Theatre Observation Report

I attended the play It’s a Wonderful Life on Thursday November 17 at 7:30 p.m. This production was put on by the Big Rapids community theatre, Stage M. The show took place at the Crossroads Charter Academy auditorium. This auditorium had a proscenium style layout, meaning the audience was seated on only one side of the stage. The location where the play was performed took away from the experience. It was obvious that the auditorium had not been renovated in a while, the seats were uncomfortable, and it was small. However, based on what we talked in class about the quality of the community plays, my expectation was not very good going in. The purpose of this play was to entertain the audience and the environment was a distraction to this. There were many distractions that made it hard to enjoy the show and the production had a lot of things that could be worked on. One of the aspects of the production that could have used a little work was the lighting. For the majority of the play the lights stayed the …show more content…
While the cast moved the scenery in between each scene it was very obvious. The movements were choppy and inefficient. As well as not looking good, there was also unfitting music playing. There was Christmas music that played every transition and the audio quality was very low. The music was fuzzy and muffled. The transitions were a huge distraction and made it hard to enjoy the show. Although there are many things to be worked on in this production, there are also a lot of positives. One of these being the acting. For a community play I was expecting some poor acting but was happily surprised. The actors did a great job and were believable. In the begging of the show there were a few scenes with children and they did an outstanding job. There were no forgotten lines or stumbles throughout the play. Although other things were not great, the acting helped make this play more