It only makes sense that theater adapt to the times. Hamilton has gotten rave reviews, and sky rocket ticket prices. After reading some reviews, I believe that it has to be something special. I think it’s great that theater did something out of the box once again. The production of Hamilton shows that theater can evolve as well, and it’s working.I couldn’t understand at first why Hamilton was so special, however, after participating in this class and understanding theater a little better I can appreciate the importance of this play.

As for immersive theater, I think it’s difficult. You have to rely on your audience to be the show. I think it makes the directors think more and plan more for the show. Going to theater that you participate in is not for everyone. I’m not sure if I would like it, but i would like to try it sometime. I can appreciate when a production relies on its audience to make the show what it is. It’s a different experience that you get. It’s not for everyone, but I think this too shows how theater evolves to the times.

I learned during the scavenger hunt that theater is everywhere in NYC. Whether it is an actual theater, or souvenir. One of the items was to find the sad and happy theater masks. After we found one, I kept noticing them all over. Many clues surprised me as I am not very familiar with theater history in NYC. The most interesting find of the scavenger hunt was the arrest that happened in front of a theater. It was just something I never heard of and it was fun to be in place of something I had just found. I also enjoyed seeing how many restaurants are dedicated to theater. And then that made me realize how many themed restaurants there are out there. There is theater everywhere. I felt that I was learning history as we found each clue. The experience was a good one. I had never participated in a scavenger hunt before, so I was really curious to see how it would be set up. I feel that if the weather was nicer, more clues would have been found. I really enjoyed figuring out the answers to clues and directing ourselves there. It was a great way to learn about all the theater that NYC has to offer in just 90 minutes. It was very memorable. It was also cool to see other teams post their answers, and wishing we were able to figure it out. For example, I believe that a team used Ripley’s Believe It Or Not as a Vaudeville house. After seeing that my teammates and me thought to ourselves that we were right there! Overall running around Times Square made me realize how many plays there are out. It’s amazing that there are so many productions and how adored they are. Not to mention the actual stores dedicated to the shows.

I found the section on niche programming interesting. After learning about how the theatre started, and how it progressed, it make sense that niche programming became popular. Theater was the start of entertainment. And as we learned it had been heavily regulated in most areas. Being able to learn how it moved into what it is today is fascinating.

Reading through this chapter, I find that modernism appears to be closely related with the avant-garde. The idea of photographic realism reminds me of an avant-garde piece. “The photographer cannot see beyond the surfaces that reality presents to him.”

It’s also interesting to read how dramatists strived to keep modernism alive on stage after film became popular in the 1940s.

It’s interesting to see how the price of the circus was inexpensive. My questions is, although the circus was loved by so many and attracted as an art form, why was it less money than the shows that were claimed to be more artistic? Did academics take the circus as a joke because of its silly banter?

It’s interesting that in the early 1900s bourgeois Europeans looked to productions to find relief in the fact that they felt their community was “unique and superior to others”. If it weren’t for these productions, how do you suppose they would find relief, and how could that have changed their communities culture?

I enjoyed our trip to the Museum. First off, the museum is beautiful. I walked in knowing nothing about Yiddish theatre and thought it was interesting how it was able to attarct so many people. There are stars who performed in big productions that I had never heard about. I wondered though, were all the productions performed in Yiddish? Because it attracted so many people from New York, I wonder if they were all of the language?

I enjoyed our trip to the New York Public Library Performing Arts Center. It was a beautiful building and area. Learning about all the treasures that it holds was quite interesting. It offers so many things that I never knew existed, and I older if anyone else is aware of what it has to offer. For example, being able to watch old plays that date back to the 70s is an amazing feature. Doug was a great tour guide and really proved the importance of archival research. It was fun to listen to his first hand experiences of digging and finding lost information.

I found this form of theater rather interesting. It felt like this performance put a little bit of everything we have seen together, with the expressive make up and decorative garments. I felt as if they’re garments were helping to tell the story that the singer is performing. The actual performer from the first video made very expressive gesture, without having to move too much. I wonder if they did this so that the native people were forced to pay closer attention to what the symbols all mean. I also wonder what the purpose of the huge bottom of the outfits came from.

I find it interesting to read about how performances played such a big part in spreading the news about religion. It shows how theater was actually crucial to many religions on spreading the word. Without these performances, I wonder how different would we view different cultures and religions. Would theater be what it is today?