For the first activity, I attended the play “The Last Five Years”, held Friday October 7, 2016 in the Harold and Jean Lambert Recital Hall. As stated in the playbill, The Last Five Years is “a show about a relationship, about a marriage…it’s told from two angles. From the man’s point of view, it starts at the first meeting and ends in the present…from the woman’s point of view, it starts in the present and works back to the first meeting.” (citation). The cast was made up of college students Caroline Stuart (Cathy), who produced the play as a part of her senior study, and Austin Loo (Jamie). The play was made up of fourteen different pieces. For this essay, I will be discussing the songs “Still Hurting”, “The Next Ten Minutes”, and “Goodbye
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One of the few duet pieces in the play, the song has Cathy and Austin singing different lines until they finally sing together. This creates a strong harmony, which seemed to suggest to me that not only do the characters work together well vocally, but also work together well in a romantic relationship. Their life together is just beginning. Those who have the ability to harmonize well together should be the characters that stay together. Rhythmically, the song begins slowly and continues to build, finally swelling when the two characters come together. This is clearly meant to be an emotional influence on the audience. Lyrically, the characters are talking about hope for their future, but the audience knows better. The rhythm is telling the audience to be as happy and hopeful as Jamie and Cathy are but the underlying dread of what comes ruins this. The register of pitch in Cathy’s voice is high and Jamie’s register is low, giving vary degrees of frequency that come together to produce a beautiful melody. The main instrumental accompaniment is a piano. This does not possess a catchy melody, but one that has a jagged contour and great complexity, skipping up and down the piano. The voices of the characters, likewise, are required to produce many different tones in order to give more complexity to this melody. I believe the intent of this piece was communicated very well, giving the readers a story of true love and how powerful it can be. Even though the audience knew the ending of this story, they were still able to feel through the performance how much the characters had loved each other
One of the few duet pieces in the play, the song has Cathy and Austin singing different lines until they finally sing together. This creates a strong harmony, which seemed to suggest to me that not only do the characters work together well vocally, but also work together well in a romantic relationship. Their life together is just beginning. Those who have the ability to harmonize well together should be the characters that stay together. Rhythmically, the song begins slowly and continues to build, finally swelling when the two characters come together. This is clearly meant to be an emotional influence on the audience. Lyrically, the characters are talking about hope for their future, but the audience knows better. The rhythm is telling the audience to be as happy and hopeful as Jamie and Cathy are but the underlying dread of what comes ruins this. The register of pitch in Cathy’s voice is high and Jamie’s register is low, giving vary degrees of frequency that come together to produce a beautiful melody. The main instrumental accompaniment is a piano. This does not possess a catchy melody, but one that has a jagged contour and great complexity, skipping up and down the piano. The voices of the characters, likewise, are required to produce many different tones in order to give more complexity to this melody. I believe the intent of this piece was communicated very well, giving the readers a story of true love and how powerful it can be. Even though the audience knew the ending of this story, they were still able to feel through the performance how much the characters had loved each other