Response to: [PLAY] Aunt Dan and Lemon

I did some brainstorming about the play after reading through it with a couple of friends and decided to approach my response in the same way we did in class in regards to Romeo and Juliet.

Here is what I came up with:

ONE SIMPLE SENTENCE:

Aunt Dan and Lemon is about good turned to evil

Aunt Dan and Lemon is about persuasion and exposure

ONE COMPLEX SENTENCE:

Aunt Dan and Lemon is about how we change everyday, slowly, through brief conversations and exposure

THREE SENTENCE VERSION OF THE STORY:

1. Aunt Dan and Lemon is about a child that changes over time as a result of what her loved ones teach her through stories
2. Aunt Dan and Lemon is about how the people in our circle heavily influences how we see the world
3. Aunt Dan and Lemon is about how morality can be taught, but also the loss of morality can also be taught

Response to The Empty Space & Visits to a Small Planet

The Empty Space - Peter Brook

A book about the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate.

I really enjoyed reading this thoughtful critic on theatre and it's current processes and direction. As one that has worked in theatre and trained as an actor in a couple of the methods discussed in the book, I found myself really relating to the literature. Brook mentions that in deadly theatre "nothing is reborn": Theatre productions are constantly redone in the same way as if shows are "frozen in time." This is something that I entirely agree with and is part of the reason why I have decided to take this class. Brook also talks a lot about how there are also issues of the actors that begin to have unchanging motivations to grow once they begin to get paid for their craft. Their work gets more and more similar and they fall into the same deadly cycle.  This is also detrimental to theatre and something I have experienced first hand as I have worked alongside actors in this situation on stage. Theatre was something that I have shied away from because the shows I was doing didn't invigorate me.

I'm excited to come to this class as a critic, a designer and a technologist to try to potentially bring actor's and shows out of the "what's already been done" and try to make something new. I'm interested in attempting to portray important topics that may need to be altered in the moment with the constant shift in the social and political climate.

Visits to a Small Planet - Essay by Elinor Fuchs

This essay was a good reminder as to how to approach a story (in writing and in examining).  Everything is intentional. This is something that I have began too touch on in my work --- and that's creating narrative in 360 space. Everything that is placed needs to be put there for a reason, it is a part of that world for a reason.

One point that Elinor touches on in the essay that I have found myself thinking a lot about in my current narrative and experiential projects is the idea around impact on the creator and viewers.  What is the impression that you are wanting to  impose?

"Ask, what has this world demanded of me? Does it ask me for pity and fear? Does it ask me to reason? To physically participate in the action on the stage? Does it ask me to interact with other spectators? To leave the theater and take political action? To search my ethical being to the core? Maybe this world means only to entertain me, why not? But how does it make this intention known?"

This is something that I would like to challenge myself with a little bit more in this class.   This is the aspect that changes people. That makes individuals think.