Alternative Forms in Theatre - Case Study Example

Performed Ideas Theatre will always survive in our changing society. It provides us with a mirror of the society within which we live, and where conflicts we experience are acted out on stage before us. It provides us with characters with which we identify with (Smith 20). The audience observes the emotions and actions as they happen and share the experience with the characters in real time. The survival of theatre lies in the very nature of humankind: its inner voyeuristic drive (Foster 88). The desire to watch other people dealing with their conflicts and fates challenges as well as reinforces values and the morality of society. The theatre provides an exciting opportunity to watch stories and situations as if they were real life, showing us the truth of our nature. For as long as humankind exists, theatre will always take on an important function within its cultures (Frazier 89). Through theatre, a culture expresses itself, reflects its society, and displays its individuality. It invites people to experience other cultures (Brown 192). Nevertheless, the question at hand is whether theatre will have a role in the society of the future, where cinema, digital television, and computers will continue to expand and grow. The answer to this question is yes. Theatre will only be a fraction in a solid media industry. Theatre on the other hand, and its contents may take on a larger dimension, but we receive it directly in flesh and blood - one to one. The magical atmosphere between an actor and spectator who are constantly aware of each other and the theatre's level of engagement is fundamentally more human and far more intimate. Theatre will survive because of its greatness, it is not just a performance. It is the mixture of the courage of its creators and the hopes and expectations of the audience. Theatre draws its reason for existence from its strength and diversion, its human contact, its passion, its energy and its excitement. This "flesh and blood" experience of the theatre contributes to the concept of "performed identities" within the actual theoretical performance (Flannery 86). In A Streetcar Named Desire the audience experiences the performed identities of males and females in the culture of the time. In The Emperor Jones, the audience is brought into the performed identity of the emperor as a man who is corrupted by power, and thus corrupts himself. By taking a close look at the theatrical performances, we can see how the personal identities are demonstrated in each of the main characters; Blanche and the emperor. Good drama is built on conflict of some kind -- an opposition of forces or desires that must be resolved by the end of the story. When developing "performed identities" this is certainly true. A Streetcar Named Desire employs exactly that. An opposition of forces, and desire, all of which must come to some sort of resolution or conclusion at the end spurns on the performed identies of the characters. The way the theatre presents this drama enlightens the audience regarding the performed identities of the main character, Blanche. The recent production of this play did a fantastic job of introducing the audience to the conflicts and performed identities at the start of the play. The first scene had the actors presenting, with very realistic emotion, elements of which add to the drama of the play through the performed identities of the characters. The acting helped to enforce the concepts of the performed identities through the theatrical presentation of things as Stella being pregnant, Blanche moving in with Stanley & Stella, and Stanley's distrust for Blanche. The performed identities are further presented through the production and presentation of the actors as the items in the play continually progress. The actors and actresses do a fantastic job of enforcing the emotional concepts behind the play, and focusing the performed identity concept mostly on Blanche as the struggling female. The emotional presentation of the actors was all very real and captivating, making the situations tense when when Blanche takes extra long Baths, criticizes the untidy apartment, and generally irritates Stanley. The actress playing Blanche did a wonderful job of making this irritation seem forced as a direct result of Blanche's unhappiness, which can be connected to her performed identity. Stanley's roughness seems to bother Blanche; he makes no effort to be gentle with her. The actor playing Stanley did a fabulous job of presenting Stanley's dramatic personality with conflicting responses to Blanche's actions. His marked facial expressions in response to her reactions and comments clearly demonstrated his annoyance with her. Tensions build in the apartment throughout the summer. Blanche and Stanley look on each other as mortal enemies, and Blanche turns increasingly to alcohol for comfort. The performers in this drama presented this annoyance through their facial expressions and voice intonations, thus making the production very real. Furthermore, as Blanche's intonations became more and more frustrated, her personal identity as the distraught female became apparent. This makes the dramatic structure of the play more and more effective. The introduction of Mitch makes the play even more dramatized. For now, not only is there strong tension between Stanley and Blanche, but there is evidence of mutual attraction between Mitch & Blanche. The actors demonstrated this attraction through their body language in the play when the interacted, which was an excellent way to foreshadow the eventual relationship and also helped to focus in on Blanche's performed identity. The major portion of the play is focused on developing the conflicts and personal identities, building tension as the characters interact, their motivations are examined, and obstacles are met and overcome. The developments of the introduced conflicts are extremely important in the build up to the climax, and the conveying of emotions to the audience and dramatically reflecting on the performed identities. Emotion is the most important thing in a play, and hammers home the performed identities of the characters. The actors in this production placed a clear emphasis on making emotion very believable and real to get across the conflict in the play. Eventually, emotions reach a climax, the most intense point of the story. In A Streetcar Named Desire this could be either fight scene, or he rape scene. In both scenes there are objects that help to build up tension and suspense, but most importantly, convey emotion to the audience and focus on personal identities, such as the breaking of the glass in each scene. The actors did an excellent job of building up this tension through their facial expressions and body language in this particular production. Dialogue was an important factor in making the play more dramatic and developing the personal identities. Words were always said with much exaggerated emotion, and were said slowly so as to allow audiences to take it in. Language was always very supportive of the emotion being conveyed alongside the personal identities of the characters. In order to convey this appropriately in this production of the play, the actors made a clear distinction between simply speaking and speaking with a great deal of passion. Mitch did not simply "Kiss" Blanche, he "Desired" Blanche. The dramatic structure used within Streetcar Named Desire was very effective within the production. It very successfully conveyed the themes, and storyline, to the audience in the dramatic manner that it was always meant to do. The main character, Blanche from the play A Streetcar Named Desire witnesses many tragedies, and these help to bring out the personal identities of the characters. These incidents are forever etched in her memory. She comes to stay with her sister Stella thinking she is running away from her past but instead her past catches up with her and from depression gradually turns insane. Blanche's pathetic disintegration begins with the loss of her loved ones, the abandonment of Mitch and getting raped by Stanley. All of these progressions reflect on the personal identities of the characters. The production team did a fantastic job of demonstrating this by having the actors act with a good deal of passion and significant body language to demonstrate their fears and desires. It continues to go downhill for Ms. Blanche Dubois as she now found love once again and because of the lack of truth in the relationship on her part she is torn away from her new special someone. We find this out when Mitch visits Blanche to tell her that their relationship cannot continue, and more personal identities are revealed. He has come to tell her that he wants to find out the truth about her. Mitch wants to know if the accusations are true. And if they are he wants to end their relationship. However it takes him sometime as he has to muster up the courage to tell her what is on his mind. He finds it hard at first but when she asks him what was on his mind. He gets the courage and asks her to let him see her face in the light, so that all of her masquerades or curtains of deceit could be removed to reveal the true woman, behind the mask. The use of lighting helps to reinforce the concept of personal identity. In the production of this play, the lighting affect in this scene was intense and helped to display what was going on with the personal identity-Blanche now begins to enter her darkness. When the light falls on Blanche' face, her fantasy dies. She can no longer hide her face from Mitch. When Mitch tells her that " 'she is not clean enough to bring in the house'"(Williams 9.121), to bring with his mother. This statement destroys Blanche as it adds to her inferiority complex as part of her performed identity. The man she loves sees her as being filthy and unfit to be shown to his mother. This kills what little was remaining of the fragile Blanche Dubois. Blanche descends further into madness as she tells Mitch that if he does leave she will scream fire. Upon hearing that her relationship with Mitch cannot continue she goes more in the road of insanity. She cannot handle the pain and suffering once again. Her world is being torn apart again. She is being destroyed and there is nothing that she can do. To further her insanity Blanche is dressed in an evening gown because she feels that Shep will come and take her on a Caribbean cruise. She is awaiting his arrival, ready to leave. Her clothes are packed and ready for departure. She breaks the mirror because she sees her reflection and it bothers her. In this scene, the production team did a fantastic job of showing Blanche's dramatic reaction. She screams, and the mirror shatters into a thousand pieces. The madness inherent in her is obvious, and the entire scene is very dimly lit, again reflecting on her madness and her identity. She probably feels that Mitch did not continue the relationship because he felt that she was ugly, and this tells the audience more about personal identities. This bothered her and when she saw her image she was disgusted and in a fit of rage shattered the mirror. Then Stanley enters the room; he just comes home from the hospital where his wife is delivering. He tells her that there is no Shep he is just a person in her imagination. Stanley puts on his silk pajamas and is approaching towards Blanche as she breaks the bottle and clutching the broken top she threatens him that she would twist the broken end of the bottle in his face. He springs towards her overturning the table and she takes a swing at him and he catches her wrist telling her " 'Tiger- tiger! Drop the bottle top! Drop it! We've had this date with each other from the beginning!'" (Williams 9.130) These words by Stanley telling her to drop the bottle just shock the audience and keep them at the edge of their seats for Stanley's next move. Blanche then drops the bottle top and drops to her knees. He picks up her inert figure and carries her to the bed and rapes her. Stanley feel that at first she will resist but she will give in and enjoy it as the "whore" which she really is. Blanche instead goes into more depression than she is and goes insane, further reflecting on her performed identity. Blanche goes through situations that she will never be able to forget. She experiences a great deal of tragedies as the play goes on. Since then Blanche has psychological problems, which leads her into insanity. She also loses her sister, as Stella believes her husband over Blanche telling her that he raped her. Stella stays with Stanley and sends Blanche to a mental asylum. Characters' personal identities in A Streetcar Named Desire revolve around the depression surrounding Blanche as well as the other terrible issues that overcome her. However, in The Emperor Jones the performed identity of the Emperor focuses on the typical stereotype of the Emperor; he is a man that has been corrupted by power and therefore continues to corrupt others himself (Johnson 86). This is demonstrated in the Wooster groups production of the play. The corruption is the focus of the production's presentation of Jones, and the actor portraying Jones did a wonderful job of conveying a sense of evilness through body language and facial expression. Furthermore, the lighting around Jones was kept dark and dreary, thus again focusing on the dark, corrupt side of his character. All of this helps to focus in on Jones' identity. His corruption leads to his eventual downfall, and this shows the center of his performed identity. The emperor began as "common". Jones was even portrayed to be a criminal at one point in his life. Jones' reason for losing his power was his deception towards his people. Jones, however, was the type of man that continued to strive for power, and if corruption was a way to achieve that power, then he would focus on corruption to get what he desired. The production of the play emphasized this with the overall dark feeling and lighting surrounding Jones, and by further dressing him in dark clothes. This focus on corruption and power is the center of his performed identity. His selfish and ambitious nature drove him to be power-hungry. This became the tragic flaw in his character. Jones does realize, before his falling out of power, that something may happen. He has some sort of premonition of losing his power, as he realizes the people may revolt against him and remove him. However, Jones sees this as just a fantasy created in his mind, so he chooses to ignore it. Jones believed that he cannot be killed unless it is of a silver bullet. This tells us much about his unstable performed identity and the delusions he is experiencing about himself. Having absolute power had led him to think that he was immortal and invincible. However as the story progresses, we are shown that he is far from immortal. One of the flaws demonstrated by Jones is his interaction with an apparition, which perhaps reflects upon the fact that he may have been losing his mind. When he was alone, Jones experienced an apparition that caused him to progress further into their downfall from power. Jones slowly shrinks back to where he has started from which is symbolized by the loss of clothing after each vision is witnessed. After each apparition Jones became more vulnerable and emotional. His performed identity thus becomes weaker and weaker as the play progresses. The visions that he encounters reminded him where he once was and bring him down from his pedestal. At the end of the play he is well aware of the mistakes that he had made and ends up dying by the fantasy he thought would never come true. The corruption of both Jones was based his tragic flaw to gain as much power as possible. His downfall from the climax showed how ambition can control life. It transforms the person into one of ruthless nature, determined to obtain the highest point of strength at whatever is necessary to accomplish that goal. Performed identities, therefore, can tell individuals much about characters in a play (Fitzsimon 96). In A Streetcar Named Desire the performed identities show the audience the types of depressions experienced by the female sex during this particular time period in the form of Blanche. Blanche encounters several depressing things, and the items that haunt here are items that many females have to deal with, and therefore she reflects on the performed identity of females during Williams' time period. On the other hand, O'Neil's Emperor Jones gives us the stereotypical performed identity of the leader that is corrupted by power, and continues to corrupt in order to maintain that power. The idea of power corrupting is a typical performed identity present in a ruler. Both of these plays, therefore, demonstrate strong concepts of performed identities reflecting on the different types of characters present in their plays. Brown, Ronald. A Historical Analysis of Theatre. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. FITZSIMON CHRISTOPHER, and STERNLICHT SANFORD (eds.), Plays and Their Influence. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, 1996). FLANNERY JAMES W., Theature History and Practice. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1976. FOSTER R. F., Life and the Theatre. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997). FRAZIER ADRIAN, Behind the Scenes: Analysis of Theatre. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990. Johnson, Harold. History of Theatre Politics. Prentice Hall: New Jersey, 2001. Smith, Dan. The Importance of Theatre History. Oxford: Oxford, UP, 2006. Read More