Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Spinning the Times
'kül: "For those of you out there who don't quite understand why one should bother with 'plays' when the 'real world' is out there, Spinning the Times is for you. Each of the five monologue plays is based on a headliner from the New York Times, and each demonstrates the rare gift fiction has to enhance the truth--that is, to be the lie that tells the truth. That's not to say that all five of the female Irish playwrights excelled at Origin Theater Company's challenge--some of the plays make deeper interpretations, or have a more ferocious topic at hand--but make no mistake: there's something in each piece that'll make you spin."
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4 comments:
when i first saw this article, i thought it was more of an improv thing, where each night 5 headlines turned into 5 stories and 1 show. This turned out not to be the case, and i can't decide if i'm really dissapointed or not. I think that they tried to get people thinking about the stories behind the stories we read everyday. In that sense, maybe the whole show is about human nature in general. BUt i'm curious as to how the 5 stories tie in together. The set is bare, lighting mininimal, so what is the common theme? or is it just 5 separate vignettes?
Although at first I was going to be quick to calling this another "lazy witting" show, I had to rethink it. Because the type of people that read the paper seem like they are more likely to be intellectual and support the arts than those who don't it may be a good approach but, i don't see it lasting very long since not many people will want to pay more to hear something that they can read in the paper for less money.
I have to disagree with Jacob here. Yes, people can go ahead and just read a story out of a paper, but nothing compares to hearing the story narrated and performed in front of you. Newspapers are designed to be informative and (generally) neutral, while performances pull emotional responses from audience members and thus communicate the same facts more memorably and effectively. I need only point you to NPR's "This American Life" to show how much even just the audio medium changes the elements of a story and elicits such a stronger emotional response.
On a separate note, I think the show's serious problem is keeping current. The Times updates EVERY DAY, so naturally the stories in this show will go stale. I would be more interested in a production which analyzes the news each week and writes a new vignette for each week of production, just cycling out the first set of 5 as time goes on. A show like this with 5 static vignettes just doesn't truly capture the essence of the New York Times.
This is the type of theatre that I find most interesting. It's taking a story and finding connections and relationships. Taking something static and adding multiple perspectives too it and then communicating that perspective to a live audience is what I love about theatre. While the concept may appear to be deceptively simple it actually allows for an almost infinite number of interpretations.
I guess Jacob is trying to say that using this show to prove to people how "cool" theatre is a bad idea, because newspapers are already part of a theatre goer's repertoire.
I suppose it would be interesting to apply this concept to something like twitter which would bring in a younger and "less educated" audience. It's cool and fantastic idea anyway.
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