1, About "Portrait"
First I thought this was a play just to hail the personality of Alice Neel. That would have been a quite boring experience, because this character would not change during the play. But the drawing of her son being beaten by the husband gave the straight direction of the play (as it seemed in the beginning, when I watched it) an interesting and also dark twist.
Like Julia wrote in her post, I think the idea of using blank canvasses instead of in any way painted ones added much to the play. I would even say, it was necessary to do that. Because a, everyone could project his/ her thoughts, how the portraits looked like on them b, noone was distracted from the plot staged right in front of them without interruption (in both times the play is set in.)
2, About the "Idiot"
I think, one problematic thing was the direct transfer of the political ideas like anarchy, socialism into the play. The audience is introduced into a net of intertwined characters. Thus, to me the detailed and unprepared hints at these philosophical, abstract ideas were just distanced to far from that. I missed a kind of connection.
I think the actors did a good job though, especially the Prince Mushkin and Nastassya Felipovna. I was impressed how the scenes with MANY people on stage did not seem to be stark and static. I am speaking of the scenes at the beginning when Nastassya comes into Ganya's house and meets his mother, sister and the Prince and later Ragoshyn appears or the party at the end, which results in an epileptic fit of the Prince.
3, About the flashcards
It was impressive, how easy it is to create a plot's outline with some thoroughly thought through ideas. It is also a way to enhance phantasy and flexibility of the mind of a playwright, because you can play with the ideas. By moving one of your flashcards one or two steps up or down the chronological ranks, you can create a whole new play sometimes, at least in my opinion.
Another important thing I learned from this task: It is often better to keep the thoughts on the flashcards short and rather general. If you specify too many facts, the flexibility aforementioned might vanish and it is not possible to develop different ideas and play with the red ribbons possible.
4, Cutting and editing
Having worked as a journalist, I know about one tendency all authors or writing people in general have. It is the thought of the written piece as an entity which shall not be violated. But the reality looks different, as we say in Germany. The thing you have to do generally is to shorten, shorten, shorten your text.
Therefore I found it helpful to trim Jenny's 2-page Joe and Amy play. I think we have to go away from the thought of having finished any written piece as we set the last full stop dot. As time goes on, as audiences or authors change, as circumstances change - the play itself has to change, if it shall be sincerely adapted and adequate for the special point in time and place it is staged on that special occasion, whenever, wherever that may be.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Thoughts on “The Idiot”
It was an impressive play, and here are my impressions:
I felt the condensed plot has too many ellipses – how could they omit the time Myschkin and Nastasia spent together in the country? There were also too many stories narrated by the characters instead of dramatized, specially at the beginning, when playing them out would be even more important. As a result, some character developments became “bumpy”, like the sudden loyalty between Myschkin and Rogozhin after they exchange the crosses, and even the gestures of love/sacrifice between Mischkin, Nastasia and Aglaida. Lebedev the gossipmonger and Lebedev the theologian struck me as two different characters altogether.
Still it had a pretty good flow – the plot wasn’t difficult to follow, despite the many characters. Those brick-sized Russian novels are a pain to follow even in the paper, let alone in performance. It’s no small feat.
The set was too bare. It looked like an empty medieval monastery. A carpet would have breathed more life into it. Likewise, I found the costumes too plain and unimposing for Russian nobility, especially in San Petersburg, Russia’s center of French influence.
The expressionistic devices worked perfectly: the echoes were seamless, and the procession of people in Myschkin’s mind was his most dramatic moment, in my opinion.
Lizaveta’s performance was the most engaging aspect of the play: it made her character shine brighter than the protagonists. For the brief time he appeared, Afanasy also made a strong impression.
I felt the condensed plot has too many ellipses – how could they omit the time Myschkin and Nastasia spent together in the country? There were also too many stories narrated by the characters instead of dramatized, specially at the beginning, when playing them out would be even more important. As a result, some character developments became “bumpy”, like the sudden loyalty between Myschkin and Rogozhin after they exchange the crosses, and even the gestures of love/sacrifice between Mischkin, Nastasia and Aglaida. Lebedev the gossipmonger and Lebedev the theologian struck me as two different characters altogether.
Still it had a pretty good flow – the plot wasn’t difficult to follow, despite the many characters. Those brick-sized Russian novels are a pain to follow even in the paper, let alone in performance. It’s no small feat.
The set was too bare. It looked like an empty medieval monastery. A carpet would have breathed more life into it. Likewise, I found the costumes too plain and unimposing for Russian nobility, especially in San Petersburg, Russia’s center of French influence.
The expressionistic devices worked perfectly: the echoes were seamless, and the procession of people in Myschkin’s mind was his most dramatic moment, in my opinion.
Lizaveta’s performance was the most engaging aspect of the play: it made her character shine brighter than the protagonists. For the brief time he appeared, Afanasy also made a strong impression.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
I Missed a (Dietz) Post and I Hate My Life.
But now that that's out of my system....
First, I want to talk about Portrait. I kind of went not knowing what to expect, and feeling sick, not wanting to be at a play (which is feeling pretty crappy, if you think about it... holding you back from wanting to experience all that is the theatre).
I was significantly less miserable the moment the show started.
I loved:
-The cast. Iris and Mozart! Yay! (Now if Bowman could just concentrate as hard on our scene for Truss's class...) And I'm a huge fan of Richard's, dating back to Summer People... for obvious reasons... and Alice was impeccable. Playing younger characters is always fun, but (to me, at least) having to act an older character is TERRIFYING, especially one as ballsy as Alice. I was really impressed. (And Whoot! I heart Avital Bisk, people.)
-The writing. Andy wrote a whole post kissing the ground that Jenny walks upon, so I feel that I can state, without sounding like a kiss ass, that the show was beautifully written. The humor was really clever, and while we credit that a lot of times to the actors and their interpretation and pacing, the good stuff has got to be written before anyone can perform it. So yay.
-The blank canvases. We talked about this in class, but the canvases being blank gave sooooooo much to the show. It let the audience imagine Alice's art, her personality, for themselves, and kept them zoned in on the actions and relationships of the characters. I was a fan.
-The design of the set. Having the couch in that corner was perfect for hiding the male nuddie booty, and with the back to the audience, it made the room real. One of my pet peeves is when a set is set up to so obviously play to the fourth wall. Urg. It's like "Come one, please be more original." It was balanced well by having the heavily used liquor table on the other side, with 'doors' that also balanced out and a middle space that allowed for a dynamic range of spatial relationship variations. It was all so feng shui. My chi and aura were thoroughly centered throughout the entire performance because of this.
-I also loved the way clothes were hanging/lying all around the set. It kind of gave more insight to the characters, and made me feel like they felt nothing was all that permanent.
(Keep in mind that these are VERY nit picky, but) I didn't like:
-Some of the acting choices. I felt like, when in doubt, any given character poured drinks. And there were moments when I felt like Nancy slipped into Iris mode, and instead of playing an innocent young woman in love, she played an innocent child, just plain...well, childlike. But I adore her and her abilities, so please, no one take that the wrong way.
-The fact that the images of Richard being beaten as a child were left to the imagination. I know that this is really third grade of me, but I wanted to see the pictures really bad. I'm not saying that a big slide projector should display them when they become known to the audience or anything like that, but, if you think about it, it's kind of comparable to images of say, the Holocaust. You know that they are horrible, and you'll probably cry and be completely shocked and horrified looking at them, but you still are enthralled, intrigued, wanting to take in this moment and be educated about this subject. Maybe that's just me. Plus, I don't think I've ever seen a drawing or someone being beaten- I've not encountered many action sketches.
-Other than that, I can't really think of anything all that negative to say. I enjoyed it immensely.
Alright. On vignettes.
Index cards are my new favorite thing. Not only are they convenient in Acting and Vocal Rep where we write ENDLESS critique sheets for everyone in the entire world, but doing this vignette exercise really helped me focus on ACTION. I get ideas, and kind of have them build into "Oh, okay, and then she'll do this, and he'll think this, so he'll do that," and RARELY are the actions of my outlines clear, concise, and (unfortunately) visibly achievable. Ridding my events of fluffy feelings and focusing on the actual action made it SO much easier to just sit down and write. It's kind of ridiculous how one change can have such a huge impact.
And, since I'm late and suck at life, I'll talk about today's class, too.
Every single cutting rule that we learned today has been written on all of my previously handed in work. I have a big problem with having my character state his or her feelings rather than showing them. I'm too controlling. I want everyone to clearly know my intent, and don't want to leave it to the actor to portray, because, you know, what if they don't? It's the same with stage directions, writing a novel so that all the director has to do is get things together. I guess we all just have to have some faith that others will take our work and do with it way they may with some respect. It's something I've got to come to terms with.
Cutting out colloquial speech was getting me, too. I thought, "But this is how the character talks, he talks just like the dude sitting next to me. This is real." Real can suck, though. I'm learning this.
Anyway, everyone have an excellent weekend, and I hope we're totally inspired to write the best seven page scenes ever in the entire world and galaxies beyond and such and what not.
Julia :)
Dietz Post: Portrait & Lidless
Upon seeing Lidless, there was something about it that really irked me. Several things, but it wasn't clarified until I saw Portrait. It seemed to me that the characterization and dialogue in Portrait really lent itself to the actors, providing some really excellent acting and roles that I personally was drawn to as an actress. I tend to particularly focus on the female characters (go figure) and none of the characters were cliches or one dimensional, not necessarily easy to peg.
In Lidless there wasn't any character that I would want to play, male or female. It didn't really didn't seem like a play written for actors as much as it was written for the playwright. I thought the young girl character in Lidless was insufferable. I got what she represented at different times, presenting an ideal next to her mother's gritty reality, but I hated her delivery that contained no real curiosity in her questions. I felt such animosity towards the character that her death was somewhat of a relief to me. Also, in the first scene with the young girl and the once prisoner, I figured that they were father and daughter and the fact that it seemed so obvious took me out of the mystery pretty quick.
I really like Frances' ideas, especially in 410 (Gone), and she can write some really beautiful, thought-provoking lines. I wouldn't have felt so frustrated watching it if there weren't some really good things about it. I just think it's her characters that fail to draw me in and get invested in the story.
I also thought about questions of gender in Lidless. How would the play have been different if the interrogator/torturer was a man and the prisoner was a woman, whose child would later save her life in a strange twist of events? How would that dynamic change the play?
flashcard homework
Truthfully, I'm thrilled to find that I was not the only one who found the flashcard assignment difficult. No matter what I did, as soon as I came up with a what-if question (and that's time-consuming enough when you're thoroughly brain-fried in the wee hours of the night) I would immediately find myself fitting the actions on the cards to my idea of what the story could be. The beauty of having everyone in the class make flashcards is that no one has the exact same play in mind, so the combination is more interesting and eclectic. With one person… it's a challenge. A good, useful challenge, but a challenge nonetheless. It's bit like, as Sherlock Holmes said, twisting facts to fit theories in a detective case, which he declared was "a capital mistake."
On a more positive note, I totally agree with everyone who liked the idea of plays being made up of vignettes. The image of those little moments on stage can really be the ones that stick in your head, and can be made to have the most psychological significance later on. And the questions that arise from the vignettes can open up the heart of the story.
On a more positive note, I totally agree with everyone who liked the idea of plays being made up of vignettes. The image of those little moments on stage can really be the ones that stick in your head, and can be made to have the most psychological significance later on. And the questions that arise from the vignettes can open up the heart of the story.
Its hard to come up with stuff...
You know, thinking back on previous homeworks, I'm finding that brainstorming is a lot harder than actually writing. This is quite strange to me. The previous writing I had done was slam poetry, and here I found that writing it was far more difficult. I would have a million ideas, but no way to put it into words. With playwriting its find the ideas that is presenting a challenge. Once I have an idea, I just run with it and see where it takes me.
Why is that?
Well, here's one guess: with slam poetry I would struggle and write and rewrite to find the "perfect" sentence, so to speak. How could I express myself in the most creative way in the least amount of words? Where does one go when they "take their metaphors for a joyride?" It was always about looking for a better way to say something. And obviously I thought that there were better ways than what I had come up with, I just couldn't think of them. With playwriting I feel like there isn't that pressure to find the "perfect" way to say something. Maybe its the restrictions of slam poetry. One only has 3 minutes to present a whole idea or story where as here I have a whole play, however long that may be.
Also with slam poetry, its a competition. So not only does it have to be good, but it has to be better than the other guys'. Now obviously life, publishing, getting your work put on, etc, is a competition, but it doesn't feel that immediate. And I'm not really writing to please anyone except myself. I'm not writing for points. And although I don't necessarily do that in my poetry, its still in the back of my mind. I guess the trick would be to focus on the writing and whether I'm happy with it rather than whether it scores good.
The problem is when I read something that I wrote and I know I can write better, but I don't know how. I have a big problem with editing because, the way I see it, I wrote something one way because that was how I thought of it. How am I going to change what I thought? (I don't think that makes sense) I just find it difficult to see something in a different way than how I've already perceived it. What I feel I need is another set of eyes and brains. They will probably see something differently than me, suggest it, and that'll get my mind running on a different track.
Since we haven't really gotten into much editing in this class I guess we'll just have to wait and see how I respond to it.
Why is that?
Well, here's one guess: with slam poetry I would struggle and write and rewrite to find the "perfect" sentence, so to speak. How could I express myself in the most creative way in the least amount of words? Where does one go when they "take their metaphors for a joyride?" It was always about looking for a better way to say something. And obviously I thought that there were better ways than what I had come up with, I just couldn't think of them. With playwriting I feel like there isn't that pressure to find the "perfect" way to say something. Maybe its the restrictions of slam poetry. One only has 3 minutes to present a whole idea or story where as here I have a whole play, however long that may be.
Also with slam poetry, its a competition. So not only does it have to be good, but it has to be better than the other guys'. Now obviously life, publishing, getting your work put on, etc, is a competition, but it doesn't feel that immediate. And I'm not really writing to please anyone except myself. I'm not writing for points. And although I don't necessarily do that in my poetry, its still in the back of my mind. I guess the trick would be to focus on the writing and whether I'm happy with it rather than whether it scores good.
The problem is when I read something that I wrote and I know I can write better, but I don't know how. I have a big problem with editing because, the way I see it, I wrote something one way because that was how I thought of it. How am I going to change what I thought? (I don't think that makes sense) I just find it difficult to see something in a different way than how I've already perceived it. What I feel I need is another set of eyes and brains. They will probably see something differently than me, suggest it, and that'll get my mind running on a different track.
Since we haven't really gotten into much editing in this class I guess we'll just have to wait and see how I respond to it.
Dietz Post
OK, so this homework, has proven to be more difficult than I would have imagined.
I like the idea of a play being made up of a million vignettes, and I think the asking questions is a GREAT tactic to opening possibilties. But here I am having a bit a problem, or maybe it's just part of the process? You tell me.
Here is the deal, making the flashcards myself has been a lot trickier of a task then I thought. Maybe it is just me, but I've had a really difficult time keeping my mind from trying to outline a story you know?
The randomness of fresh ideas is something hard to keep because it's hard for me to ignore the outlines that form in my head. Personally, I have found the best solution to be incrementing the process over time. Like last night I started at 8 with flashcards, but I discovered I had to take breaks and lose focus to rid myself of an outline of a story forming in my head, so I took the assignment in periods and ultimately, I didn't finish the whole thing till 11:30. This, at least to some extent made me lose my train of thought, which was good for creating more random vignettes.
My question from all of this is, am I alone? Is anyone else out there run into this sort of problem? And if so, any better tips than taking breaks to solve the issue of detaching one's self from the story ?
I like the idea of a play being made up of a million vignettes, and I think the asking questions is a GREAT tactic to opening possibilties. But here I am having a bit a problem, or maybe it's just part of the process? You tell me.
Here is the deal, making the flashcards myself has been a lot trickier of a task then I thought. Maybe it is just me, but I've had a really difficult time keeping my mind from trying to outline a story you know?
The randomness of fresh ideas is something hard to keep because it's hard for me to ignore the outlines that form in my head. Personally, I have found the best solution to be incrementing the process over time. Like last night I started at 8 with flashcards, but I discovered I had to take breaks and lose focus to rid myself of an outline of a story forming in my head, so I took the assignment in periods and ultimately, I didn't finish the whole thing till 11:30. This, at least to some extent made me lose my train of thought, which was good for creating more random vignettes.
My question from all of this is, am I alone? Is anyone else out there run into this sort of problem? And if so, any better tips than taking breaks to solve the issue of detaching one's self from the story ?
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