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While doing the reading for this week, I stumbled upon the section about the “niche filling” theaters such as Teatro Campesino, and theaters that appeal to a specific, target audience. Learning about these types of theaters in Professor Krebs’ class led me to think about my project to create my own theater and brought me back to the question of “what niche am I filling,?” a fundamental question to be asked when creating a theater or any type of service/product, but one that can be lost among the “dreaming up” of the idea. After all, what good is a theater if it isn’t serving anybody?

While reading A Doll’s House, I recalled many occasions where I had heard the translated work of Ibsen spoken or performed, and since I had been used to the text in the context of performance, I thought about the acting choices one would make when portraying one of Ibsen’s characters.  One of the things that truly jumped out to me was the heavy use of subtext – or what the character is actually thinking or feeling but doesn’t say.  Nora is one of the characters with the most apparent subtext.  It is apparent that things are not “okay” in her life from the first scene, yet the playwright chooses to have the character speak lines that would suggest something to the contrary.  These type of plays rooted in subtext are always very interesting to watch, as it is the actor’s choices that truly illuminate the character’s intentions and emotions.

After realizing that today’s assignment was a critical question and not a blog response, I will take what I wrote above and pose it as a question:

How does the subtext that Ibsen and other playwrights utilize in their plays help to tell the story?

This chapter provided an interesting read for me, as I was familiar with many of the plays mentioned in it.  Out of the plays that are written about in the chapter, I have either performed a scene from them in my after school acting class – Chekov’s The Three Sisters, Miller’s Death Of A Salesman, seen scenes from them acted in class – Pinter’s The Birthday Party, Chekov’s Seagull, Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and many others, read them for a high school or college class – Shakespeare’s Henry IV, and Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, or have seen a full scale performance of them, like Pinter’s The Homecoming when I was on my trip in London.  It was exciting to realize, as an actor, how many of these classic works you come in contact with as you learn your craft.  I just so happened to need a new scene to work on for my class, and this chapter gave me a whole bunch of suggestions!

How has avant-garde theatre, by making the experience of an audience member going to the theatre “more private than social,” affected the ways that the audience reacts to what they see on stage specifically their individual psychology, and how in turn does this affect what is being presented on stage?

My question stems from how cultures, or nations are represented on stage, and how these nations prefer to be represented.  For example, while reading, I was surprised to see that Salvini’s Othello was accepted by the Italian nation-state as a positive stereotype.  Though the character of Othello was a powerful warrior, he was also a “Moor,” and rather brutishly smothers his wife, Desdemona, to death.  Why would this be a suitable symbol for the Italian nation-state at the time?

In the 1600 and 1700s, we saw how philosophical thinkers such as Locke and Hobbes influenced what was represented on stage as well as the audiences’ reactions to it. What would be the modern day equivalent of this type of thought influencing theatre? Social media?

What I really enjoyed about this trip to the MCNY (besides the great weather) was the fact that we spent an hour looking at one exhibit.  I hardly ever get to focus on one exhibit in a museum when there’s always so much to see.  I surprised myself that I didn’t know Fiddler had been based off of Sholom Alecheim’s “Tevye.”  I also learned a lot about Molly Picon, a name I had heard of before, but never was able to place.  Some of those costumes were quite something to see, with Picon being only 4’11”, and speaking of costumes, seeing Zero Mostel’s Tevye costume, and Barbra Streisand’s from Funny Girl, left me in a happy mood.

The visit to the NYPL for the Performing Arts really got me excited for our project, but also truly opened my eyes to a lot of resources I hadn’t previously known were available.  I had visited the library before, but only for the special exhibit downstairs.  Being on the second and third floors made me aware of music and scripts I could use for auditions, recordings I could watch for purposes of a project (or just to become more knowledgeable about theatre), and wonderful archival material for me to sift through.  Seeing Jonathan Larson’s rewrites of Rent and backups to his computer was fascinating for me, especially since I’ll be performing in it, and possibly using Rent as the musical I write my paper around.  Doug was a great guide and seemed truly invested and interested in his work, and made me interested as well! I know that I’ll be coming back to this library much more often in the future, even if the archival material I need to write about Rent may be in D.C.