On the Verge

"Ladies, shall we whack the bush?" is a line repeated over and over throughout the play On the Verge.  And it’s what leads into my idea for the poster. My vision for the poster would be a thick jungle with a light watermark of a clock on it.  I would want it to not be very obvious that there is a clock involved.  The poster should suggest a journey or an adventure, not giving away the exciting twist of time travel, but merely hinting at it.  Maybe there would be a few of the objects that we see come up in the play scattered around, but I’m not sure about that part.  It’s hard to imagine it in my head.  I feel like this idea is not super crazy or innovative, but it is very fitting.  "Ladies, shall we whack the bush?" is the line I would want to use for the tag line.  It conveys that same idea of the jungle and adventuring, but also holds more weight to it than that.  These women have an incredible persistence and determination for exploring.  The desire to discover new places is the main driving force through this play.  They are not only discovering new places as in physical places, but also making discoveries about new places in time.  And they are not only whacking through trees, but whacking through confusion of new objects and phrases that they have never heard.  It paints a mental image of a thick and difficult web of something that they must plow through to find their way.  This is why I chose the image of the jungle to use for the poster.  It is the physical image of the words of my tag line.  I didn’t want to use the typical pictures of maps and adventurous looking women with umbrellas.  I wanted it to have a bit more ambiguity in it.  It leaves people who see it wondering what exactly it suggests.

Fires in the Mirror

I think that we would lose so much of the story by removing those monologues from the script.  When I first began to read the play, I just didn’t get it.  This was before I read the prompt from Dr. Fletcher and understood how the play was originally meant to be performed.  Also, I absolutely didn’t understand what the show was about.  Then I paused what I was doing and tried to figure out what the play was about.  When I began reading it again, it made much more sense.  And I think that there was so much purpose in Anna Deavere Smith’s choices to include the monologues that seemed more random.  It gives so much more insight into who the people actually are.  It takes the focus off of the issue of the riots and brings it into the deeper roots of where the ones involved, impacted by, or just observing the incident are coming from.

Hearing from the Lubavitcher Woman explains her perspective of the others.  It shows us that she doesn’t hate them, she just acknowledges that they are different.  Getting to know the Anonymous Girl doesn’t tell us any bit of information about the riots, but just more information on how they view different races.  Even “Big Mo” doesn’t focus in on the riots, but more on the culture in her world.  I think that these different random monologues are a very important sort of preface to introducing the serious issue of a boy getting hit by a car and a man getting stabbed.  It introduces you into the world that this play is set in rather than just plunging head first into these big issues.  If these parts were excluded from the plot, I think we would lose a large amount of the context that is a huge part of the story.

My Comments

Here's where I posted all of my comments, just to make it easier on y'all :)

http://emilielegethtr2130blog.blogspot.com/2013/04/water-by-spoonful-hudges.html?showComment=1365868692640#c8618873095987122145

http://emilielegethtr2130blog.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-glass-of-water-eugene-scribe.html?showComment=1365869012907#c7299457098883031133

http://thtr2130sh.blogspot.com/2013/04/noises-off.html?showComment=1365869407224#c260904325474009070

http://thtr2130sh.blogspot.com/2013/04/glass-of-water.html?showComment=1365873738963#c2652836829900031547

http://garrettstheater.blogspot.com/2013/04/detroit.html?showComment=1365874085755#c1915795708649258843

http://garrettstheater.blogspot.com/2013/03/noises-off.html?showComment=1365908018918#c4901945775149523307

 

Show and Tell Post #2!!

My Show and Tell post for this segment will be on Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods.  It was first performed on Broadway in 1986 and has been performed many, many times since then.  

Into the Woods is a cleverly written musical that combines several of the Grimm’s Brother’s fairy tales.  We see characters from Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and even some brief appearances from Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.  There is also a brand new story about a Baker and his wife desperately trying to start a family.  A witch comes to their home one day to inform them that the reason they can’t have children is because of a curse placed on the Baker’s family.  The five different stories intertwine with one another as the Baker tries to break this curse.  He journeys “into the woods” to collect “the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, the slipper as pure as gold.”  If he is able to return to the witch with those things in 3 days, the spell will be broken.  Each of the characters has a wish that the journey “into the woods” to try to fulfill.  For the most part, the well-known stories progress as we’ve always known them, but intertwine with one another in surprising ways.  Act Two presents and entirely new plot line, however, when the characters (who are all acquainted with one another at this point) are forced to battle the wife of the giant that Jack killed.

To think about the dramaturgical choices that Sondheim and Lapine made in creating this play is different from many others since much of the plot is based on little pieces of stories that already existed.  It is still an original plot, though, so I’ll look at it as its own world.  I noticed that there are some crucial parts of the stories that are not included in the script at all.  There are no scenes with Cinderella at the ball or Jack climbing the beanstalk and meeting the giants.  We don’t see Rapunzel or Cinderella meeting their princes.  These parts of the stories are told through their songs.  It’s easy to say that the writers left these parts out of the story because we already know all of that stuff.  However, I think that’s cheating a little bit.  All of the scenes, except for the first scene of each act, are set “in the woods.”  Therefore, it makes perfect sense that we would never enter the palace for the ball or climb up the beanstalk into the world of the giants.  We hear about those parts in the character’s reflections after their experiences.  The clever lyrics of the songs paint a very vivid image of what occurred.  Also, we are able to hear the impression and perspective of the characters.  We know their intentions and reactions to what happened.  That’s very different from hearing the original stories in the third person form in a story book.  This brings me to my next point.  The choice of including a Narrator is another very game-changing choice.  For the entire Act 1, much of the story is presented as a story book through the voice of the Narrator.  This makes perfect sense since these are all stories that many people relate to in that way.  However, there is a moment in Act 2 when everything changes.  The line between the Narrator and all of the other characters is severed.  Suddenly the characters notice him and he becomes part of the plot.  It’s a bit unsettling, which supports the rest of the play (especially Act 2) very well.  Many of the things that the audience thought they knew about all of these stories is completely shattered after their happily ever afters.  All of Act 2 constantly breaks everything that was ever known about the well-loved characters.  Incorporating a consistent, charming narrator throughout Act 1, then breaking that consistency as well throws the reader and the audience for a loop once again.

Detroit

I honestly had completely forgotten that the name of the play was Detroit after I read the title.  I noticed it at the beginning and when I read the descriptions of the setting and the characters.  The first sentence that is in the script is part of the description of the setting.  It says “Not necessarily Detroit.”  So, that was confusing right off the bat.  I might have questioned it briefly when I read that sentence, but then I really did not think about it again as I read through the play.  Perhaps it is a mistake to forget about the title of a play as you read it, but I usually do.  It doesn’t often influence my take on a script.  However, this time I suppose I have to think about it.  Personally, when I think of Detroit (the city), nothing notable comes to mind.  I don’t actually know anything about it.  In fact, I have to take a little second to remember what state it’s in. (Oh right, it’s Michigan. I even googled it just to be 100% sure so nobody would laugh at me.)  I’m sure that there are some notable facts about Detroit, but I think that it’s intentional that nothing in particular strikes me about that city.  Maybe it’s so that the reader or audience is able to easily find their way into the world of the play.  Instead of having preconceived notions about the culture of a certain place.  I still don’t think that’s the whole answer, though.  Because the question still persists, why Detroit?  Why not Phoenix or Seattle or Baton Rouge.  What is significant about that place that isn’t for the others?  There is no mention of the setting in the entire script, so why on earth is it titled Detroit?  I feel like I have the right questions, but I can’t figure out what the answers are.  Even on Lisa D’amour’s website, it just says “a city that might be Detroit.”

Water by the Spoonful

Before the play begins, there is an extremely descriptive list of characters as well as an extremely descriptive description of the set.  There are some very intentional choices made in this script that truly transport the reader or audience to a different world.  The world that takes place online is more obviously different and unusual while the scenes at Subway and between Yazmin and Elliot seem much more normal.  At first, as I read the play, I absolutely could not make sense of how these two different story lines would ever combine.  When I began reading the play I read the descriptions of the characters, but when I actually got to the script part, I completely forgot that Haikumom and Odessa were the same person.  They are called by different names in different scenes.  I was actually so surprised and delighted by that when I figured it out again.  That is something that is interesting about reading a play, rather than watching it.  I guess I could have—should have—known that Odessa was Haikumom, but for some reason that fact did not stay in my head.  So, when I discovered it, it was fantastic.  It was almost like dramatic irony in reverse.  Something that would not happen for someone watching the play, but could happen for someone reading it.  In the very first scene where the realities begin to overlap, it was a bit surreal.  There was also the added element of the ghost.  So, not only are the worlds of online and real life intersecting, but also there’s a ghost that’s there too.  It created a moment where I found myself questioning whether it was Haikumom speaking or Odessa.  Who could hear one another in that moment?  Obviously Elliot was alone, but who was aware of one another in that scene?  It begins to show the two worlds colliding.  The online group quoting all of these cheesy slogans, in a strange way sort of narrates Elliot and his punching bag.

Noises Off

Wow, Noises Off is so crazy.  I once saw this play performed and it was very difficult to follow what was going on most of the time.  Keeping track of who’s who.  Especially since every person is playing two characters.  It is very difficult to keep track of whether they are acting in the play or if they’re acting in the play within the play.  Basically, it’s all pretty chaotic.  I was not prepared for how much more the chaos would be magnified by reading the script!  It is even more difficult to keep track of who’s who.  When they are calling a character one name, but it says a different name on the side of the page when they answer, I just found myself lost.  Because of all of the chaos and distractions, I initially found it a bit difficult to pin down a motif.  Then I just had Dr. Fletcher’s words that he said NOT to use floating around in my brain blocking out any other ideas.  I finally landing on repetition as a motif in Noises Off.  I guess it’s actually a bit obvious in some ways.  In all three acts, of Noises Off, we are seeing the same repeated Act 1 of the play that they are performing Nothing On.  If you continue to look though, this repetition is occurring on a smaller scale as well.  In certain scenes, it is happening as the characters strive to perform their play and must get their scenes right.  There is the repetition of the sardines always being an issue.  There is repetition in the backstage drama as well.  There are certainly twists and surprises, but there is a large amount of feeling like “Oh, here we are again!”  I think that this motif is one that continues until the very end.

Glass of Water

The characters in Glass of Water all play a very important and central role in presenting the plot of this play.  That makes it extremely difficult to narrow down just one protagonist.  It is relatively easy to figure out the antagonist.  The duchess makes it pretty obvious that her motives are not quite pure all of the time.  She messes things up in people’s communication with each other.  She convinces the queen of untrue things.  She behaves in very selfish ways.  And it’s just rather easy to figure out that she’s kind of the one blocking the way of many—well actually all—of our central characters.

 When it comes to the protagonist, though, I’m much more stumped.  Sometimes, I gauge who the protagonist in a play is based on how much time they spend on the stage.  I’m not really sure if that’s 100% correct.  I think it probably factors in to some degree, but that’s definitely not the only thing that makes a protagonist a protagonist.  And even if it was, it wouldn’t help me in this play because all of the characters have a pretty close to equal amount of time on the stage.  The character that I landed on, though, after much consideration was Bolingbroke.  It seems like much of the plot centers around his desires and his actions.  He is trying so hard to create peace between the two nations.  We see him planning his actions and understand his motives.  I feel like we get to know him more than some of the others.  Although, I do notice Abigail and Masham.  They are also extremely central.  They are affected in some way by every single decision that is made.  Some of the decisions affect whether or not Abigail will be able to have a place in the queen’s household.  Some of the decisions affect whether Masham will be caught after killing the laughing man.  And other decisions affect their love life. 

As far as protagonists go, though.  I’d have to say I’m a bit undecided.  I think that that’s alright though.  I think that the story is told through several different perspectives and that is part of what makes the plot work.  There aren’t really many ambiguities or revelations later in the play because we know what everyone is planning and thinking.  This gives much more dramatic irony and much less ambiguity, which is one of the defining characteristics of this play.