Equus at Actor's Workshop is excellent. The staging is extremely spare, almost non-existent. Because I had difficulty seeing (if you care, you'll want to get there early and sit up front), I had to rely on voices for some of the production. NO PROBLEM. The main actors were up to the task. In some ways this added to my experience. The work itself is dense and strong emotion, or lack of it, is part of the subject matter being explored. Having an aural component and a certain difficulty in seeing everything was perhaps intended by the director. The doctor's internal dialog is all the more real for being more vocal and something seen.
The lighting was used entirely to set emotional tone rather than for realistic effect. First we were in a therapeutic, almost chilly space, then a bit of red conjured warmth, relaxing into emotion. A beach scene was suffused with soft, mostly blue light for outdoor space. I could almost smell salt water (some foley work helped here). This use of lighting occured again and again, yet was not intrusive. In act 2 backlighting for the young lovers really racked up the sense of a pressure cooker and served in contrast to the dramatic and literally dark scene blinding the horses.
I found the sound design filmic, subtle and personally directed. Music or foley work was added only as needed to increase emotional temperature (warmer or cooler) as originally set by lighting. Because the space at Actor's is so intimate, there was no need for anything overly loud. A courteous audience meant that very small sounds penetrated and were effective.
Directing through a spare concept allowed for strong dramatization by the two main actors. They were not required to compete with a busy set and were often in semi-darkness, as are we all when living with our thoughts. In a dense and atmospheric 'place' there was more work for my imagination than anything solid on stage and this added to to my experience. In food terms this show is both meat and potatoes and the best dessert you will find. The writing makes for serious content, the presentation here is artful. The dramatic voice of the director is clear with lots of light, high tones and authenticity. The playwright's language shown through.
This was a superior use of 2.5 hours.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
So when are you going open this up to more readers? I'm very limited on some of this and won't be able to add much to the over all discussion. It a very short time here you seam to be getting more comfortable and have a lot to say. I think you would benefit from others.
Gotta' get the go ahead from the team and deal with a parent company issue on non-disclosure. We'll see what happens. Perhaps I'll go with son-of-artedges for more public posting. Or perhaps son-of might better be the locked site for internal team discussion since kids deserve more privacy.
On the blog. It seems to me that thinking about public vs. private matters is worth some thought. In the end, you may find that each category has its own audience, assumptions, expectations, needs/desires. Good luck ferreting all this out.
On Realism. It also seems to me you have another important issue by the tail--what to do about meat and potatoes realism in a contemporary theater that tends to think less and less of it. Wants a different diet. In fact, one could argue that there is a lot of experimentation today around your main topic, starting with the play/production you critique in this post. Both here and elsewhere the turning seems to be away from concrete realistic staging and toward more open spaces become a different kind of visual abstraction [note: I assume that quality realism is in its own way a form of abstraction].
In thinking about this shift, it may be useful to ask for starters--what does the word realism actually mean, that is, what's all included in the concept? I personally think its full of all kinds of hidden stuff. Moreover, it holds meaning, whatever it is, that varies from person to person, director to director, audience to audience, critic to critic.
A discussion of the word realism, then, would no doubt turn up lots of variables. These variables would probably include things like degree of presupposed accuracy the word contains, amount of nuts and bolts used, kind and range of imagination at work, the kind of imaginative appeals that appear in the product, general assests and liabilities of doing things in a realistic mode. You indicate some of the potential liabilities through your descriptions of a positive alternative.
I suppose that in order to really understand the range and reach of realism as a concept, one should add to the mix the element of genre and how realism works in film, in dance, in performance art, in fact, in any art form using the visual. But that leaves out the aural; so what about the aural arts? Can actors create realism with their voices? Your post seems to suggest they can. If so, what is the nature of this kind of realism and how does it operate?
Thanks for the topic and rattling some cages. The post is full of interesting things to talk about.
this is heady stuff, Gillian.
You're doing a great job.
The blog is once again fully open and hoping for feedback.
Post a Comment