Richard Foreman is a man that envisions a symbiosis amongst the several elements of a piece that he can translate through his designs. Critiques and patrons of theater have considered his work a mixture of surrealism, dada, futurism, heavily emphasized through symbolism. He envisions a set where the authors mind is morphed by the elements encompassing the stage. His designs express simplicity without using cliche models. Foreman likes to use frames to express the film reel like lives we see everyday. Those mind frames of thought he wishes to express are done by creating a space on stage expressing layers. These layers represent the complexities of everyday life.
Foreman takes a script for what it is and tries to personify its themes and conflicts with not only the actors and props but what those props do to leave an impression on the audience. He mentions the space between the stage and the 4th wall; he wishes to create an ever changing environment that can somehow mesh the show into the audience's reality. His use of string on stage shows how the layers interconnect and create the connections between every aspect of the stage. His "why not" methods show his Dada influence and how it turns the stage into a representation of the thought processes of the mind.
Perspective is also a huge influence in Foreman's designs; he likes to use the space to highlight scenes that express the perspective characters have on stage. Ultimately, Foreman wishes to have a space the could conform to his current mind set. His attention to aesthetics is shown by the materials like Plexiglas, string, colors, in his productions. The props he uses stir up and energy that creates a pull on the audience; to direct their gaze of the stage in line with the events unfolding the play. That energy is his goal to mediate. Not only does this enhance the affects of the play on the audience, but appeals to the audiences eye; an accomplishment that keeps the audience focused throughout the entire show.
Showing posts with label reading notes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading notes. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Jorge Luis Borges "Poets Creed"
- One reads what one likes, and one writes, not what one would like, but what one is able to write.
- In reading we seem to have the ability to transcend and to stretch beyond ourselves. In writing it seems that we are limited by our own talents, and experiences.
- Borges remembers back to his father's library and recalls stories not by there actual content, but how they made him feel.
- One of Borges definitions of humanity is that to be human is to live in the past and the future, to know a time before one is born, and a time that occurs after ones death.
- Another definition of humanity seems to be able to see yourself, face to face, and know. Perhaps an ecstatic truth, one that gives illumination?
- As a poet, Borges favors being the reader. It seems easier and in my opinion it is. The writing part, and which is a part of Borges Creed is that writing is troublesome and painful.
- "I suppose young men are found of unhappiness, they do their best to be unhappy, and they generally achieve it." A great quote, and it is very clear inside this classroom.
- In poetry everything is feeling.
- To repeat the last two lines of a play or poem, gives the second repeated line more weight. There is a thickening of meaning.
- The mistake that free verse is easier than structure. When, structure actually frees you by making your job easier. You just plug in your ideas into a form. In free verse you must construct everything from scratch.
- The art of hiding and writing as others do, pretending to write in an old "style"
- Borges finds that we are all contemporary. Because, we all exist now. You cannot get away from it.
- "What does being a writer mean to me? It means being true to my imagination."
- Stories as dreams or ideas, not factual re-accounts. Facts are just a web of accidents and circumstances.
- Be loyal to the dream not the circumstance.
- Poetry can harbor laziness, or idle writers. It's easier to hint at something than to write a novel about it.
- Finally he state that he has not real creed and that he only has a few precautions and misgivings.
- In reading we seem to have the ability to transcend and to stretch beyond ourselves. In writing it seems that we are limited by our own talents, and experiences.
- Borges remembers back to his father's library and recalls stories not by there actual content, but how they made him feel.
- One of Borges definitions of humanity is that to be human is to live in the past and the future, to know a time before one is born, and a time that occurs after ones death.
- Another definition of humanity seems to be able to see yourself, face to face, and know. Perhaps an ecstatic truth, one that gives illumination?
- As a poet, Borges favors being the reader. It seems easier and in my opinion it is. The writing part, and which is a part of Borges Creed is that writing is troublesome and painful.
- "I suppose young men are found of unhappiness, they do their best to be unhappy, and they generally achieve it." A great quote, and it is very clear inside this classroom.
- In poetry everything is feeling.
- To repeat the last two lines of a play or poem, gives the second repeated line more weight. There is a thickening of meaning.
- The mistake that free verse is easier than structure. When, structure actually frees you by making your job easier. You just plug in your ideas into a form. In free verse you must construct everything from scratch.
- The art of hiding and writing as others do, pretending to write in an old "style"
- Borges finds that we are all contemporary. Because, we all exist now. You cannot get away from it.
- "What does being a writer mean to me? It means being true to my imagination."
- Stories as dreams or ideas, not factual re-accounts. Facts are just a web of accidents and circumstances.
- Be loyal to the dream not the circumstance.
- Poetry can harbor laziness, or idle writers. It's easier to hint at something than to write a novel about it.
- Finally he state that he has not real creed and that he only has a few precautions and misgivings.
Reading Notes
Update on the reading notes. So far we've posted 5 different readings, so we've got 5 left guys. Reply in the comments which reading you want to work on if you haven't posted one yet.
Reading Notes that are done:
"Behind the Screen Door" - Jimmy
"World on Stage" - Allie & Keith
"Can Theater and Media Speak the Same Language?" - Kira & Keith
"Directors and Designers is there a Different Direction" - Nate
"The Stage as Dangerous machine" - Allie
Reading's not done:
"The Metaphor"
"Poet's Creed"
"Richard Foreman as a Sceneographer"
"Scenography as a Machine"
"Use of Mettapatterns"
Reading Notes that are done:
"Behind the Screen Door" - Jimmy
"World on Stage" - Allie & Keith
"Can Theater and Media Speak the Same Language?" - Kira & Keith
"Directors and Designers is there a Different Direction" - Nate
"The Stage as Dangerous machine" - Allie
Reading's not done:
"The Metaphor"
"Poet's Creed"
"Richard Foreman as a Sceneographer"
"Scenography as a Machine"
"Use of Mettapatterns"
Monday, June 1, 2009
Directors and Designers is there a Different Direction: Notes by Nate
There is often tension between directors and designers during a production. Many directors are seen as the head of a production but in reality they are the head of only half. As described in Directors and Designers is there a Different Direction designers often have to take the role of a 'wife' figure, having to word questions to the likes of "how do YOU think this would look?" in order to gain a response from directors who have the innate need to be in charge of every aspect of a production.
The year 1911 in Germany was a great year for theater. For the first time plays were mixed in with music costumes and intricate colorful sets that were designed for specialists. However, also stemming from this breakthrough was the commonly notion that the designers served the directors. But in 1988 this issue was addressed by The Society of British Theatre Designers as they stepped forward to announce that a change in the artistic collaboration between director and designer must change.
Pamela Howard calls for this change in her article stating that designers should become "architects of the space and the space itself becomes a major player in the production. This is becoming a reality as many designers are becoming just as well recognized as directors and with the new technology available to theaters for creating outstanding sets, this trend can only increase.
-Nate Murphy
The year 1911 in Germany was a great year for theater. For the first time plays were mixed in with music costumes and intricate colorful sets that were designed for specialists. However, also stemming from this breakthrough was the commonly notion that the designers served the directors. But in 1988 this issue was addressed by The Society of British Theatre Designers as they stepped forward to announce that a change in the artistic collaboration between director and designer must change.
Pamela Howard calls for this change in her article stating that designers should become "architects of the space and the space itself becomes a major player in the production. This is becoming a reality as many designers are becoming just as well recognized as directors and with the new technology available to theaters for creating outstanding sets, this trend can only increase.
-Nate Murphy
Friday, May 29, 2009
The Stage is a Dangerous Machine: the Designs of George Tyspin
The theater can be dangerous aesthetically as well as practically. George Tyspin, classically trained in architecture in Moscow and then as a designer at New York University, is among one of the foremost modern designers.
Style:- Steel is Tyspin’s favorite material for it’s “sleek beauty and strength”, it is used in many of his designs and sculptures.
-“I’m not interested in periods; I feel incredible freedom. I was never indoctrinated in the sense of ‘this is from this period and that is from that period’. I have total freedom t use whatever I like.” This freedom is most often connected with the postmodern movement, with historical and contemporary elements juxtaposed together.
-Tyspin insists that his approach is organic, “I’m more interested in the essence of things, the textures, the shapes, the space, the historical elements as long as they serve the meaning”
-Influenced by David Mitchell, in his ease with mechanical transformations.
-employs the vertical to achieve a “spiritual dimension” as well as adding additional focal points.
-Islamic architecture in how it makes an understanding of how a building is put together impossible, as well as how it seems to melt into the air.
Shows:
1)The Screens by Genet.
- Created a sand y dessert of stage
-Tyspin designed a net that hangs above the stage to represent the land of the dead. He called in a German engineering firm to help design the net to hold up to 40 bodies as well as appear light and airy.
2)The Electrification of the Soviet Union
-set inside of a train car that was flexible
-his work on this set exemplifies his collaborative nature where he and director Peter Sellers formed the idea of the malleable train car.
3)The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez
-this was the first film that Tyspin worked on, it was a remake.
-the original had been black and white and tyspin wanted to carry that feeling by having intense colors. “to really go to essentials in color where every color becomes a state of mind”
-Played with the loneliness of new york “whatever is not onstage is just as important as what is”
4)The Ring of the Nibelungs - Wagner- In this design Tyspin wanted to design with all the elements, and create a space where “the audience and the stage were intertwined”
-“the first note of the opera sounds in the darkness, and then there was an explosion of glass and metal. The platforms begin moving and action immediately becomes spatial”
-The design for this set took over the Netherlands Opera, with set changes waiting in the lobby and coming out into the street.
Sculptures:
-Tyspin has held gallery shows for his sculptures
-They are created after the show has been designed and act as monuments to the shows.
-They are not quite stage models, but more conceptual of how Tyspin would have designed in an ideal world with no limitations of floor space for actors.
-These monuments set Tyspin apart from almost all other American designers who keep almost no record of their work and just design shows back to back. Tyspin remain the artist instead of making a career out of designing.
The Danger:
-in later years, Tyspin did very little work in the United States as his designs were too dangerous.
-His design for War and Peace had been performed in many other cities without fault, it wasn’t until New York did a mishap occur. But Tyspin felt the sage itself was safe but that “there was something getting into people’s subconscious. There was a perceived danger in the design.”
-Tyspin is dismayed at all the new safety regulations on what he can and can not do in the theater space.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Readings
So I was looking through all the old posts to see what readings have and have not been done.
Reading Notes that are done:
"Behind the Screen Door"
"World on Stage"
"Can Theater and Media Speak the Same Language?"
Reading's not done:
"Poet's Creed"
"Directors and Designers is there a Different Direction"
"Metaphor"
"The Stage as Dangerous machine"
"Richard Foreman as a Sceneographer"
"Stage as a Machine"
"world on stage" and "can theater and media speak..." were both done twice.
-Angus
Reading Notes that are done:
"Behind the Screen Door"
"World on Stage"
"Can Theater and Media Speak the Same Language?"
Reading's not done:
"Poet's Creed"
"Directors and Designers is there a Different Direction"
"Metaphor"
"The Stage as Dangerous machine"
"Richard Foreman as a Sceneographer"
"Stage as a Machine"
"world on stage" and "can theater and media speak..." were both done twice.
-Angus
Thursday, April 30, 2009
"Can Theater and Media Speak the Same Language" (Keith's Reading Notes)
Reading notes for Aronson's article on Theater and Media
Aristotle's Warning: "spectacle is 'the least artistic' aspect of theater"
Past method: minimize the appearance of human agency
Thesis:
projected scenery, an especially film and video, does not work -does not function- on the stage!
Why projections do not work well onstage:
1. Product of a capitalist society (subjected to political, social and economic influences)
2. Theater is the only art form to use what is signified as the signifier of that object (ie chair signifies a chair)
-dealing with real surfaces and volumes (wood floor treated to look like tile still functions as a floor)
-we sense the spaciality of the stage
-actor exists in real time
KEY ELEMENT: a) space and b) volume, which imply c) time
When scenography includes a projected image...
-the audience experiences the disjunction of perceiving a different world
3. With projected imagery: no spacial continuity between stage and auditorium and, consequently, no ability to comprehend time
4. Pictoral space, while possibly mimicking the exterior world, remains self-contained and self-referential
-sets create an illusion of continuing the space of the auditorium onto the stage
-we experience the stage in the here and now
5. Photographs: Time has transformed the subject while preserving the object
-turns them into fetish objects (ie family portraits: look back on)
~"The eye has lost its historically privileged place as a processor of information. On a stage that combines live images observed through normal visual processes and photographic images in which an eye observes mechanically reproduced images, the two systems inevitably clash"
EXCEPTION- live video feed
KEY TO OUR COMPREHENSION= the FRAME
-frames create self-contained space carefully delineated from the world around it
-Theater: the action that unfolds before our eyes is framed by the stage
-Internal logic: a world on a different scale that obeys different rules
~"individual spectators are obliterated in the darkened auditorium and become a communal audience" similar to Feminist Spectator (oh fuck... thats TA61. not this class...)
Movies
-present us with an infinite world (no FRAME)
-documentary capturing reality> believing that what is on the screen must in some way be true
vs Theater
-composed of real objects
-transforms a concrete reality into a kind of fantasy> everything on the stage becomes a sign
=TENSION is created between the unlimited bounds of the projected image and the architechtural realities of the stage
Movies
-the movement is specifically enhanced by the subjective intentions of the director or camera operator
-experienced as subjected and intentional, as presenting representation of the objective world
Stage set= permanent and unchanging (set is replaced but remains)
Projection= nothing but light/shadow> no corporeality
~"the very idea that one image, the projection, is created by light, and the other, the stage set, is created by objects that are made visible by their ability to reflect light, creates two perceptual orders, two kinds of reality"
My Question
1. Theater=present/Film=past(preserved): What about a period piece playing video clips (news, etc) that would be contemporary to the plays setting? No contrasting time periods...?
-Keith
Aristotle's Warning: "spectacle is 'the least artistic' aspect of theater"
Past method: minimize the appearance of human agency
Thesis:
projected scenery, an especially film and video, does not work -does not function- on the stage!
Why projections do not work well onstage:
1. Product of a capitalist society (subjected to political, social and economic influences)
2. Theater is the only art form to use what is signified as the signifier of that object (ie chair signifies a chair)
-dealing with real surfaces and volumes (wood floor treated to look like tile still functions as a floor)
-we sense the spaciality of the stage
-actor exists in real time
KEY ELEMENT: a) space and b) volume, which imply c) time
When scenography includes a projected image...
-the audience experiences the disjunction of perceiving a different world
3. With projected imagery: no spacial continuity between stage and auditorium and, consequently, no ability to comprehend time
4. Pictoral space, while possibly mimicking the exterior world, remains self-contained and self-referential
-sets create an illusion of continuing the space of the auditorium onto the stage
-we experience the stage in the here and now
5. Photographs: Time has transformed the subject while preserving the object
-turns them into fetish objects (ie family portraits: look back on)
~"The eye has lost its historically privileged place as a processor of information. On a stage that combines live images observed through normal visual processes and photographic images in which an eye observes mechanically reproduced images, the two systems inevitably clash"
EXCEPTION- live video feed
KEY TO OUR COMPREHENSION= the FRAME
-frames create self-contained space carefully delineated from the world around it
-Theater: the action that unfolds before our eyes is framed by the stage
-Internal logic: a world on a different scale that obeys different rules
~"individual spectators are obliterated in the darkened auditorium and become a communal audience" similar to Feminist Spectator (oh fuck... thats TA61. not this class...)
Movies
-present us with an infinite world (no FRAME)
-documentary capturing reality> believing that what is on the screen must in some way be true
vs Theater
-composed of real objects
-transforms a concrete reality into a kind of fantasy> everything on the stage becomes a sign
=TENSION is created between the unlimited bounds of the projected image and the architechtural realities of the stage
Movies
-the movement is specifically enhanced by the subjective intentions of the director or camera operator
-experienced as subjected and intentional, as presenting representation of the objective world
Stage set= permanent and unchanging (set is replaced but remains)
Projection= nothing but light/shadow> no corporeality
~"the very idea that one image, the projection, is created by light, and the other, the stage set, is created by objects that are made visible by their ability to reflect light, creates two perceptual orders, two kinds of reality"
My Question
1. Theater=present/Film=past(preserved): What about a period piece playing video clips (news, etc) that would be contemporary to the plays setting? No contrasting time periods...?
-Keith
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Reading Notes- "The World on Stage" -Keith
Like the title says... some reading notes. For States' "The World on Stage".
Different perspectives-
1. approach theater semioticically
Definition: semiotics-study of signs/symbols as elements of communicative behavior
-"all that is on the stage is a sign" -Prague linguists
-things "conceptually referring to" the greater "world" outside of the performance
-bridge between the stage and its fictional analogue of the world
2. approach theater phenomenologically
Definition: phenomena- circumstance/fact observed (ie 'the phenomena of nature')
-signs "achieve their vitality... not by signifying the world but by being part of it"
-not what it represents, but why its there?
-"pursuit of the essence of things"
Author (States)'s perspective
3. defined by VICTOR SHKLOVSKY
-"Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things"
-things important "as they are percieved and not as they are known"
-"the object is not important" just associations to the object
-similar to PHENOMENOLOGICAL views
-DE FAMILIARIZATION- "removing things from a world in which they have become inconspicuous and seeing them anew"
SIGN vs IMAGE
1. Sign
-Correlative terms: signifier and signified
-of no value unless it repeats itself
-the material of the sign is totally indifferent to the object it signifies
2. Image
-Any likeness, or representation, made out of materials of the medium (gesture, language, decor, sound, light)
-emphasis on empathetic response
-unique and unreproducible
-the physical image and its object... resemble each other
NEITHER SIGN or IMAGE
-"things that resist being either sign or image"
-"stage images do not always or entirely surrender their objective nature to the sign/image function"
1. working Clock
-astronomical time would clash with theatrical time
-awareness that theatrical time is being measured by a real clock
-SELF-GIVENNESS onstage>obeying its own laws of nature
2. Fire/Running water
-mildly distracting in the sense of being interesting
-retains a certain primal strangeness>something indisputably real leaks out of the illusion
3. Child actor
-"how well he acts, for a child!" / "Do they understand the play?"
-success depended heavily on the audience's "double vision" (seeing both child and character?)
-DOUBLE VISION- disparity between the actors and their roles" -Shapiro
-innocent child vs characters that "flirt with the audience"
-Kids did comedy/satire (genre's most closely linked to the audience's immediate world) instead of tragedies/serious plays (depended on a suspension of disbelief)
4. Stage animals
-trained or tranquilized, but cannot be depended upon
-No good behavior, only behavior
-BISOCIATION- intersection between two independent and self-contained phenomenal chains- natural animal behavior and culturally programmed human behavior
-can claim dog as the likeness of a dog (acts well by acting as it normally does)
Other
-Moliere playing Moliere (an exception to the aesthetic rule that the image is not the thing)
-Zoos> dingo- dog playing a dog from Australia
LAW OF COMPLEMENTARITY:
to the extent that something on stage arouses awareness of its external (or workday) significance, its internal (or illusionary) significance is reduced
Different perspectives-
1. approach theater semioticically
Definition: semiotics-study of signs/symbols as elements of communicative behavior
-"all that is on the stage is a sign" -Prague linguists
-things "conceptually referring to" the greater "world" outside of the performance
-bridge between the stage and its fictional analogue of the world
2. approach theater phenomenologically
Definition: phenomena- circumstance/fact observed (ie 'the phenomena of nature')
-signs "achieve their vitality... not by signifying the world but by being part of it"
-not what it represents, but why its there?
-"pursuit of the essence of things"
Author (States)'s perspective
3. defined by VICTOR SHKLOVSKY
-"Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things"
-things important "as they are percieved and not as they are known"
-"the object is not important" just associations to the object
-similar to PHENOMENOLOGICAL views
-DE FAMILIARIZATION- "removing things from a world in which they have become inconspicuous and seeing them anew"
SIGN vs IMAGE
1. Sign
-Correlative terms: signifier and signified
-of no value unless it repeats itself
-the material of the sign is totally indifferent to the object it signifies
2. Image
-Any likeness, or representation, made out of materials of the medium (gesture, language, decor, sound, light)
-emphasis on empathetic response
-unique and unreproducible
-the physical image and its object... resemble each other
NEITHER SIGN or IMAGE
-"things that resist being either sign or image"
-"stage images do not always or entirely surrender their objective nature to the sign/image function"
1. working Clock
-astronomical time would clash with theatrical time
-awareness that theatrical time is being measured by a real clock
-SELF-GIVENNESS onstage>obeying its own laws of nature
2. Fire/Running water
-mildly distracting in the sense of being interesting
-retains a certain primal strangeness>something indisputably real leaks out of the illusion
3. Child actor
-"how well he acts, for a child!" / "Do they understand the play?"
-success depended heavily on the audience's "double vision" (seeing both child and character?)
-DOUBLE VISION- disparity between the actors and their roles" -Shapiro
-innocent child vs characters that "flirt with the audience"
-Kids did comedy/satire (genre's most closely linked to the audience's immediate world) instead of tragedies/serious plays (depended on a suspension of disbelief)
4. Stage animals
-trained or tranquilized, but cannot be depended upon
-No good behavior, only behavior
-BISOCIATION- intersection between two independent and self-contained phenomenal chains- natural animal behavior and culturally programmed human behavior
-can claim dog as the likeness of a dog (acts well by acting as it normally does)
Other
-Moliere playing Moliere (an exception to the aesthetic rule that the image is not the thing)
-Zoos> dingo- dog playing a dog from Australia
LAW OF COMPLEMENTARITY:
to the extent that something on stage arouses awareness of its external (or workday) significance, its internal (or illusionary) significance is reduced
Monday, April 27, 2009
Theatre and Media
Theatre and Media by Aronson
It’s a reality that many and most things cannot be translated on to the stage, a lot of media and projections don’t look the same, don’t have the same effect on stage than on film or otherwise.
Aronson says that this is because of the signified and the signifier. We are constantly decoding image and text with our eyes and our ideologies. Some people don’t have the vast knowledge of socio-cultural decoding abilities that other do. Other may be more adaptable to more naturalistic viewings. The stage is the only place where this can be totally engaged, where an illusion can be portrayed as just that, where the words can be portrayed through image. The narrative comes alive into an image, and without complications we see the story. So why do we need complicated media and projections?
Like theatre, we are a product of our environment and our time and space. We see the actors in that space, and we too become involved. We notice the scale of the environment to our own; the theatre is now a basis for scale of its own environment, a type of architecture. Architecture of illusion. But the projection is an illusion too, so when we see that it interrupts the environment of the stage and the actors. Media challenges the “special reality” of the stage. He says that they “clash” with the set and the time in which the projections come in.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think abstract work on stage with projections that have been thought out and done carefully with purpose can work on stage, but otherwise, I think doesn’t work well. I think the place for multimedia is film. Film allows the framework to be manipulated and the spectator eyes to follow wherever the action takes place. Theatre is more like a painting, as Aronson says, our eyes follows patterns and colors in side the frame, in film we are taken outside of that. Film allow actions to take place outside of the frame, actors to leave and come back, change place faster that on stage. With mass reproduction and representation lots more can be made from film, but the authenticity is lost, that is grounded in the theatre and the environment in which it is based.
See ya next time!
Kira Shaw
It’s a reality that many and most things cannot be translated on to the stage, a lot of media and projections don’t look the same, don’t have the same effect on stage than on film or otherwise.
Aronson says that this is because of the signified and the signifier. We are constantly decoding image and text with our eyes and our ideologies. Some people don’t have the vast knowledge of socio-cultural decoding abilities that other do. Other may be more adaptable to more naturalistic viewings. The stage is the only place where this can be totally engaged, where an illusion can be portrayed as just that, where the words can be portrayed through image. The narrative comes alive into an image, and without complications we see the story. So why do we need complicated media and projections?
Like theatre, we are a product of our environment and our time and space. We see the actors in that space, and we too become involved. We notice the scale of the environment to our own; the theatre is now a basis for scale of its own environment, a type of architecture. Architecture of illusion. But the projection is an illusion too, so when we see that it interrupts the environment of the stage and the actors. Media challenges the “special reality” of the stage. He says that they “clash” with the set and the time in which the projections come in.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think abstract work on stage with projections that have been thought out and done carefully with purpose can work on stage, but otherwise, I think doesn’t work well. I think the place for multimedia is film. Film allows the framework to be manipulated and the spectator eyes to follow wherever the action takes place. Theatre is more like a painting, as Aronson says, our eyes follows patterns and colors in side the frame, in film we are taken outside of that. Film allow actions to take place outside of the frame, actors to leave and come back, change place faster that on stage. With mass reproduction and representation lots more can be made from film, but the authenticity is lost, that is grounded in the theatre and the environment in which it is based.
See ya next time!
Kira Shaw
Thursday, April 23, 2009
"The World on Stage"
Here are some notes on the "The World on Stage" reading.
-"All that is on stage is a sign"
-becomes a self contained illusion outside of social praxis
-creates a bridge between the stage and its fictional analogue of the world
-the power of this sign (image) is not exhausted either by its illusion or its referential character.
-signs and images are more than their iconic identity
-theater is really a language whose words consist an unusual degree of things that are what they are.
-signs may represent images, but they are still real images outside of the scene.
-persuit of the "essence" of things disregards their other functions in real life
-"the sensation that things as thy are perceived and not as they are known" - Shklovsky
- art makes objects unfamiliar
-the image is unique and unreproducible
-root difference between image and sign
-"the material of the sign is totally indifferent to the object it signifies... but the relationship between the material of the physical image and it's object is altogether different; the two resemble each other" -Sartre
-reading a scene present almost no phenomenal distraction
-more real than on stage, mind can create images
-the eye is window to the waiting consciousness
-vs the theater production which is a condensation into "real form"
-some things refuse to be signs or images
-the viewer gets worn down, no more initial amazement
-clocks will always be a disturbance onstage, we are perturbed that theater time is being measured by a real clock
-somethings are too interesting in real life to be used on stage (running water, fire, ect)
-"double vision" of the audience to overlook casting ( ex: child troupes)
-the medium becomes the message
- animals on stage give the effect of bisociation ( natural animal behavior and culturally programed human behavior)
-the actor putting objects on stage neutralizes the objects "Objectivity"
-same way animals in a zoo lose their objectivity, " this is the kind of animal you would see here"
-something on stage can rouse the awareness of something external
- art is a certain perspective on substance
-props(furniture) and their placement can force the actors to move and act differently
-the actor allows us to recognize the human "from the inside"
-are it nature.
--Allie S.
-"All that is on stage is a sign"
-becomes a self contained illusion outside of social praxis
-creates a bridge between the stage and its fictional analogue of the world
-the power of this sign (image) is not exhausted either by its illusion or its referential character.
-signs and images are more than their iconic identity
-theater is really a language whose words consist an unusual degree of things that are what they are.
-signs may represent images, but they are still real images outside of the scene.
-persuit of the "essence" of things disregards their other functions in real life
-"the sensation that things as thy are perceived and not as they are known" - Shklovsky
- art makes objects unfamiliar
-the image is unique and unreproducible
-root difference between image and sign
-"the material of the sign is totally indifferent to the object it signifies... but the relationship between the material of the physical image and it's object is altogether different; the two resemble each other" -Sartre
-reading a scene present almost no phenomenal distraction
-more real than on stage, mind can create images
-the eye is window to the waiting consciousness
-vs the theater production which is a condensation into "real form"
-some things refuse to be signs or images
-the viewer gets worn down, no more initial amazement
-clocks will always be a disturbance onstage, we are perturbed that theater time is being measured by a real clock
-somethings are too interesting in real life to be used on stage (running water, fire, ect)
-"double vision" of the audience to overlook casting ( ex: child troupes)
-the medium becomes the message
- animals on stage give the effect of bisociation ( natural animal behavior and culturally programed human behavior)
-the actor putting objects on stage neutralizes the objects "Objectivity"
-same way animals in a zoo lose their objectivity, " this is the kind of animal you would see here"
-something on stage can rouse the awareness of something external
- art is a certain perspective on substance
-props(furniture) and their placement can force the actors to move and act differently
-the actor allows us to recognize the human "from the inside"
-are it nature.
--Allie S.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
DOORS ARE SUPER IMPORTANT
-jimmy wagner
Just writing about the reading of "Behind the Screen Door" by Aronson that we discussed in our group meeting and in class.
Basically what I got from it was actually insight on doors used in theater. Before this I had never even thought twice about important a door could be and took it for granted.
The first example used in the article is how a door can set the mood. A person bursting through the door, such as Kramer in Seinfeld instills a comedic mood in the audience. While on the other hand, a slow opening of a squeaking door creates terror.
Aronson writes how a door can be the boundary between complete order or complete chaos, known and unknown, and how it separates the scene into different parts. Aronson writes, "The door hides; the door reveals."
It was also interesting that the Ancient Greek plays did not have doors, and instead had to make a production out of the elaborate entrances. This took away the element of surprise and anticipation of what could possibly be behind the door. Doors also seem to be very useful because they can completely change a setting, which makes the play more complex and entertaining. For example, an actor or actress can walk through a door and be in a different house, or miles away in the middle of a forest.
The last thing that the article briefly mentions is how a door in a theater represents all of this and more, but that a door on screen or in video is simply walked through.
-jimmy wagner
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