Side Show Research Paper

A few weeks ago I went to the showing of a piece titled Braided Sorrow at the University of San Francisco Lone Mountain Theater. Braided Sorrow is a performance written by Marisela Orta, was directed by Roberto Varea and was presented by the USF Performing Arts Department. When I arrived to the performance the first thing that I noticed was the set up of the stage. It looked very different from usual. This past spring semester I was in a class taught by Professor Varea (The director of the play) and throughout the semester we were required to go to a number of performances.

The black box theater is a very intimate setting to begin with, and as I took my seat in the theater, I felt that intimacy. The theater was dark, and the audience was virtually silent before the production began. As I sat waiting for the performance to begin, I took in the lighting, the props, and the set as a whole, and I began to feel as if I were sitting just at the edge of a different time period. The design element that stood out most to me was the lighting of the river because the gobos and the selection of down lights made the river come to life, almost as if it was another character in this production. I was definitely drawn into the world of this play due to the intimacy of the black box theater and the lighting design of the

The stage starts off mostly bare except for a few rows of chairs set to look like the seats of a train. The simple set allows for more movement for the actors and also prevents any distractions that large sets often cause. Throughout the show, the set changes to show the different locations that Bella visits. During one scene that takes place in Bella’s dreams, a projector casts lights that look like stars across the bare stage to reveal Tommie Haw (Paolo Montalban), an Asian cowboy that tells Bella about the Californian railways. The bare stage provides a dramatic and dreamlike scene.

but it eventually got easier and the play became super funny. This play was filled with action everywhere. The lightning was set up really good because I was able to see everything that was going on and it all looked great. There were many lights in the venue and that was good because you were able to see everything more clear.

One use more set pieces during scenes with only two or three characters to make the stage more full and not as empty. The second thing I would add is more mics. Throughout the show audio was constantly at a low because of a lack of microphones and some dialogue and even singing was lost due to no one being able to hear the actors. One thing I would also change is some lighting clues, because at random points in the show a spotlight would appear on an entirely empty side of the stage while leaving actors on the other side almost completely in the dark. Secondly I would change the actresses playing Julia Sullivan and Linda.

Savannah Live was a musical preformance held in one of the oldest continuing theater halls in the nation. The theater, appropiately named the Historic Savannah Theater, origionally opened in 1818, yet do to years of wear and tear and several fires, the modern theater was retrofitted to look like its 1940s, art-deco self. Although the stage was in the traditional Proscienim style, the play was anything but traditional. The stage hall itself seemed like something right out of the hay day of Broadway, with lights surrounding the procienian arch, red velvet chairs and carpet, the hall was like a time caplse bringing me back into the 20th centry. Mimicing the transformations of the hall throughout the years, the musical took the audience on a journey through musical, and theatrical history.

Backstage areas of the theater, dressing rooms, rooftops, corridors, and, of course, the stage all provide deeply detailed to perfectly contain the characters in the film. Printed couches, scrawled “congratulations” notes, flowers and flickering light bulbs adorn our hero’s dressing room. These spaces are each decorated to look authentic. Color also plays a large role in “Birdman”. The stage lighting shifts dramatically throughout the play within the film and this theme often bleeds into the backstage of the St. James Theater.

Realizing is to understand, while denying is to contradict. We as people understand that there is more to any relationship than the just the surface. The Great Gatsby, a mysterious but intense novel, is based off of the ideas of denying but realizing, leaving the story intriguing to readers. Not only does one of the most important characters in this novel, Daisy Buchanan, realize what is going on in her reality but she also chooses to deny it. In this case, her convenience is more important than the truth.

The cast of the play are unaware of the audience, however, the audience is able to listen to dialogue that occurs throughout the theater, whether it is in the headsets between technicians, on stage between the actors playing their characters in the play and between the director and actors who make adjustments when necessary. The third fourth wall was at its edge of breaking, where the audience is almost unable to tell whether what they are experiencing is real or not. As an observer of the rehearsal of this play, this wall was broken when I understood that what I was watching was a rehersal of a play, of a rehearsal of a play. It was difficult to describe or understand when the cast of 10 out of 12 were actually in or out of character. The complexity of this play lies in the use of metatheatre, which has been exploited to its fullest extent

The stage design gives the impression of the characters being in two separate rooms, the positioning of blocks and pillars helps again to demonstrate this. This intricate attention to detail enables the performance to be compared so similarly to the movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic, although the ‘big screen’ enables more room for a fast change in setting and shots, Rourke does a phenomenal job trying to create this illusion which works so brilliantly. The night before the wedding or you could refer to it as the ‘stag and hen do’ was an unexpected twist that the audience definitely did not see coming. Again, the revolving stage was used to represent the divide between the women and the men and to compensate for the lack of space that the stage could carry.

The designs, lighting, sound, makeup, and music of the play are as crucial as the play itself. The people who put the production together work just as hard as those who make the play come to life. Without production elements, the play may not obtain the intended impact than with it. Each production element has its own objective as do the actors of the play. For Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the production element that caught my attention out of all other elements were the costumes.

She never knows what side to choose and she feels pressured to make both men happy. She is so insecure of herself in her relationships and the men try to make it better for her. The men do not help her insecurity because she becomes extremely overwhelmed with who to chose. She is so wrapped up in Gatsby’s vision of her and Tom’s cruel power that it makes her try to escape the love. She does not want to feel pressure by the men

The productions of this play were successful through stage design, lighting crewing, and acting. Those three aspects made the quality of the play stand out to me, as an audience member. The production of the set design of the play was a good effort. The set design for the play staging aims for the sweet spot between feeding adult nostalgia and satisfying a new generation of children.

“The Play That Goes Wrong” required a very detailed strategic plan of the arranged props and set design that actors need to follow in their performance. I believe the performers did a marvelous job in following the detailed choreography of the show. One of the most memorable cast members was Nancy Zamit. She played Annie the stage manager, who took the spotlight when she was forced into playing Charles’ fiancée named Sandra because the original female lead got "knocked unconscious” in the middle of the play. As terribly shy as she was, Zamit intensified the enjoyment of the audience as her character was reading off lines from pages of the script very awkwardly and awfully in an unfitted red dress and wig.

A Chorus Line was different from any of the plays that we had seen during the semester, given that it was a musical. This is definitely what I am more accustomed to from watching my friends through the years preform this style alone essentially as well as my sister playing any Broadway musical soundtrack she could get her hands on for weeks on end. This felt so drastically different from anything else we had seen in the semester because it seemed that there was no end goal or resolution, it just ended. Sure, a handful of characters grew but a lot was left to the imagination at the end of the play. One thing that always sticks out within a musical are the songs itself.