The Spring One Act Play Festival is one of the most memorable event in Bard Queens. Students, both from Scene Study class and others, did not only have the opportunity to enjoy their evening but also deepens their knowledge on theater and acting. While the plot and character development remain important for maintaining the audiences’ interests, the study of posture/gesture, staging/movement, objective/tactics, and emotional/sensorial truths are, as well, significant. In this paper, I chose to examine four specific plays and connect each to one of the aforementioned elements of acting, where appropriate. The crux of the last play i.e. Playwriting 101: The Rooftop Lesson by Richard Orloff is a playwriting class at an institution with a somewhat-annoying
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The director and her team were very courageous to have used to props at all as part of the staging. Despite no use of props, the team have successfully portrayed the house, which is undeniably a difficult task. The stairs part was the most interesting. On one line, an actor mentioned going upstairs. I was wondering how they are going to go upstairs without actual stairs, and what they have done was out of the ordinary. They went behind the shades and used their steps to create noise, which actually made it feel like they were going up and down the stairs. Not only the stairs but the actors also did a well job showing that the floor was uneven. For example, there was a time when the actor and actress had to take very far and high step to show that there is something they have to walk over when entering the room. Although there is no such thing to represent that in the play, I can actually see the house and its interior in my mind. This makes me think of my most recent project Lobby Hero. The play sets in the lobby of an apartment building of Manhattan. Our group used various props as part of the staging to show that we were actually in the lobby. This includes using the door frame as an elevator and stacking cubes to show the lobby door. At first, I thought we needed even more props to show the setting but after watching Wildwood, I felt I have used too many. My team used four five props to portray a lobby but Zoe’s …show more content…
I will not be discussing about the main characters i.e. Marcus and Susan, but the four mourners. These four did not have much lines and some didn’t even have a line to say at all. Yet, they all are able to display their sympathy for Susan, who just lost her loved one. The mourners often have brief side conversations consequent to the entrance of Marcus. Their objective of showing sympathy has been interrupted by the annoyance of Marcus. I went home and thought about this; all of the sudden, I thought of Romeo and Juliet. When I was assigned to be Benvolio, my objective was to get my two friends to go the feast and enjoy ourselves. Similar to the mourners, I was interrupted by Romeo who seems to be refusing quite a lot. The difference was that I had to influence another character but the mourners did not have to do so much. It’s a nice correlation to study and Rebecca’s team have done a great
The director and her team were very courageous to have used to props at all as part of the staging. Despite no use of props, the team have successfully portrayed the house, which is undeniably a difficult task. The stairs part was the most interesting. On one line, an actor mentioned going upstairs. I was wondering how they are going to go upstairs without actual stairs, and what they have done was out of the ordinary. They went behind the shades and used their steps to create noise, which actually made it feel like they were going up and down the stairs. Not only the stairs but the actors also did a well job showing that the floor was uneven. For example, there was a time when the actor and actress had to take very far and high step to show that there is something they have to walk over when entering the room. Although there is no such thing to represent that in the play, I can actually see the house and its interior in my mind. This makes me think of my most recent project Lobby Hero. The play sets in the lobby of an apartment building of Manhattan. Our group used various props as part of the staging to show that we were actually in the lobby. This includes using the door frame as an elevator and stacking cubes to show the lobby door. At first, I thought we needed even more props to show the setting but after watching Wildwood, I felt I have used too many. My team used four five props to portray a lobby but Zoe’s …show more content…
I will not be discussing about the main characters i.e. Marcus and Susan, but the four mourners. These four did not have much lines and some didn’t even have a line to say at all. Yet, they all are able to display their sympathy for Susan, who just lost her loved one. The mourners often have brief side conversations consequent to the entrance of Marcus. Their objective of showing sympathy has been interrupted by the annoyance of Marcus. I went home and thought about this; all of the sudden, I thought of Romeo and Juliet. When I was assigned to be Benvolio, my objective was to get my two friends to go the feast and enjoy ourselves. Similar to the mourners, I was interrupted by Romeo who seems to be refusing quite a lot. The difference was that I had to influence another character but the mourners did not have to do so much. It’s a nice correlation to study and Rebecca’s team have done a great