Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Review: 'Our Town' takes on minimalist stage setting
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "Prime Stage's 'Our Town' may be the simplest play — at least visually — that anyone in the audience ever will see."
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6 comments:
This is a unique way of doing a show with not much scenery at all. Letting the actors do all of the work and there is not a set there to help them tell where they are in a time in the play. It is a very cool I would think that the actors jobs are be much harder then. I wonder if the lighting helps set time and place. If the lighting dos not do that I would think that then the actors jobs would be harder. I would like to go see this show and see this way that they are approaching this show.
In my experience I have found that the plays that use the least amount of scenery or props are the most effective. If a play is to cluttered with too many items then at some point it becomes about what prop the actor is holding instead of about the action. Whenever this happens there is a serious problem! It is one thing to be realistic, but it another thing to weight the play down.
I feel like there has begun to be a push of minimalism on the stage. There seem to be a trend in extremes of set design. There are the broadway extravaganzas and the minimalist sets. Perhaps this trend in minimalism is a reflection of the modern economic crisis.
Its interesting to see how this article comments on the minimalist setting when the script itself calls for this minimalist approach. There is not supposed to be any silverware, and the sets are, as specified in the script, mimed. The idea is to call attention to every day life in this town, without the use of spectacle. I didn't find this article at all informative because it mentions everything that i automatically think of as "Our Town"
This kind of choice, when it works, always impresses me. The amount of restraint it takes to choose not to go with lavish sets, or props, or have the actors over-act to compensate for the lack of sets takes an amazing amount of self control on the part of the director and design team. In this play, it sounds like the choice really worked. The story is the most important part of this production, not the setting. Letting the story shine through so boldly takes a risk, and it payed off. When my high school did a production of the Laramie Project, with minimal scenery, and no costumes to speak of, it didn't have the same effect. The play was sloppy, and poorly done. (The actors were still on book!) I've seen this kind of decision go badly, so I'm really curious to see what Our Town did differently to make it more effective.
It would be interesting to find out why they chose to do this production in this minimalist style. However these days we have so many choices of things that we can add to a production that sometimes there seem to be too many things going on. It would be interesting to see a strip downed production like this and see what it takes away or adds to the story and how it contributes to the understanding of the audience. Especially after having completed Salt Peanuts were so much emphasis was put on the elements used to tell the story, it would be interesting to see the effect that taking the most commonly used elements has on the story.
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