina's heart, or Nina breaks Treplov's heart.
John Updike’s poem “The Great Scarf of Birds” expresses the varying emotions the narrator experiences as he witnesses certain events from nature. His narration of the birds throughout the poem acts as numerous forms of imagery and symbolism concerning him and his life, and this becomes a recollection of the varying emotional stances he comes to terms with that he has experienced in his life. These changes are so gradually and powerfully expressed because of a fluent use of diction and figurative language, specifically symbolism and simile, and aided by organization.
At first glance, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America appear to serve as two individual exercises in the absurd. Varying degrees of the fantastical and bizarre drives the respective stories, and their respective conclusions hardly serve as logical resolutions to the questions that both Beckett and Kushner’s characters pose throughout the individual productions. Rather than viewing this abandonment of reality as the destination of either play, it should be seen as a method used by both Beckett and Kushner to force the audience to reconsider their preconceived notions when understanding the deeper emotional subtext of the plays. By presenting common and relatable situations such as love, loss, and the ways in which humans deal with change and growth, in largely unrecognizable packaging, Kushner and Beckett are able to disarm their audience amidst the chaos of the on stage action. Once the viewer’s inclination to make assumptions is stripped by the fantastical elements of either production, both playwrights provide moments of emotional clarity that the audience is forced to distill, analyze, and ultimately, comprehend on an individual level.
The setup of the stage was very simple. It was the living room of a home in the early 1980’s. It looked like a normal household, and it had small things such as crumpled up pieces of paper lying around the wastebasket. It also had a couch, circular class table and a recliner in the living room. The dining room was to the left side of the stage and only had the dining table and surrounding chairs. There was a door in the back of the set where characters entered and exited through. Beside the door was a table and stool where Willum presumably worked on his blueprints for the hotel. The lighting design was great; it put you into the atmosphere of the
The lighting in the performance was fairly basic, for the large majority of the play the lighting was constant. It’s primary use was for functionality purposes, such as to light up the stage so the audience could see, and not to convey any special meaning or set any kind of mood. There were two different types of instances were the lighting would change, too show a passage of ti...
The White Heron is a spiritual story portraying great refinement and concerns with higher things in life. A 9 year old girl once isolated in the city found fulfillment in a farm surrounded by nature. Too those less unfortunate, money charm and other attractions can be intoxicated; Sylvia did not bite. She could have helped her situation and found a way to wealth but in the end she realized that it wouldn’t help her to be the person she wanted to be. This paper will illustrate a critical analysis of the story of White Heron and focus on the relationship between the literary elements of the story, plot, characterization, style, symbolism and women’s concerns that are specific to this period.
I have never once been to a show where a change in lighting made me gasp in surprise; but at the beginning of Act Three, when the lights changed from a soft warm light to a harsh fluorescent truly blew me away. It sets the tone for the entire second half of the play, and I thought the way they went about utilizing the lighting was truly brilliant. I also found the dripping water in the Proctor’s home to be very impressive. It made the entire universe that much more realistic. As I watched the real drops of water drip from the ceiling and into the bucket, I was mesmerized and 100% engaged in the story that was happening. I have seen lots of great productions, with tons of brilliant actors, but I find that the little things, like special effects, and lighting is really what impress me when I go to see a show. The technical aspects of theater are truly what made a fine production great, and I like to pay complement where complement is
of the audience. One of his main aims in the play was to present the
Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, shows the importance of staging, gestures, and props to create the proper atmosphere of a play. Without the development of the proper atmosphere through directions from the author, the whole point of the play may be missed. Words definitely do not tell the whole story in Trifles - the dialog only complements the unspoken.
The deconstruction of the conventions of the theatre in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard predicts the more radical obliteration presented later by Pirandello in Six Characters in Search of an Author. The seed of this attack on convention by Chekhov are the inherent flaws of all the characters in The Cherry Orchard. The lack of any character with which to identify or understand creates a portrait much closer to reality than the staged drama of Ibsen or other playwrights who came before. In recognizing the intrinsic flaws of its characters, we can see how Chekhov shows us that reality is subjective, reality is not simple, linear, or clean, and that the real benefit of theater is to show this inane, subjective reality.There are essentially three flaws that permeate over the characters of The Cherry Orchard. The obvious first flaw is nostalgia.