reading hw

1.

When I first entered the theater, I saw a completely different stage than the one that we saw last time for the play “As you like it.” They only had two sides for audience to sit instead of three. However I still liked the sitting. Another thing that I have noticed is that there was a flower on the stage. I thought I was very weird because I thought it was piece of tissue paper at first. Later on, I discussed that the flower is foreshadowing for the later plot.

To be honest, I think the very beginning of the play was very weird and confusing, I couldn’t really understand. I got that they were employees from a company. But I don’t understand why they had to shake their head/body whenever the phone rings. Also, they keep on repeating numbers, and each number is a multiple of 2. That part was really confusing to me.

As the play continually playing started to understand it. Although, I think Mrs. Jones should not have killed Mr. Jones, even she is very reluctant in this relationship. She should not cheated on his husband. If she is dissatisfied with her life, she can improve it and make it better.

For the last part, I think it is very creepy, because they were wearing the gas mask, they gave me goose pumps. All in all, I think the actors played very well in the play, but the plot is a little weird.

2. The play MACHINAL was distinctive and was presented in an amazing details. Throughout the whole play, the plot was centered on the main character - a young woman. The lead female deduced a tragedy story with her unfortunate fate. Instead of her life, her mother cared more about money if she married her boss who she didn't love. She hated her husband and felt painful when they lived together. She even denied her baby. The actress performed this role vividly and incisively. Her active performance made all the audience feel distressed too. The lily on the stage at the beginning and the end made me think of two deep meanings. One stood for the young woman's true love and freedom. The other one represented the woman herself. She was pure and innocent and was always pursuing what she really wanted. The timing the lily appeared on the stage was extraordinarily ingenious.

In addition, the supporting characters also played an important, unique and irreplaceable role. They were workers in a company and each person had different features. When the telephone rang, they shook their shoulders and bodies as if they were controlled. This part was what I couldn't totally understand. Maybe the design was just for flexible and multiplex movements, or stood for the lead female's freedom which was imprisoned and controlled by both other people and the surroundings she was in. Moreover, These characters helped the young woman express her inner feelings. Although a little bit weird, it created a wonderful effect. They used standing microphones to say a bunch of lines. At the beginning, I was not sure what they wanted to express, not only because sometimes it was hard to clearly hear what they were talking about but also due to these characters' roles. Why were they talking during the young woman's performance? But later I realized the young woman's inner thoughts were expressed by different characters from the upper-stage, which provided an impression of space, as well as her complicated and conflicting emotions. In this way, audience were offered immersive experience in this play.

I like the lighting design which provided audience with a strong visual impact. It was effective especially when the play was in the critical moment such as the scene in the court. The lights shocked me but it exerted a bright and valid environment. Sitting on the side of the stage, I don't think the tennis court style was good because the view was limited. I could see only one side's actor's facial and physical expressions most time and this made me miss a lot of details which could be found on other characters.

3. From my perspective, this play is unique. It has only one main character, just the young woman. Same to other plays, at the beginning, it is a little confused. There are so many people on the stage, and their actions are weird. And later, I find that maybe they are just acting as herself and express what she is thinking. In this way, many people help her expressing herself, it is effective to reflect the inner turmoil of the young woman. To some extent, it reduces the burden of the lead female, because she can not show all her thoughts just by acting.

It's a play that all around the young woman. From this aspect, I think the story is effective, because it talks about young woman's whole changing thoughts completely, from bring afraid of her mom and being embarrassed with her husband to being eager to freedom and finally trying to kill her husband. Maybe the young woman is a tragic role, because she marries to a man she doesn't love, and her mother actually cares little about her, even her mother cannot understand her. However, it also is her that chooses to marry Mr Jones, and later always keeps distance with him. So, Mr Jones is also a tragic role who marries the person he wants but cannot get her true love and ends up with betrayal. The stage is a tennis court style, making audience closed to the stage. I think it is not effective. Because the actors can only act in one direction and we cannot always watch their expression all the time, making us hardly feel their emotions. And I think the light is a little strange, I don't understand why the light will shine to the audience.

Anyway I like the play, because it can make me thinking of it after watching it. At the beginning, there's a white flower on the ground, which should be a particular meaning. When Lily appears later in the play, I find that maybe it represents freedom and true love. It also becomes the key evidence of charging her with the murderer at the court and makes her confess her crime. The flower really is designed well. Secondly, I like the play because there's a scene at the court. I like watching reasoning dramas and legal dramas. So when there's one similar in the play, I watched very involved. The process that the lead female denies her crime and keeps telling the lies and eventually confesses her crime is really good. The expressions on her face can reflect what she is thinking at that time. Thirdly, the ending is amazing. It's like after she died, her spirit appears in front of her body and is watching her.

4. Before i watched this, i thought it was like As You Like It. i have to say i have a new opinion about play. I understand the language during the show, also the set of stage is different than i thought. Although i watched rehearsal, they did not fully prepared, the effect of stage, and the costumes are not very good, but i would say it is a quite a good expierence to me.

At beginning, i did not get it what they people are doing, i know they working in a company, but i just could not get it why they shake their bodies every time phone rings. I just felt a group of crazy people working together, felt so wired. Mrs. Jones is very impressive character, she is so crazy me for me, i even think she has mental illness. She is being afraid of her mother, and her husband. She thinks she could not be free forever. She married to a man she did not love, i think this is cruel for her husband Mr. Jones. I certainly think Mr. Jones is the most pathetic character in this play, he is cheated by his wife, and murdered cruelly by his wife. Maybe most of people think Mrs. Jones is pathetic,but i do not think that way. She has all kinds of way to be free,she can divorce with Mr. Jones, but she chose to cheat on his husband, and killed him. Those people like Mrs. Jones disgusts me.

The story of this play it think it doesn't make it clear to me, sometime i think the images are so creepy, for example during the last scene, those people wore gas mask, and some creepy faces mask. It looks so wired, make me feel like i was in a activity of cult. In conclusion, i do not really like this show, but i think it is a new expierence, so i still enjoyed it.

5.Personally speaking, I really like this play as well as the story. The language and the story were easy to understand and I just felt that the show was presented in a different way by using expressionism to express the actors’ inner feeling. Even though it was just a rehearsal and the overall story was a little bit dark, I like this show a lot.

In my opinion, the production’s costumes were very effective. It was really easy to identify who was the lead in the play, because only the lead female wore specially in a blue dress and all the other actors were in a neutral color suit or dress, making the lead female very outstanding. The actors showed us their passion and enthusiasm in the play. I thought that the lighting and sound were fantastic, and the stage as a tennis court style was very effective. The play used a lot of background music to help convey the feeling of the actors and the lighting of the play reflects the story was a little bit dark. The tennis court styled stage enhanced the audience’s experience of the play, because there wouldn’t be any blocked views and the players could interact with the audience thoroughly through the play. In general, I think the technical aspect of the play was very effective and enhanced our experience in the play.

In terms of the story, I was kind of confused at the beginning of the story. I just know that a group of people were working in a company, but I could not understand why they shook their shoulders and heads when the phone rang and wore sunglasses in their costumes, which made me feel a little bit weird and crazy. However, Mrs. Jones impressed me a lot in the story. She married to a man that she did not like and her mother did not understand her and paid less attention to her. Mrs. Jones did not know what she really wanted in her life. Her husband, Mr. Jones was a hand- fetish person. He felt in love with Mr. Jones because he loved her hands. After their marriage, Mr. Jones paid a lot of attention to his money and property, but he did not really understand his wife and know what she wanted. Finally, Mrs. Jones got mad and she cheated on her husband and killed him. The actress presented to us all of her feelings through her body motion. At the end of the story, the scene was kind of scary and dark, but it did show us that Mrs. Jones was found guilty of the crime and was executed in an electric chair. The scene that her soul was out of her body and she saw herself dead in the electric chair presented the end of the story very effectively and vividly

I think the “non-realistic” expressionistic movement the cast used to express their inner life was effective. Most of the time in the play, the other actors used expressionistic movement to express the inner feelings of the lead characters. They acted as an assistance to convey the expressions of the main characters’ feelings and sometimes these actors were divided into two groups to show us the turmoil or fighting of the lead female’s feeling in her heart to make the decision. The way how the actors presented were very interesting, because the characters expressed the feelings through the performance of other actors. However, I realized that most of the time the actors did not use the real objects to help present the scene. For example, when they smoke a cigarette they did not have the real cigarettes, but they tried to present us the scene by using the movement. Other times of the movements in the play without assistance of the real objects to present just made me hard to understand and follow the story.

Overall, I like the story and the way it performed in the play. The story was much easier for me to capture and understand compared to our last play “As You Like It”. It was also the first time for me to see a play that uses expressionistic movement to express the characters’ inner feelings and life, which left me a deep impression. What's more, I learn to find out what I really like and my goal in my life. Otherwise, I may lose myself and did something wrong after watching this play.

6.

To begin, I would love to make it clear that I thoroughly disliked this show. I thought that the lighting, sound, and simplicity of the set were fantastic. The previously mentioned aspects enhanced the experience of the audience by adding unique experiences throughout the show. I believe that the tennis court styled stage enhanced this, since the audience received a full, unobstructed view of the action that was occurring on the stage. Overall, I believe that the technical aspect of this production was phenomenal and enhance the audience's experience throughout the show.

In terms of the story line, I thought it was entirely ineffective. The story never really gave a true understanding of what was happening throughout the play, and the acting style that was used did not help either. Personally, I never felt like there was a true moment where I knew entirely what was occurring since the scenes and lines were all over the place. Also, I believe that the expressionistic movement of the cast gave the audience, at least myself, confusion rather than enhancement. These movements were nondescript and never really gave a true reference to what they meant. The only movement that the audience discovered what it meant was the one that constantly referenced the gloves. Another portion that made this story difficult to understand, and in consequence ineffective, was the fact that half of this play used improvisation. Certain aspects such as the cigarettes were clear and the audience could assume what was happening, but to the rest of the improvisations, I could not understand a single thing as to what they were using or attempting to portray.

The final aspect of the show that I thought was interesting and more thought provoking, was the possible use of symbolism. I noticed throughout the costumes, they were all neutral colors except the main character, which was blue. Blue typically represents either serenity or despair, and this was clearly used to represent the despair that this woman experienced throughout her life. I believe that her nightware was white to possibly show her innocence since white is usually a color of innocence and purity. White was also used in the flower petals that she walked through to get to the execution chair. I believe this symbolized that she finally felt at peace and that she was deemed as pure by the higher being that she had been praying to. Finally, I believe that the color black was used in the ending portion of the play to represent the dread of punishment, and darkness of the murder that she had committed. I believe that this possible use of symbolism provided a small amount of understandability top this experience for me, but overall Machinal is not exactly a show I will be dying to see again any time soon.