Arms And The Man By Bernard Shaw: Play Analysis

For my ethnographic project I went to see a play. Now, for most people, this is probably not out of the ordinary and it seems to be a cop out for a project that is supposed to take you out of your comfort zone and challenge your expectations of music. I felt it was too at first but, after reevaluating it, I realized that it 's actually more ground shaking than you 'd expect. I am an African American baptist Christian that was raised in gospel and contemporary Christian music. I have never been to a play before and the closest I 've been to something of that style is an opera when I was about ten years old. Believe me, it was a culture shock.
This play was at Triad Stage in Downtown Greensboro and it was titled Arms and the Man by Bernard Shaw. The play itself (in writing) didn 't include any music at all but, through the prompting of the director and the sound designer, Triad Stage turned the sort of dry writing into a very musically driven and powerful performance. Because I 'm interning at Triad Stage I was able to see behind the scenes at the production of the show and even talk to the director, actors and sound designer for their reasoning and inspiration to what they did with the show. It was pretty cool.
Before I even arrived at the theatre, I stood in my room fretting over what to wear. All the people …show more content…
Due to it being a live show, most of the music while the actors were singing was from a single piano pushed near the stage. It was a smaller sound than a loud orchestra that I was expecting but it did the job well. When they did need a loud orchestra, the speaker system in the theatre would play the grand motifs and the actors would sing but would be visibly more restricted in their expression in the songs. It was worth noting that, in rehearsals, the actors preferred the piano over the "orchestra" and, for the songs that weren 't played on the piano, they were forced to specifically time their voices to the