chapter 2,3,4
Chapter 2:
1. In 75 - 100 words, explain the key differences between devised plays and non-devised plays. What goes into making devised work that does not go into working on a single-author play? (Remember: there are lots of ways in which the two are similar; I'm looking for how they're different.)
2. In 75 - 100 words, define ritual, and how it pertains to theatre.
3. In 100 - 125 words, explain whether or not Into the Woods was a realistic play. If it was realistic, how did you know? If it was unrealistic/stylistic, how do you know?
Chapter 3:
Think about the four fields this chapter considers:
· Set design
· Costume design
· Light design
· Sound design
Using about 75 - 100 words for each, write a concise, yet replete, summary of the major concerns each individual designer needs to think about when designing a show.
Note: I am not asking you to get bogged down in too many fine point details. For example, the lighting design portion of the chapter gets into the deep nitty-gritty of different types of lights (per cans, scoops, strip lights, border lights, follow spots, etc.), which is good information to have handy and certainly richly informative, but if you spend too much time on these details in your response, you'll eat through your 75 - 100 words very quickly. The point here, as with our Week 1 assignment, is to take the mountain of information this chapter gives you and then reduce it to its most essential points. It's more than just summary, which is restating information--this is synthesis, which is combining ideas together.
It's a good idea to spend some time on this, as the information you pull together here will make your future work easier. Just as now you can start to see plot, character, idea, language, music, and spectacle in every show, you'll soon start to see individual light movements, individual costume choices, the paint details in a set or the pitches and tones in a sound cue. When you can see these details and track these choices, you'll necessarily see theatre in a different way.
Chapter 4:
Chapter 4 of Experiencing Theatre concerns performers, directors, and dramaturgs. As with previous chapters, there is a lot of information the book gives you, and your assignment will be again to distill it down to its most essential points. In pursuit of that, please answer the following questions. Your answers for these questions should be about 100 words each. You will not have to respond to anyone else's answers this week for this assignment, but will for the show response, per usual.
As with previous assignments, remember that your job here is to essentialize and synthesize--to take big ideas, or big swaths of ideas, and condense them down to their most essential talking points. Just like previous chapters offered you lots of ancillary and auxiliary information, so will this week's. For example, this week's chapter goes into an in-depth discussion about Anne Bogart's Viewpoints technique. You can reference Viewpoints as evidence in an answer, but if you try and fully summarize all of Bogart's theories on acting, you'll quickly eat up all of your 100 words for that question.
Read the questions before reading the chapter so you know what to look for in the text. If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email--I'll be happy to help.
1. The chapter spends a lot of time breaking down the difference between inside-out and outside-in acting techniques. What's the difference? Briefly define each approach, and then explain what makes them different.
2. What is "directorial vision?" You've watched a few plays so far this semester: pick one and explain what you feel the director's vision might have been. (HINT: p. 82 references "idea" in connection with "directorial vision." Where else have you heard idea as a component of theatre?)
3. Production dramaturgy is a notoriously hard to define profession, since every production at every theatre has different dramaturgical needs. A key component of dramaturgy, however, is research. A dramaturg is often the research component of a production process, making sure complicated ideas and historical items all make sense to the production team and the audience alike. Pick any show you've seen this semester and imagine you've been asked to serve as dramaturg. For the show you've picked, what would be the first thing you'd research, and why?