CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, April 15, 2015

“All The Names” at Quantum Theater

The Pittsburgh Tatler: José Saramago’s All the Names is a mysterious and haunting novel. The story revolves around Senhor José, a timid, middle-aged, low-level civil servant in the densely bureaucratic “Central Registry” of an unidentified city. Senhor José’s life is transformed when, having taken the uncharacteristically bold step of borrowing some of the registry cards to use for his after hours hobby creating scrapbooks of the lives of celebrities, he chances upon the card of an unknown woman and – for reasons he cannot explain, even to himself – becomes obsessed with tracking her down and finding out as much information as he can about her.

2 comments:

Bronwyn Donohue said...

I saw this production last week and love that Quantum theatre utilizes the site-specific method. I also really loved seeing my acting teacher, Cameron Knight, performing. What was so great about watching Cameron was that I was able to see how he implemented many of the techniques we are learning in his acting class. While it was fun seeing so many school of drama professors, I did often find myself, however, confused by the play and the story that it was trying to tell. I think part of the reason was that the opening sound cue had a lot of exposition and I was focused on writing names on the wall so I missed the opening exposition. One thing I personally loved but hated for the production were the baby lambs that were used. They were adorable but everyone's attention was on the lambs rather than the actors and so I missed more story telling moments.

54-102::A

Jason Cohen said...

I can tell you already that this is going to be one of those two part comments. This is the first part of the two. I have purchased tickets to see Quantum Theatre’s production of All the Names for this Sunday. Unfortunately, due to the cut off time for comments I will not be able to post my review and thoughts on the production after I see it, so you will have to stay tuned for another comment next week for all of that fun! What I want to do in this comment is talk about my expectations for this production. In my mind this piece of theatre is going to be super crazy but have solid storytelling. I say this because the majority of the design team is from Carnegie Mellon and they are the ones teaching us how to tell stories. And its going to be weird because well that’s what I heard. Stay tuned for more next week. ☺