Subject : # 14227 Teatro Inglés Siglos XIX y XX Grupo B
Student´s name :
Escolano de Rivas, Elena
FIRST PAPER
Title of the paper : SOCIAL REALISM - CHARACTERS COMPARISON BETWEEN :
ARNOLD WESKER’S “THE KITCHEN”(1961) AND
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S “PYGMALION”(1916 )
Abstract :
This analysis is going to be focus , in just the major characters appeared in the two plays mentioned above, due to practical reasons of extension (as an example “The Kitchen” offers a repertory of thirty characters approximately).
To start with the play “Pygmalion”, I’ve found two main characters: Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins. The story relates the relationship between a cockney girl –Eliza - ( “ reckonize, Enry Iggins”), who meets a tutor –Henry-, decided to teach her in manners and speech.
Finally she reaches the objective and with her obtained self-confidence she decides not to marry Mr. Higgins, which was the natural result in the contemporary plays .
The end of the story is opened, this means that the reader should imagine how is it going to continue.
A first glance of “Pygmalion”, gets the reader to the old Greek Pygmalion; the king of Cyprus who sculpted himself a beautiful statue of a woman, who was named Gallatea, after coming to life. You could think this was the real inspiration of the author, for Eliza and Mr Higgins.
However, if you read the dialogues carefully, you start to discover other significant subjects:
-The hopeless of Eliza, when she finds her learning has had no relevance in her independence in life.
- The new role she gets, at the end of the play , changing in a strong and determined woman who refuses the wedding with Mr Higgins, athwart to the prospected for a girl like her, preferring Freddy.
- A social criticism to the Capital and Victorian idealism of society, personified in Mr Higgins, a childlike and egocentric character, who gets even rude ( “you squashed cabbage leaf”).
In some way the reader may find similar subjects in the second play “The Kitchen”, where maybe, in this case the character of Mr. Marango, the proprietor of the restaurant, represents the personification of the Capital idealism again ( “ I give work, I pay well, I don’t know what more to give a man”); an egocentric personality afresh (“why does everybody sabotage me?”), and even rude too (“ Bloody Fool!!”). The difference between Mr. Marango and Mr. Higgins is that the first one distrusts of everybody, he suspects of everyone, every employee conspires against him.
The other main character, in my opinion, is Peter a German Mr. Marango’s employee, who represents the rebelliousness role in the play.
Once again, we find the subject of hopeless in his dialogues, as he finds his life is empty. He cannot put up the philosophy of life : work, money and food ( “I’m not going to wait much longer, you’ll see”). This frustration turns him aggressive, in opposition of the pacific Eliza’s way of doing.
When he finds he cannot afford that Monique will not end his marriage (“ We can’t go on like thieves”), he turns wild; at the end , he has nothing to keep him going on.
At first view, there was no way in comparing these four characters, but isolating each one, from their context , the reader can find similar backgrounds, as I have showed in this paper.
· Bibliography
Http: www.arnoldwesker.com
SECOND PAPER
Title of the paper :
THE DUMB WAITER(1960)
ASHES TO ASHES(1996)
PARTY TIME(1991)
Author or topic : PINTER, HAROLD
Abstract :
This analysis of Harold’s Pinter evolution as playwright, is going to be centre on the three plays above noted, in order of performance.
The first of them, “The Dumb Waiter” , could be resume in the dialogue between two men hired in a room windowless in Birmingham, England. As a reader, you can only suspect they are waiting orders for commit a murder, and meanwhile , as time passes, they begin to get under a lot of stress, added to the fact that they start to receive mysterious orders from a room above.
Under a growing desperation, they try to follow the orders from unseen people. As well as the other two plays , this piece does not have a brief end, you guess the play approaches to its climax , but when it finishes , you just know something was going on, but you do not really get it.
For the next play “Party Time”, some common elements are retake: we just have minimal information about place and time of the drama, and what is going on; you must do a big effort trying to obtain some coherent information based on the dialogues.
In this case, comparing with the other two plays analysed, Pinter offers more than two characters inside a cocktail party, representing a bourgeois society ( people don´t do vulgar and sordid things in our club”) very indifferent to the outside horror world.
Once again, “Party Time” shows a similar style of “The Dumb Waiter” under terrifying portraits of a privileged class, or criminals shocked by reading silly incidents on the newspaper, Pinter shows a dark humour, while you guess a tragedy , is arriving.
Finally, the third play, “Ashes to Ashes”, is the more enigmatic one. Once again, the reader finds a stage , ignorant the time and the place (a living room unplaceable).
The author retakes a dialogue between two characters (as the “Dumb Waiter”), and again the reader, begins an exercise of inspect the dialogues in order to rebuilt the puzzle.
The drama consists of a dialogue between a couple, Rebecca and Devlin, inside a living room. As the wife gradually answers his husband’s questions, the reader intends to find the clues of the drama, discovering, at the end, a hidden painful past of Rebecca ( “He stretched out his hand for the bundle, and I gave him the bundle”)
Unlike the other preceding plays , you do not find any slit of humour in this play.
As some opinions I have found in Internet, (see Bibliography), it seems that below the words of Rebecca, appears a painful past related to the Holocaust. Been Pinter interviewed, he has recognized an inspiration from Albert Speer , civilized as Devlin, -the husband-and cruelty as the sadistic lover (“He put a little pressure on my throat”) of Rebecca.
Ending my analysis, I would like to bring out , an essential feature in this three plays: in my opinion, the author keeps a background of violence below enigmatic dialogues, throughout thirty years, but has removed the black humour for the last one.
His theatre is, in my opinion, intelligent, obscure and minimal.
Bibliography
http:// www.frontlist.com
www.imagi-nation.com
www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hpinter.htm
THIRD PAPER
Title of the paper : THEATRE OF ABSURD
Abstract :
The “Theatre of the Absurd”, flourished in Paris, after the Second World War, into the 1970’s., based on the original Greek Drama ( Old Comedy), and the influences of Surrealism and Dadaism.
It has been defined as a form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing repetitious, meaningless dialogues and confusing situations, breaking the logical development, giving way to irrational and illogical speeches. A godless universe human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down.
Martin Esslin ‘s “The Theatre of Absurd” (1962), where the author defines it as a “working hypothesis”, a device, instead of a real movement, first established the term. (www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm - 29k)
He remarked the fact that although the main Theatre of the Absurd writers where living in France and writing in French , they were not Frenchmen ( Ionesco, Beckett, Adamov, etc). (However the most acknowledge predecessor before these authors was Alfred Jarry with his play “Ubu Roi” , introducing the comedy, as the Greeks, like Varronian have done before.)( http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm - 29k)
He indicated too the influence of Camus’ Existentialism behind the absurd, with the idea that “ men are trapped in a hostile universe that was totally subjective, describing the nightmare that could follow when solitude and silence were taken to the ultimate degree”. http://members.aol.com/KatharenaE/private/Philo/Existentialism/TA.html
Depending on Esslin, “the Theatre of Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being- in terms of concrete stage images”.
· These are some of the most relevant authors :
§ Eugene Ionesco with his first play “ La Cantatarice Chauve” , applying some ideas like “ There is no plot, no arquitectural construction, no puzzles to be solved, only the inscrutable enigma of the unknown”, and “ the comic alone is able to give us the strength to bear the tragedy of existence”, so he reinforced the ingredients of parody and banality, as Greeks done before.
§ Arthur Adamov,with his two plays “La Parodie” and “L’Invasion”, presented a hopeless search for meaning too and disliked like Ionesco the term of Theatre of absurd, “Life is not absurd, only difficult, and very difficult”, and he preferred the term “ theatre de dérison”.
§ Samuel Beckett (“ Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that….Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world”), with his play “Waiting for Godot”, drawing on Greek Theatre, with its small number of actors and its absent divinity, including some ingredients from “commedia dell’arte”, vaudeville, and circus.
§ Harold Pinter, with some of his famous plays, “The Dumb Waiter”, “The Caretaker”, or “The Caretaker”, has been show as the supreme master of dialogue of incoherence and silence.
He is also fame for his explorations of territorial conflict in confined space. In addition, Pinter’s dialogues employed incoherence, silence, ambiguity, irrelevance with a general absurd sounding. For Pinter “horror and absurdity went together”.
§ Finally Tom Stoppard , was defined as an author inside the “British Absurd”, with some of his plays like “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead”, and “ The Real Inspector Hound” or “Travesties”, where he displayed echoes of British predecessors like Beckett , Wilde, or not English ones as Ionesco or Pirandello.
Just to finish this analysis, it must be necessary to mention other real important authors in the “Theatre of Absurd” like Eastern Europe ones, as Slawomir Mrozek and Vaclav Havel with their absurdist techniques, as well as Jean Genet with his dreamlike fantasies of power and sex, or Fernando Arrabal with his “Panic theatre”.
By the way, Absurdist theatre has continued after his flourishing time until our days in authors like Dario Fo, Sarah Kane, Edward Bond( politic theatre) or Giusseppe Manfidi (back to the Greeks).
Bibliography:
Http:// www.wikipedia.org
FOURTH PAPER
Title of the paper: THE FUTURE OF THEATRE.
Abstract:
As I have noticed, nowadays, theatres are carrying deficits of millions, audiences for plays are falling, and consequently, there are fewer productions and tours, and there is insufficient new work.
Obviously, the main problem is money.
The ACE’s (Arts Council of England) proposals for areas, which theatre must reach, are:
Increasing young people knowledge of the core texts , multi- cultural Britain: with a wider range of forms and traditions , the new technology applied to creative uses and a development of local cultural distinctiveness.
In my opinion, it’s so important to make theatre accessible financially to the people.
The main reason, is because when you are in the theatre, you can observe that the 80% of audience are students (concessionary tickets), school parties (also concessions), and retired people (with concessions).
Which is the reason? Because, the rest of the possible audience , from twenty’s to forty’s, are not able to afford full- prices.
One way to approach theatre to the general public, could be the reinforcement of the “fringe theatre”, in the future.
This fringe theatre is cheaper than the more commercial ones, and gives the audiences the feeling that they are not just consumers.
Sometimes, this theatre breaks down the barriers between audience and performers. Audience and actors will often socialise after the show, creating relationships with aftershow discussions and meetings on the bar afterwards.
This kind of theatre brings youth audience successfully , and keeps the Theatre alive .
Bibliography:
http://www.britishtheatreguide.info
READING MODULE
TITLE : PYGMALION
AUTHOR : GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
PUBLISHED :1913
The play starts in the Victorian England, when Mr. Higgins bets Mr. Pickering he will be able to transform a cockney speaking woman –Eliza Doolittle- into a well-spoken lady.
As Eliza wants to work in a flower shop, she accepts to start this training.
For a number of months Higgins trains Eliza to speak. The experiment finishes in success when Eliza goes to an ambassador’s party.
After this, Mr. Higgins gets bored of Eliza and she, been hurt, decides to leave him.
At the end, it is not clear if she will come back with Mr. Higgins or marry Freddy, a friend of Higgins family.
In relation with characters, Mr. Higgins is a professor who plays Pygmalion to Eliza- Galatea. He is obsessed in concepts like speech and manners. He is unconventional and impatient with high society.
Eliza is not a romantic hero, as usual. After being transformed by Mr. Higgins, she prefers to keep her dignity against Higgins treatment. Then she becomes an independent woman.
Freddy is the son of Mrs. Eynsford, a Mrs. Higgins’ friend who becomes lovesick for Eliza. At the end, Fred appears as a marriage option for Eliza, when she decides to live independent. There are three more characters on the play, Mr. Pickering, Mrs. Higgins and Mr. Doolittle, but they are less essential as the three ones analysed.
In this play, there are different stages: the portico of St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden in a rainy’s night of summer – Act I-; Mr. Higgins’s house – Act II and Act IV- and Mrs. Higgin’s house -Act III and Act IV-.
Analysing the play, Pygmalion is a name becoming from a famous Greek story, in which Pygmalion created a perfect beautiful statue of a woman. This statue is Galatea, who is transformed in a living woman by Venus. Obviously in Bernard show’s play, Pygmalion and Galatea are represented by Mr. Higgins and Eliza. In this case, the piece does not conclude conventionally: Galatea- Eliza decides to be independent from his creator, Pygmalion- Mr. Higgins. This detail turns the play less romantic at all.
Shaw has humanized the Greek archetypes, showing their faults and foibles. In addition, Shaw does not allow the male to fall in love with his creation. Higgins does not think of Eliza as an object of romantic interest.
Actually, Shaw exposes the inadequacies of myths and romances that overlook the human aspects of life.
READING MODULE
TITLE: THE REAL THING
AUTHOR:TOM STOPPARD
FIRST PERFORMED:1982
This play begins on stage with a scene form Henry’s comedy “House of cards” about a supposed marital infidelity. The scene is from a play within this play, where Charlotte – a sardonic and slightly character- who plays the wife is actually married to Henry, the playwright. Max, who plays the husband, is really a friend of theirs, and married to Annie, another actress. Henry and Annie, who are having an affair, are discover eventually, leading to the termination of both marriages.
Life continues imitating the play, when enters Billy, a young actor, who tests Henry’s relationship with Annie.
There are additional complications when Annie decides to help Brodie, a young missile protestor jailed for some years, and nevertheless for the love of Annie, Henry adapts Brodie’s play into a TV drama.
Annie appears in it on TV, and the prisoner wins a reprieve.
The main themes of this funny play are not only the relationships, but also the British class system and the parent- child relationships in a liberated society.
Referring to the characters, this play is focus on Henry, the playwright. He is very talented and successful, but he seems to be lost when writes about love, because he’s unable to feel it himself. He can talk all about love: “It’s no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst”, but never in a real sense.
Henry (a semi- autobiographical character) is almost untouched by emotion at the beginning of the play, although he’s a romantic. By the end of the play, he has changed, and pain is the result.
On the other hand, Annie, the other main character, is politically idealistic and dedicates herself to the compaign for Brodie’s release. She urges Henry to come clean about their affair but is in fact the one who reveals it to Max. In the final scene, Annie turns against Brodie, and appears to return to Henry.
In my opinion, the play’s title describes the protagonists’ search for “real love”. It’s a play about matters of the heart, including infidelity.
The play is not only about how Henry learns to feel love, but also about how he learns to write about love, which he had previously considered as “unliterary” – he is a words fanatic, close to obsessive about correct grammar-.
“The real thing” is the play Henry really meant to write and he finds the self- knowledge needed to write it.
READING MODULE
TITLE: WAITING FOR GODOT
AUTHOR: SAMUEL BECKETT
PUBLISHED:1948
On this play, there are two major characters, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for a man named Godot, near a tree. While the wait two other men enter, Pozzo on his way to the market to sell his slave, Lucky.
After Pozzo and Lucky leave, a boy enters and tells Vladimir that Godot’s will not be coming that night, he will come the day after. Vladimir and Estragon continue in the same place since the next night.
Lucky and Pozzo enter again, but this time, Pozzo is blind and Lucky is dumb. They don’t remember meeting Vladimir and Estragon last night.
The boy enters again, telling them Godot will not come that night too, and he doesn’t remember too speaking to them last night.
Estragon and Vladimir decide to leave, but again they do not move, ending the play.
Referring to the characters, Vladimir seems to be the more responsible a mature of the pair, while Estragon seems so weak. Estragon is impatient and constantly wants to leave Vladimir but he never is decide to do it because he needs Vladimir. Estragon seems to be the body without a brain, so he needs Vladimir to provide the intellect.
He’s always looking for Vladimir’s protection. He also has a poor memory.
Lucky is Pozzo’s slave, tied with a rope, who carries Pozzo’s bags and stood. He is only allowed to speak twice during the play I.
Pozzo like Estragon, cannot remember people he has met. His transformation between the acts may represent the passage of time.
Both provided diversion to Vladimir and Estragon.
On the other hand, Godot never appears in the play. His name seems to refer to God.
The subject of the play is the hope as a form of salvation. Vladimir and Estragon wait for hope, in a situation, which offers no hope. The play describes how to pass the time with the hopelessness of their lives –“nothing to be done”-.
Both Vladimir and Estragon, are dedicated to games, which will help them pass the time. But they don’t only talk to pass the time, but also to avoid the voices with assails them. They stay together because they need their relationship. Another reason for why they’re together is because Estragon cannot remember anything and he needs Vladimir to tell him his history. Estragon also serves as a reminder to Vladimir or all the things they have done together. This is necessary since no one else in the play remembers them –“I don’t remember having met anyone yesterday,” said Pozzo.
During the time they spend waiting, they contemplate suicide as another way of escaping their hopelessness hanging themselves from the tree, but both continue doing no action.
In my opinion the interpretation of this play seems to be the uncertainly of life, being Godot a kind of religious figure. Vladimir and Estragon, born to suffer in life, are waiting the return of the saviour to save them.
READING MODULE
TITLE: AN IDEAL HUSBAND
AUTHOR: OSCAR WILDE
PUBLISHED: 1895
It opens during a dinner party a t he home of Sir Robert Chiltern in London’s Grosvenor Square. The time of the play’s action is twenty- four hours. The action begins when Mrs. Chevely – an old enemy of Lady Chiltern- accuses Sir Robert of madding his fortune with illicit money from a fraudulent operation to build a canal in Argentina.
The career and marriage of Sir Robert could be ruin. For Lady Chiltern, their marriage is predicate on her having “an ideal husband”: a model spouse in both private and public life, so she refuses to forgive him, in the second act.
In the same act, Lord Goring reveals Sir Robert that he and Mrs. Cheveley were formerly engaged.
In the third act, Mrs. Cheveley discovers in Lord Goring’s house a supposed love letter from Lady Chiltern to him, which was in fact, a letter asking for help. She offers Lord Goring to exchange that letter for her hand in marriage. Lord Goring declines. After Goring obtains and burns the letter, however Mrs. Chevely steals Lady Chiltern’s note from his desk.
The final act in Grosvenor Square, resolves the complications: Lord Goring is permitted to wed with Sir Robert’s sister after been informed by her spouse the last night’s events, and Sir Robert and Lady Chiltern reconcile.
The major characters are:
Sir Robert Chiltern, considered as an ideal husband, has separated thought and emotion in his personality extremely ambitious, Sir Robert conceals a blemished past, from his wife in hopes of keeping her love.
Throughout the play, he suffers from a nervous temperament. Sir Robert considers himself a victim of what he identifies as “feminine” adoration.
Lady Chiltern represents the ideal of Victorian woman an educated wife, supporter of her husband’s political career. She loves in the worship of an ideal mate, who serves as a model for her and society. Finally, she learns from Goring not to idealise so much the lover and forgive him his faults.
Mrs. Cheveley is the play’s “femme fatale”: well dressed, cruel, ambitious and opportunistic.
She needs power and wealth, dominating others above all. She is the opposite of Lady Chiltern. Her mask falls in Act III, giving way to an agony of terror that distorts her face.
On the other hand, Lord Goring is the hero of the play. He is a philosopher with his pronouncements of love and marriage. He serves as a helpmate to the Chilterns. He has a number of comic dialogues, too: “You see, Philips, fashion is what one ears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. “
In my opinion, the major theme in this play is marriage. The author adopts the scheme of the Victorian popular theatre, but mocking and ironing it.
In addition, here is the theme of feminine.
The play offers a contrast between the virtuous Lady Chiltern and the demonic Mrs. Chevely. Lady Chiltern appears as the model Victorian new woman. On the other hand, Goring is artificial and amoral like Mrs. Cheveley, but she is unmasked, while Goring keeps his dandified pose for most of the play. In general, this play is plenty of irony, sarcasm and half-serious epigrams, mocking the values of the contemporary popular stages.
READING MODULE
TITLE: LOOK BACK IN ANGER
AUTHOR:JOHN OSBORNE
PUBLISHED: 1956
The three- act play takes place in a one-bed room flat in the Midlands.
Jimmy Porter, lower middle-class, university educated, lives with his wife Alison, the daughter of a retired Colonel in the British Army in India. His friend Cliff Lewis, who helps Jimmy run a stall, lives with them.
Jimmy reads the papers, argues and taunts his friends over their acceptance of the world around them. The arrival of Helena and actress friend of Alison’s from school exacerbates the situation. Appalled at what she finds, Helena calls Alison’s father to take her away from the flat. He arrives while Jimmy is visiting the mother of a friend and takes Alison away.
As soon as she has gone, Helena moves in with Jimmy. Alison returns to visit, having lost Jimmy’s baby. Helena can no longer stand living with Jimmy and leaves. Finally, Alison returns to Jimmy and his angry life.
Analysing the characters, Jimmy Porter, -tall and young about twenty-five years- seems to be a model of the angry young man.
He is a man running in circles, trying to find a way out. Alison says to him “you’re hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it. Something’s gone wrong. Somewhere, hasn’t it?”
On the other hand, Alison, young and tall, too, tolerates Jimmy’s invective, measuring her answers all the time (in fact, she has reduced dialogues).
She appears fine and delicate, but discerning. Helena, middle class, snob, similar age as Alison seems to roam with no direction and ultimately cannot stay with Jimmy because of the destruction of all her old certainties.
Cliff, appears as Alison’s real friend. He is calm and peaceful. Whiles Alice is forced to accept Jimmy’s rages, because she doesn’t have any viable option, Cliff keeps the peace by hiding her real character, playing alone all the games. Time on scenes is confusing in this play because the author changes months, weeks or just minutes in every scene in every act, giving the sensation of routine and monotony. The language of everyday speech is mixed with some broadsides as Jimmy’s description of Mrs. Redfem “an overfed old bitch”
Sometimes Jimmy’s sentences have the power to shock; “I wonder if you might even become a recognisable human being yourself” to Alice.
In my opinion is so interesting the relation between Jimmy and the historical context, the post-war labour government with the failure of socialism. This context accounts for Porter’s frustration. Jimmy Porter is the ranging expression of the frustrations of the lower middle class.
READING MODULE
TITLE: THE DUMB WAITER
AUTHOR:HAROLD PINTER
PUBLISHED: 1960
In this play, there are just two characters: Ben and Gus, who are inside a basement room, during all the play.
It seems they’re criminals waiting for orders to commit a new crime, in Birmingham, England.
Meanwhile Ben and Gus keep discussions about different subjects, as the section at accidents and crimes on the newspaper.
The stage consists in a basement room, with two beds, a serving hatch between the beds, a door to a kitchen , a lavatory on the left and a door to a passage on the right.
The room has no windows.
They’ve got some kind of megaphone and a kettle, too.
Ben and Gus are dressed in shirts, trousers, and braces.
Ben seems to be the leader in the piece, but he’s not as comfortable with his work as he acts. Gus appears as a nightmare roommate doing questions constantly, always starting with “I wanted to ask you something” , which affects Ben even more and more.
Through the play, Ben changes from simple irritability to despair, as the play approaches to the end. By other side, Gus is not familiar with the job they are going to perform and he’s concerned with the consequences. Seems that Gus comes from a lower class and he is generally submissive to Ben’s orders.
In fact, both of them are under a lot of stress due to the reason they don’t know their next assignment. Despite of this, Ben seems more resigned to his criminal life, considering them fortunate for having jobs.
In addition, mysterious food orders keep coming down the dumb waiter. Ben and Gus get desperate to fill it, even though they don’t have any meal.
At he end, Ben receive the assignment, meanwhile Gus has gone out the room. The order is to kill the first one who comes into the room. Gus comes back, being the first to appear into the room...the stare at each other in a long silence.
In general, the style of this piece is enigmatic, profound and humorous. Language is simple to understand, with dialogues full of silenced- filled pauses.
Behind the silences is always the threat of violence, the anticipation of something deathly -at the end, Ben trains his gun on Gus in silence-.
In some way, Wilson, the one who sends the men messages through the dumb waiter is the most dominating silence in the play. His mysteriousness is one of the more sinister components of the play. This single location takes on the form of a prison for the characters, a space they cannot leave. The basement also functions as a part of the mystery – who owns the building? Is it a café? Is Wilson inside?
The Dumb Waiter shows the broken communication between two people: Ben and Gus. They haven’t got a fully dialogue. This disconnection is the essence of their relationship.
PERFORMANCE MODULES
Author : George Tabori
Title: “ Las Variaciones Goldberg”
Theatre Company : “Companyia Repertori Contemporany”
Play Director : Josep Maria Mestres
Casting : Enric Benavent, Nuria Garcia, Manuel Ángulo and others.
Date and place of performance: 01/12/05 – “Teatre Rialto”
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This piece is the story of a dramatic rehearsal. The director (Mr. Jay) is creating a show based on the Bible with the collaboration of his young assistant Goldberg – whose name refers to a Bach score.
On stage, we can see the actors and technicians who play some biblical stories like the paradise expulsion of Adam and Eve, the Ten Commandments or the Crucifixion of Jesus.
The sound track is Bach’s score; its variations are similar to the transformation of the biblical history , onto life’s tales, that Tabori has made. The Bible is the “sound track” on Tabori creates his variations. The main subjects are the sin, the blame, the mercy, and the fear...all the Christian values.
A Jewish humour dominates the dialogues, mixed with the tragedy. However, some songs are quite rude, for example the Jews song.
The piece starts with the murder of Abel by Cain, and finish with other murder: the crucifixion.
Mr. Jay’s language is full of jokes and blasphemies but it seems he represents the role of God, as well as Goldberg seems to play the role of Jesus.
In my opinion, this play could be an offence for some religious public, because at my sight it mocks the Christians and Jews beliefs. Sometimes you cannot realise when it is fiction an when it’s reality. I mean the play mixes different levels. You can see the stories of the characters –actors, technicians, etc.- followed by biblical passages.
In relation to the stage, there was a big number of focus lighting the centre of stage where usually was performed the actions. Costumes were contemporaneous. The main characters, Mr. Jay and Goldberg wear trousers suits, and just the two women who represented an artistic assistant were singular.
The actress appeared most of the time with a “negligee” showing the chest – she probably played the role of the sin in the Jews history- and the assistant wear an original and coloured suit.
On the beginning, there are just few pieces of furniture: the table and chair of Mr. Jay, and a blackboard on was written, “God has died” signed by Nietzsche- during the play, the message changes as “Nietzsche has died” signed by God-.
Throughout the play, the furniture changes due to show the different scenes of Bible.
In this place, public was divided. As I saw the firsts ---- were occupied by young people who laughed at all jokes. But the rows behind we were occupied by older people who where astonished with the sexual scenes rolls by the technicians and the main actress, in addition to the fact of mixing sex and religion.
PERFORMANCE MODULES
THEATRE (3)
Author : “De La Guarda”
Title : “ Villa Villa”
Theatre Company : “De La Guarda”
Play Director : Pichón Baldinú
Casting : unknown (six women and six men)
Date and place of performance: 29/11/05 – carp on ground.
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This play is unusual; it could be defined as aerial, because most of the time, the action, is developed on the air ,above the audience. It hasn’t got any text, and any dialogue. The actors sing and shout, but do not speak.
By other way, the play is unusual too, because there’s no distance between actors and audience. They even, touch, embrace and kiss people.
The show starts with over one hundred people, standing in an extremely large room, with no seats, where the lights have gone out. The public can see, shadows of persons flying above a paper over their heads; meanwhile a delighted music is played.
Suddenly, some performers start to fly, coming from the ceiling.
When the enormous paper above the public heads, gets broken, a big number of lights start to go crazy and performers go walking around the theatre, dancing and shouting crazy.
They also do acrobatics on the ceiling and walls, above all the public standing below.
Since the moment that public arrives to the theatre, they must move constantly around the performers, expecting their movements.
They jump, sing, and dance through the public, and even someone is “caught” by an actor to fly on the air, or dance over the platforms.
In my opinion, this play cannot be compared with any other I’ve ever seen ( some people think.... ). Audience stands up the two hour show, but in fact, you don’t get tired, because you don’t have time to get bored.
The most original idea, is the fact that actors and audience occupy the same space of the theatre.
The music has been composed with tribal sounds, and it is played in live by the actors, themselves .
But , behind this atmosphere of madness, you can see there is a perfect technician control, because actors use armours every time, and if they commit a mistake , can be quite dangerous for them and even for the audience.
At the end, actors finish singing a song like gospel, followed by the public, who believe is the guest star in the show.
PERFORMANCE MODULES
Title : “Los Monologos de la Vagina” (“The Vagina Monologues”)
Author : Eve Ensler
Category : Social Science – Women’s Studies; Drama
Publisher : Villard (January , 2001)
Theatre Company : “ Karacter”
Play Director : Antonia Garcia
Casting : Maite Merino and Paloma Catala
Date and Place of Performance : 25/12/05 – “ Teatre El Musical “
The Vagina Monologues is a piece which has been played in Broadway, during some years, having lots of success.
It has been performed by very famous actresses like Kate Winslet or Melanie Griffith, between others.
In the Spanish version, two women relate to the audience their vagina’s stories.
During one hour and a half, these actresses, perform some kind of women, pertaining to different social classes, ages and matters.
In fact this play is the result of over two hundred interviews about the memories and experiences of sexuality of women, made by Eve Ensler, herself. So all the monologues played on stage, are real , and non-fiction.
The language used is easy, an every-day language, irreverent, full of humour, however, excluding the obscenities.
There are stories of intimacy, vulnerability, and sexual self- discovery, including the main deepest fantasies and fears of women.
There are stories about gynaecology visits, about pleasure groans, etc.. giving the audience very comic moments.
On the other hand , there are some painful stories, which relate the massive violations of Bosnian women, or the Ciudad Juarez murders.
Since the first moment, the audience was quite receptive, bursting in laughs very often.
Ending the play, there was a moment, where one actress “obliged” public to repeat the word “coño” five or six times, higher and higher each time; every one did it.
I think public was delighted.
In relation to the stage, there was just a little platform in the centre, with some objects (like shoes, coats, etc..), the actresses were taken continuously, to characterise them.
Lights were very soft, yellow or white, focusing platform and actresses, at the same time.
Attending to costumes, the two women wear trousers suits, adding all time some accessories to characterise them, as different women.
In my opinion, it is a very funny play, where it seems men are completely excluded. They just don’t talk about them.
The moment on one actress started telling us a never ending list of vagina’s synonyms was so amusing, and finally I came back home, so much familiarized with my own “vagina”.
AUTO – EVALUATION : NOTABLE