Monday, September 22, 2008
International and fantastical
The Tartan Online: "Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama will put on three productions this semester. The shows — The Other Shore, Into the Woods, and The Mill on the Floss — represent a departure from traditional university plays by highlighting theatrical content that is both international in scope and fantastical in nature. As faculty directors and both undergraduate and graduate student designers and managers produce the works, the subject matter and execution of the plays are both powerful pieces of art as well as tangible representations of Carnegie Mellon student work."
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8 comments:
It is great that the school is doing more controvertial plays. The showing of new perspectives and ideas is an intrisic part of a play's role.
Am I the only one who's read the line "Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama will put on three productions this semester" and was mildly insulted? We're doing at least three times that number of plays by the end of October I believe. Maybe the phrase "main stage" was forgotten, but still, I know I've got crew this semester and its not on any of those plays.
They say that we are doing "controversial" shows. However one of the three is Sondheim... Also i agree with ammerman by saying that we are only doing three shows. I feel bad for the Graduate and Senior Directors for not being put into the category of shows at School of Drama. It's silly that they do that and they should note in the article that these are the mainstages as apposed to all of the shows coming out of School of Drama.
I also found it a little funny that they only mentioned three of our shows. A big city newspaper I would expect that from, but not our own school paper. Most of my friends that are theatre majors in other schools only do three shows a year, so I guess we are in the minority. I'm not sure this season is any more controversial than last season was or next season will be. I guess they gotta write about something though.
Whether it was an issue of lack of research or simply poor wording, I agree that asserting that CMU Drama is only doing three shows this semester is a big mistake. I also agree that Into the Woods is hardly a controversial show; it seemed like the article was trying to force a relationship between the productions that wasn't there.
Even though CMU's attempt to produce more controversial work is an important factor of this season, I think it's the attempt to open up audiences to new cultures. We sometimes get caught in certain 'western ways' that we narrow our theater experience. Even if we do not like the piece, it's the idea of being introduced and immersed in another culture. For Americans, this is an important mission to try not only to accomplish, but succeed at.
Who says Sondheim isn't controversial? Into the woods brings up a lot of issues that are not usually talked about in musical theatre and shows a world that is thought to be enchanted and fantastical as very dark and disturbed.
As part of the run crew for The Other Shore I have had the opportunity to watch the rehearsal process for two weeks, and witness what is described in this article. It was interesting experiencing how I slowly came to understand how the various exercises that the actors often paused to do before, after and during rehearsal, related to the play and affected the actors and the rehearsal environment and final product.
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