Comment on Robin's post

I think Robin may be giving the playwright too much credit. I think the depth of the characters and the acting had more to do with the actors than the playwright. I have a feeling if the director we so far as to make the two commericials for the play, he probably did a lot of tweaking and editing to the script. I think the playwright was a first time writer who, in middle age, had time on his hands and a lot of resentment for women that he needed to release without himself committing murder. Especially with his wife's question about the commericial's revealing too much, I think that said he didn't really know what he was doing. Personally, I give credit for any redeeming qualities in that play to the actors first, and then maybe the director.

Comment on Lou's last post

I thought your wording about the playwright's comfort with the suprise ending was interesting. It put the whole ending in another light. His willingness to throw out this ending that was completely out of left and had very little, if anything, to do with the development of his characters and more about his own feelings and opinions about women. I think if one was to look at the play through a post-colonial lens, the playwright would be seen as a colonizer, more than a creator. He is not concerned with his chracters as people, or even as representations of people, but as players whose sole purpose to act out his fantasies and whims. In his mind, these crazy women were murderous, psychopaths no matter what their character development or human decency said to the contrary. They were the Other and the playwright treated them as such.

Comment on Jeanne's post

I also think this a very good idea about the plays. I think that also plays well into the feminist issues we discussed in class and I expounded on in my post.

Only the upper class women can take control of their lives, yet they are the ones displayed as the most helpless. Barbara is very distraught about her decision then is able to make a choice and becomes crazy. Yet the characters portrayed in Paul's play are very strong and independent. So why are the women who are in the upper classes always portrayed as weak? I this these things would tie in well together when we create our thesis as a group.

Comment on Sarah's San Antonio post

I think your comment about Paul showing all sides of the argument is really good. I really hand't thought about that aspect, but even Richard is portrayed as a sympathetic character. I'm sure it was not Paul's first inclination to make that character a likable guy, but I think that aspect gave him more creditibility. I'm also suspicious of writers who make the villian completely bad with no redeeming quality. (Kind of like in The Decorator.) If a writer can only prove their point by making the other side into unrealistic monsters, they need to re-evaluate their message and their ability as artists.

Apparently, commenting on my own posts is too meta for Google

This is some further explanation about my third post of Brecht and Ubu.

I can see the confusion since I never went back to the play during my discussion of Brecht. My point is that while the play was done well, it would have been better both artistically and socially had they used a straight forward narrative. I think there is a reason narrative has been used for the last thousands of years. It works. It works really well. I believe Ubu would have greatly benefited from that.

June 22, 2011 2:20 PM

As I said in class, the aspect I find most interesting is the fact that the strongest female characters we saw this weekend were those portrayed by a man. I think juxtaposing these characters would best show their discrepancies. Showing Mandy from The Decorator trying to sell her method of husband distraction (which I guess we don’t actually have footage of, but maybe show the actor who played Mandy explaining that the characters aren’t real might work. We’ll have to experiment to see what works) and putting that against Paul’s character trying to sell poetry. (Again, I don’t know if we have any footage of that. I only took footage of DJ girl.) Then, if we have the footage, juxtaposing the mother from Pinkalicious with the mother from Paul’s show. We could show how one mother is actually trying to teach her daughter life lessons while the other mother appears to be a flat character who only scolds but never actually teaches a lesson.

Though this may be less compelling than the juxtapositions I already mentioned, we could also put the DJ girl (which I did take footage of) against Pinkalicious and Barbara. These three characters, I feel, are the main decision makers. The DJ is choosing to strike out on her own and try to make a name for herself in a world dominated by men. Not only does she live with the other guys, female DJ’s still have a hard time making it. The field is dominated by male performers and the audience doesn’t always respond respectfully to female performers. Pinkalicious is also the main decision maker, but a.) she is only trying to decide if she should eat pink food or green. Also, it is only after she turns read and experiences the negative consequences of her choices that she decides to eat green food. Plus the fact that being given a binary is not actually making choices. If there are only two options and the character is being told which one to choose, there’s not much of a lesson there. Finally, we add in the character of Barbara who decides to take control of her life and, guess what, she’s crazy. But, females of the world, this is a good lesson, take control of your happiness and you’ll commit murder. Best to live unsatisfied and unhappy. Let the men do the thinking. This all depends on if we have the right footage so we’ll have to wait and see.

I think it would be nice to try and have a least part of the video be a mash-up in the style of the Disney things have seen on Youtube. I feel like we are not expert enough to do a Pogo style video. (Pogo takes sound clips from Disney movies and makes songs out of them. So like every clip is from Snow White or, my favorite, Up.) But we probably could compile some of the footage so that we create our own message for twenty to thirty seconds. I think that is similar to the idea that was floated yesterday about showing how Pinkalisious’s family were run out of the Mission District and then they become the women of The Decorator. The only problem with that narrative specifically is that we have no footage of The Decorator. Maybe we can take scenes from Showgirls and American Pyscho to recreate scenes from The Decorator. Better yet, American Psycho and Designing Women. Or maybe Will and Grace. We’ll have to do some experimentation and see where things go with that angle.

Post 3

I have been trying to think how to approach this blog post about yesterday’s play and be able to say something different that we didn’t already go over. And what I found myself wondering was if the play was as affective as it could have been. While I do think the play was very poignant, especially during the last scene, I feel that playwright’s Brechtian approach took away from the activist theater I feel the artists were trying to present. I think the success of the play depends on the audience’s critical understanding and interpretative lens they are using. Depending on how the play is approached, the play gains and loses some of its successes.

Just to be different from my normal mode of operation, I will look at the play through one of its successful lenses which is of experiment and performance. As a piece of artistic theater, I think the play is highly successful. The work is definitely not avant-garde but is highly experimental with all the different types of media as well as the layers of performers who are working the puppets as well as acting as the voice of these puppets. The additional layer of the experimental form of the charcoal that Kentridge provides is also an aspect of successful artistic work. In all of these aspects, the play works beautifully. But this is taking something close to an approach of art for art’s sake. If you look at the play for the sake of having something beautiful and livid to see and experience, this works as good as any modern piece of drama; however, if the play is looked at as a piece of activist drama (which I feel all the artists involved in the work are trying to do) the play is not as successful.

Brecht talked about making theater for the common, thinking man. Two adjectives that do not always go together. I think what Brecht really meant was that he wanted to create theater that appealed to an audience full of Brecht clones or, to be a little nicer, Brechtians. But most people do not function in the same manner as he did. If an artist wants to move his audience to action or empathy or remorse, alienating that audience being reached is probably not the best approach. While commenting or acknowledging the limits of theater and the fact that theater cannot mirror real life may work in some performances, I think this is an idea that even the slowest audience members will pick up on. Children may believe that a man in a red suit who comes into school to talk to them is actually Santa, they understand that their principal in a red costume putting on a play with other teachers is just a show. Therefore, conceptual sets and blocking is not a mind blowing experience for audiences but an understandable artistic choice; however, actors are still expected to give moving performances. While I will never believe that I am actually watching a feud between the Capulets and Montagues, I can be enraged and fully moved in that one moment by Mercutio’s curse of both the houses. If the playwright never lets the audience become emotionally involved with the actors or, even more, let the actors become emotionally involved in the characters, the play is meaningless and will easily be forgotten. How many people have read the The Pioneer by James Fenimore Cooper? Not many. Because it sucks. Because the young pioneer, who somehow magically becomes the Mohicans friend two books later, is an emotionless automaton that no one can relate to.

In the end, even the strictest Brechtians provide empathy for their characters. In the play, the witnesses are portrayed with very life-like, heartbreaking puppets. If the characters were portrayed with Sesame Street like puppets that appeared to be in black face, the audience would truly be alienated. They would also have truly been enraged, the artists labeled as racists and bigots, and theater house possibly burned down. So, in the end, we all need empathy.