The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project is a play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theatre Project about the reaction to the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepart in Laramie, Wyoming. The murder was a hate crime by homophobia.
The play draws on hundreds of interviews conducted by the theatre company with inhabitants of the town, company members' own journal entries and published news reports. It is divided into three acts, and eight actors portray more than sixty characters in a series of short scenes.

    What I’m going to focus on is the set. Libby has already given me some suggestion about how to set the stage but I think there is more I would like to add.

During winter break Chris B. is probably going to paint with grey the background of the stage in order to make the background homogenous. After winter break I hope I’ll be able to find more wood’s chairs and paint them with different colors that could probably used in a symbolic way in order to identify the different characters.

    In the first act there isn’t a lot of movement in the stage, the atmosphere is kind of static. The different character and the member of the Tectonic Theatre Project are introducing their self; even if at the end of the act there is more movement because there is the moment “Finding Matthew Shepard”, there is still no physical movement in the stage because everything is narrated. For this act Libby’s suggestion, which I agree with, is to create a semicircle (facing the audience) in the stage with the chairs. The chairs would be always in the scene for all the entire act (no scene change) and the actors would have to have a sit depending if they are or not in the moment. Here the idea of a symbolic way to combine actors and chairs could be interesting. (For sure, in order to realize this act and create a good atmosphere in the stage, the collaboration with the light crew is fundamental!!)

    In the second act, even if there is more dynamicity, the stage’s set can still be as in the first act. In this act there are a few more stage directions which are basically for the video crew.

    In the third act, right at the beginning they are some stage directions: “The stage is now empty except for several chairs stage right. They are all facing the audience and arranged in rows as if to suggest a church or courthouse”.

In my opinion, this is the act with most scene changes. Differently than the first two acts, here there are also specific places, which have to be recreated, in which the scenes are set (church and courthouse). Following the stage directions, in order to distinguish the church by the courthouse I think in the first case the actors should wear black clothes, so in the courthouse they can where their normal costumes.

I also think that is no more necessary to have a semicircle facing the audience in the stage. Starting from the beginning of this act, I would suggest to follow the stage directions; then, during the “normal moments”, where the actors are narrating (there are neither in the church nor in the courthouse), we should arrange the chairs in a horizontal line in the middle of the stage, facing the audience. This could be a good and also strategic composition so the scene changes from the church to the “normal moments” and then to the courthouse (and back again to the “normal moments”) would be easier. Even if it seems confusing and distracting I think it is not at all also because this could also be done by the actors in the scene, without involving the backstage crew but just using a light effect.

ACT THREE

Moment Snow: CHURCH

Moment Jury Selection: COURTHHOUSE

Moment Russell Henderson: COURTHOUSE

Moment Angels in America: NORMAL

Moment A Death Penalty Case: NORMAL

Moment Aaron McKinney: COURTHOUSE

Moment Gay Panic: It should be normal but since just two people are talking and for a few seconds, they could be somewhere in the stage or under the stairs spot lights.

Moment Aaron McKinney (continued): COURTHOUSE

Moment The Verdict: COURTHOUSE

Moment Dennis Shepard’s Statement: COURTHOUSE

Moment Aftermath: COURTHOUSE

Moment Epilogue: NORMAL

Moment Departure: ? final scene! Something powerful!

In this moment I just figure out that a great imagine for the stage, for this last act, could be having always the set for the Church/Courthouse and then, during the “normal moments”, the moment where people are neither in the Church nor in the Courthouse, they could just enter in the stage and say their speech or something like that.

..to be continued..

Yerma

1^st Dec 2010

Tuesday the 23th November 2010 all the theatre classes (1^st and 2^nd years) went to see YERMA by Federico Garcia Lorca at the Phoenix Theatre at UVic. I really enjoyed my time. We went there with a big yellow school bus. We left the campus by 7pm, the show was at 8pm (to 10pm) and we were back by 11pm. After the show Libby asked us to write our first critical evaluation about the play:

http://finearts.uvic.ca/theatre/season/2010-2011/Yerma/index.html

Critical Evaluation Yerma by Federico Garcia Lorca

     The theatre company of the University of Victoria performed Yerma, a play by the Spanish dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca. Yerma is the story of a childless woman, with a desperate desire for motherhood and it becomes an obsession that drives her to kill her husband, when she knew that he has no desire to have children. Her desperation is driven both by the social norms of her culture, dominated by the reactionary forces of the Church’s  tradition and convention, and by the fact that she lives in a society of women who have children with their husbands as it is culturally accepted and expected.

The most evident themes in Yerma are passion and frustration, but at the same time themes of nature, marriage, jealousy and friendship are relevant.

The social environment in which the play is set has an important part in the play’s plot; Yerma was written in 1934 and performed for the first time the same year, in a period of political tensions that led to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1939.

As the director of this version anticipates, his attempt is to present both the personal and the political intentions that, he believed, animate Lorca’s play. Even if Yerma is Lorca’s work most directly associated with his assassination in the early days of the Spanish Civil War, in Lorca’s original version there is no reference to the civil war. The director of the theatre company, Warwick Dobson, has decided to emphasize Yerma as a powerful political play, other than a tragic poem for a barren wife.

     It is pretty clear that the director doesn’t really honor the writing. As far as I’m concerned I agree in part with the choice of underlining the political environment of the play by setting it in a different and most significant time by the original version.  In order to make this objective more powerful he makes a strategic use of the production elements. First of all the setting of the stage is really expressive and helps to make some scene more realistic; for example, thanks to the setting, the “Laundress Scene” creates a close interaction with the audience. The stage is surrounded by the audience on three sides, with the possibility to enter and to exit both by the bottom of the stage and of course by the backstage. In the stage there is also a nice mountain landscape background, a stream below the stage proper and a big tree on a side of the stage. The costume design matches up with the setting and the Spanish rural atmosphere, thanks also to the strategic use of symbols, such as the color red that symbolizes both the antifascist during the civil war and love, pain, blood and passion.

The stage was brightly light at all times, clearly visible and without any kind of 'illusion', which tend to snap the audience into reality and create harmony with the setting and characters movements. This harmony also gives a certain rhythm to the play and helps the audience to follow the actions going on in the stage. Comparing to little stages, such as The Max Bell Theatre, the set and the lighting are very challenging. Also the utilization of the stage’s particular round shape is a brilliant and innovative idea.

Beyond, they are also different choices that I question, either because I find them unnecessary or because inappropriate in the play’s setting. The whole play is both accompanied by a guitar and by sounds emitted by the actors present during the scenes. According to the setting and Lorca’s original version of the play, the idea of a guitarist next to the stage playing the main sounds of the play have a strong emotional impact, so is also when the main character communicate to each other or to the audience singing, creating a strong emotional impact. Since the first scene of the play, you can observe different moment, in which almost all the characters are in the stage making sounds, ground noises and little and constant actions which are very distractive and avoid you to focus on what is going on in the stage. Sometime in these scenes too many technical elements are involved; such as lights, music, choreographs and at the same time dialogues, which seems too difficult for the actors and very distracting for the audience. Another aspect that I totally diverge from was the use of projection at the beginning and at the end of the play; this device is in disharmony with the scenery and the phrases projected are not clear enough and legible.

Generally through the play there is no magic or surprise but the director’s choice of a shocking and unnatural ending is a fact that I disagree with even if there is a catharsis of emotions when she kills her husband.

     Personally I think that not all the characters are fully realized. In particular, the main character, Yerma, she is the leader character and she has the “power” almost in every scene but are biggest lack is how to control the power. There are a lot of scenes where she uses to much energy where not necessary, so it’s very difficult for the spectator to catch the turning points. Differently by Lorca’s version, in this version Yerma character is static and there is no natural climax in her acting. Her desire to have a child at the beginning of the show is almost the same at the end but act in a different way. Her character has inner turmoil, in many cases she is too dramatic and as a spectator you can feel that the actress is not physiologically connects with her character, effective; but is still a matter of fact that she has the most physiologically engaged role.

Almost all the other characters are physically and emotionally expressive even if they are not really psychologically engaged.  Specifically, Yerma’s husband is a little bit passive in the first act, but by the end of the second act a natural climax is clearly visible in his character. Even if the Pagan Woman sometimes doesn’t control her vocally, her character is physically well defined.

     As part of the audience I enjoyed the show, even if I disagree with some of the director’s choices, all together it is a good and well organised show, even if is performs by amateur actors. During the show I felt a huge emotional distance between me and the actors, particularly during the dialogues, because I didn’t feel personally engaged; but in the most emotionally powerful scenes I felt a lot of sympathy for the deeply unhappy individuals, Yerma and her husband Juan; the “fourth wall” was broken.

I would recommend the play to others because I think it’s a good play in a very interesting social contest. I’m not sure that I would recommend this version, but with the appropriate background both about Lorca’s original version and this director interpretation, I’m pretty sure it would be a nice experience. Personally the play doesn’t have any lasting impact on me both because it refers to a past event and because it doesn’t involved me directly, even if it’s something to crew on. A very clear aim of Dobson is to associate the play with the Spanish Civil War, the institution of Catholicism and the strict sexual morality of Spanish society, which are points I reflect on and discuss even after the play. He supposes that Yerma’s longing for a child reflects the hopes of the republicans for the future of an antifascist Spain.

Gugu

"Defamiliarization Effect"

19 nov. 2010

Today I really enjoyed the class. We talked a little about the Stanislavski method (naturalism) again and then we moved to Bertolt Brecht with the “Defamiliarization Effect”

Bertolt Brecht's Defamiliarization Effect (sometimes called "estrangement effect" or "alienation effect"; German Verfremdungseffekt) tries to prevent the audience's succumbing to the usual illusion that is inherent in the presentation of a play, by distancing the spectator from what is happening on stage. The element of surprise such as actors moving and speaking from among the rows of the audience, or actors exchanging parts and characters in the course of a play, for example, is meant to confront, and make the audience aware of the usual mimetic presentation in a play and instead make them reflect on what they see.

Bertolt Brecht coined the term "defamiliarization effect" for an approach to theater that focused on the central ideas and decisions in the play, and discouraged involving the audience in an illusory world and in the emotions of the characters. Brecht thought the audience required an emotional distance to reflect on what is being presented.

At the beginning I didn’t really get what was going on but then, when Libby took us to the stage and did some exercise with us I got it. Libby took the scene of Derek and Danie “Art” and Sidingo and Amelia ones “My children my Africa” as examples. She ask both of them to repeat a part of their scene first saying as a reported speech the action they were going to do, then saying their speech. In the first case I didn’t like the result because it made the scene slower and boring. In “My children my Africa” case as far as I’m concerned the scene became better because it made you focus in the single character, their emotion and no more (physical) distraction in the stage.

As we discuss later, this method is very useful because after familiarizing with the play and focusing on the emotions, the connections between the actors in the stage, you also have to break “the 4^th wall”, and create a connection between actors and public. You focus more in yourself and use correctly your body language in order that the audience can always understand what is going on in the stage by looking at “the picture” created by the actors.

Gugu