Doctor Curran's Theatre Blog

Last Friday (day before yester-day) we in the IB Drama class of the Cleveland High School recieved  a sheet of paper with five topics (five stimuli, if you will) and were given the instructions that in about a month, each of us must have a PRACTICAL PERFORMANCE PROPOSAL for one of the stimuli. What the PPP is is a plan for a performance piece with elements of theatre, but not necessarily existng within the confines of a theater. “Remember TBA?” Oh yes. We remember Portland’s Time-based Art fest. Let’s try not to repeat some of those, hm? (I’m lookin’ at you, Carter. You and your Erased James Franco. It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that your guarde is a little too avant for my taste.)

My stimulus is Lewis Carroll’s famous (infamous?) poem Jabberwocky and why shouldn’t it be? It’s my favourite poem, bar none. And surely there is a statement made there, considering I’ve read a few poems in my day.

There should probably definitely be some flying winged creatures suspended above the audience at times. And borogoves! And a bandersnatch! Calloo callay indeed.

The location is Cleveland High School. The time is the day before Opening Night. The mood is nervous.

For several weeks, twelve brave teams of directors have taken up the task of turning a sorry bunch of teenagers into actors. Twelve plays is far more than ever has graced the stage in the auditorium at one time. And it will continue to be too many for a single night. But how cool would it be to have a four-hour show? Run from 7 to 11 at night? And then you’d know who the worthy audience members were- the ones who stuck around until the end for the fireworks.

Jane Ferguson: Woah woah woah, you want to have fireworks in your show?

Director: Well, yeah, I mean it’s not like they’d be big fireworks or mortars or anything. We just want to shoot a few bottle rockets into the audience.

Jane: Why?

Director: Well, see, it’s like a metaphor. It’s about how the world is so unjust and stuff, and at the end it just all explodes. It’ll be awesome.

Jane: Um, no it won’t be so awesome. You can’t have live gunpowder on stage. We tried that once. It wasn’t… it didn’t really… work. So the answer is no.

Director: But we’ll be really safe. I promise nobody will catch on fire this time. We have it all rehearsed and everything.

Jane: Alright. But don’t tell anyone I let you do it, because if you do-

Director: Everyone else is gonna want fireworks too.

Jane: That’s right. Gosh, I am such a pushover [laughs].

End scene.

The responses of this entry will pertain to the CHS IB Drama blog entry of the address below.

http://chsibdrama.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/summary-of-your-research-project/

The culture I believe I’ve decided on is France. The theatre practice is their take on the absurdist. The project will be about the French aspect, but perhaps it’ll carry over a bit into other cultures so as to make comparison. I will be examining Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit and conjecturing how it was devised and affected by the world in which Sartre lived. The practice of absurdist theatre in France, I believe, had to’ve been conceived by Social and Political factors and their effects on the playwrights of Sartre (among others). It is unclear to me at this point whether the acting style found in absurdist drama was in place before the plays, or if it was evolved because of the plays. More research will undoubtably follow.

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