A Marriage Proposal

For my personal learning outcomes, I just read A Marriage Proposal, by Anton Chekhov, a one-act farce that was first performed in 1890.  It was a light and humorous play about a man, Ivan Vassiliyitch Lomov, who goes to see his neighbor to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage.  The father, Stepan Stepanovitch Chubukov, is at first very delighted that Lomov wants to marry his daughter and calls her in and leaves them together.  Natalia, the daughter and Lomov immediately get into an argument about a piece of land they both claim to own and he becomes ill and is sent away.  When Natalia hears that he had come to propose they have him come back only to start arguing again.  

The cycle of coming together and arguing happens again but the play ends with the three breaking out some champagne.  
Chekhov demonstrates how absurd and even silly it is for a man and a woman to display their stubbornness, pride and self-love.  
 
This is fast, humorous and a little exaggerated and all you can say is 

"and this is just the proposal?"

The power of sequence and music.

The way a scene or play is presented can dramatically (no pun intended) alter the way it's received.  Will it be interpreted as funny, scary, sad, or contentious?  The director has the ability to tack any one of those adjectives--and certainly more--to his play by changing the pace of the line exchanges, the music that accompanies them, and the way that the characters speak.  

That's why I think scripts are meant to be analyzed as a performance, rather than simply on a page as a process of wording or spelled-out emotion.  Some would beg to differ in cases of Shakespeare and the like, but.  I prefer to think that--were they here to speak a preference--they would like their works to be seen on the stage, rather than read on a page.  

Here's The Notebook, re-stitched as a horror trailer.  Brilliant, really.  

all the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts

Comedies, in Dr. Burton's words, "unmask general hypocrisy." So can tragedies. This well-known monologue by Jacques in As You Like It got me thinking about roles we play: gender roles, roles in the workplace, roles in our family relationships ... the idea of acting/scripting in real life.

A well-regarded sermon by Dieter Uchtdorf (for any readers who aren't Mormon, don't worry, he's very cool!) discussed the different roles a man plays in his life. More than the typical dialogue within the Mormon community, he emphasized that men wear many hats, and that is important that no one is shunned because they fit into one role better than another.



None of the "titles," or roles, focused on professional attainment or (and this is important!) ecclesiastical positions, or "callings," as they're termed in LDS circles. They were all deeper and longer-lasting than that. (Healer of Souls, son of God, &c.)

Human Frailty (The Philadelphia Story and The Importance of Being Earnest)

When Dr. Burton suggest we compare The Philadelphia Story and The Importance of Being Earnest, I was thrilled.

I saw a production of Holiday at BYU last November, and it was spectacular. I decided that this was a playwright I wanted to get to know better. His probing of societal expectations in the 1920s and '30s had a lot of resonance today, what with the financial crash of '08.

I promptly bought The Philadelphia Story, a film adaptation of another of Philip Barry's plays. It has a dream cast: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart.

The two men battling (at times) for Hepburn's affections come from different social milieus: the "high line" Philadelphia society of Grant, and the wisecracking everyman of Stewart. I won't spoil the plot too much, but let's examine the following exchange (Grant plays Dexter and Hepburn plays Tracy):

Dexter: No, Red, not of you, never of you. Red, you could be the finest woman on this earth. I'm contemptuous of something inside of you you either can't help, or make no attempt to; your so-called 'strength' - your prejudice against weakness - your blank intolerance.
Tracy: Is that all?
Dexter: That's the gist of it; because you'll never be a first-class human being or a first-class woman, until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty. It's a pity your own foot can't slip a little sometime - but your sense of inner divinity wouldn't allow that. This goddess must and shall remain intact. There are more of you than people realize - a special class of the American Female. The Married Maidens.

Realism Onstage

What is Realism?

Reading about Realism Onstage in Literature Craft &Voice - Delbanco and Cheuse, p. 1344, 

says actors like  "Marilyn Monroe

Realism = Skill?

and Marlon Brando -


made a method out of naturalism onstage.



An actor and his or her character should merge so that the



role becomes inhabited by the person cast in it;"

Naturalism Onstage

Dr. Eric W. Trumbull, Professor of  Theatre and Speech explains that "realism was partly a response to new social and artistic conditions.  It is where people move and talk in a manner similar to that of our everyday behavior.  It was to deal with everyday life and problems as subjects.  

A dominant style for 120 years, realism holds the idea of the stage as an environment, rather than as an acting platform."

The Fourth Wall

I just learned about drama's "fourth wall."  It is one of those things you are only semi-aware of, but makes you pause and think about it when you know it actually has a name.


The fourth wall is the invisible wall that divides the characters from the audience.  If the fourth wall was actually built in, spectators would not be able to see what the performers were doing.  The reason for this imaginary wall is that the actors should not acknowledge the audience is watching them.  It would destroy the illusion to show the audience the actors are aware of their presence.



In Ferris Bueller's Day Off,  Ferris breaks the fourth wall when he looks into audience through the camera lens to explain how to fake illness and when he tells everyone to go home after the credits are over.



This is a very old trope.  The fourth wall was frequently broken in Elizabethan and Restoration drama.  Actors in Shakespeare's day would run through the audience chasing other actors and even joke with the audience. They would even ask a spectator to hold a prop in an attempt to hide it.

Performers in Ancient Greek theater broke it often as well, which may be when the fourth wall was invented - or may be even before.


Did you know that there is a "fifth wall?" 

DRAMA

My past experiences with drama are not plentiful, but with the knowledge that I do have, I LOVE DRAMA.  I've mentioned in several posts (here and here) how literature is a form of art which is a means of communication and expression.  The art of theatre is the dramatized version of feelings, sometimes meeting the same caliber of intensity. 

In theatre, certain status quos of the ordinary world (even in literature) do NOT EXIST.  People are free to be as loud as they want, as quiet as they want, as musical as they want, and of course as angry or sad as they want.  Now that's what I call a dream world.  It can be the ultimate be who you want to be world. 

Let's go to the THEATER

Tonight I saw the musical, Urinetown, and boy let me tell you what a treat it was to go to urinetown (that is, err, in a figurative sense).  Bad jokes aside, it really was well worth the $16 I spent to see it.  It was put on in the small and cozy Hale Theatre in Orem, UT and is running through June 15. Get your tickets here.

The work gets its title from Urinetown being the place where people who "relieve themselves" in public go after being caught, as it is against the law.  In this society, people must pay to use the restrooms, if they don't have enough money, then they simply can't go.  Urinetown focuses on several people who are living in the poorest part of town and often do not have enough money to pay. Eventually a rebellion starts and yada yada yada. Again, go see it. 

For starters: the music was catchy, the cast holds great singers and actors, and the themes were powerful.  I would say that these three combined always make for a pretty decent show.  The stage was very small and there was not really a specifically built set aside from a few signs and painted walls.  In actuality, I feel this minimalistic set design brought the audience's attention to the dialogue as opposed to getting lost in visuals (which can also make for a very respectable production).