Proscenium

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,…

I think that A Doll’s House is a drama. It is a drama because it closely resembles real-life. It in fact resembles the life that many women had to face not too long ago when men were still in control of everything, including their wives. Also, it deals with issues in marriage in which many people have today. The plot structure is definitely linear. There are no flashbacks and there is not a series of stories being told. There is in fact only one story being told and it began with the…

The play Abigail is about ten years after the Salem witch trails. Salem is where Abigail was the antagonist for the events that occurred there and lead to the deaths of those all accused of witchcraft. Abigail ran to the outskirts of a town she tends to the sick and her gardens. She has changed her name to Ruth Meadow and is haunted by the events of her past. When she is tending her garden one afternoon a sailor by the name of John Brown approaches her and says that he is sick and that he heard…

This semester, I have seen numerous of productions that were enjoyable and at the same time, shared a common theme towards the end of the play which was there ticket towards freedom. The two productions I thought resemble this includes Father Comes Home from the Wars and the Royale. These two productions had a common connection of racism moments when they were trying to reach freedom. The main character in each of the productions had a difficult time stepping out of their comfort zones due to…

the theater and costume designs created by Natalia Goncharova for the Ballet Russes in the 1920s. Her interest in theater continued in the "Presentation" series of 1982-1983, in which an abstract "figure" was enclosed by two borders resembling a proscenium arch and curtain.The figure finally asserted itself in Schapiro's work of the mid-1980s. I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1984) and Master of Ceremonies (1985) each presented three dancers on a stage. The lively abstract qualities of the dancers…

“The World’s First Blue-Collar Dancing Movie Star” The dancer known to film buffs and stage historians as Gene Kelly was born to an Irish-Catholic family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 23rd, 1912 as Eugene Curran Kelly. One of five children, Kelly started performing from a relatively young age as part of the Five Kellys, a family troupe patterned after the famous Seven Little Foys” (Fletcher 16). Although he took dance classes at the studio partially owned by his mother, Kelly did not…

8:00 at night, I attended the musical Big River presented at the Dakota Prairie Playhouse. The show was written by William Hauptman and was presented by DSU students and special guest Keith Hatton. The Dakota Prairie Playhouse’s Theatre has a proscenium theatre space. The theatre was much larger than I had originally thought it would be allowing for a bigger audience that was present that night. The audience itself, from what I can tell, was composed of mostly college students. However, there…

On April 28, 2016 the Redfield Proscenium Theatre is full of excitement from energized parents, peers, professors, and choreographers, as everyone patiently waits for the Spring Dance Concert to start. The lights are finally dimmed and the applause stops as soon as the stage lights turn on. The concert starts off with “Space Taken” by Katie Dahlaw which explores gender stereotypes and ends with a piece by Kathleen Hermesdorf titled “Fern” that starts off with dancers surrounded around a Fern.…

Lighting The lights are the first thing the audience experience in this piece, then comes sound and movement. From the begging the lighting design was unique in the since that there was emphasis on the curtains. There were lights shining directly on the wings drapes. They were simply horizontal lines stacking straight up. The choice to have the lights show up first gave the audience time to take in the lights and create their own idea of what the lights represented. There were two sets/types of…

witnessed no pausing; when one scene was ending the next scene was already being prepared. Overall, the whole play was very clean, well managed, and highly professional. The play was performed at Cuesta College’s Performing Arts Center, on a smaller proscenium stage that seats 450 people. The space was limited, clean, and simplistic, and not terribly theatrical, but that all changed when many of the production effects and set design were revealed (which will be explained further below).…