Blog 7

Since my life is currently being consumed with Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, I will talk about this show. In our lab show, space is all we have. Our budget hasn’t allowed us to take on this crazy and elaborate set. The play doesn’t even really call for anything like that anyway. So we have a blank stage with some periaktoi and some branches where we can create a string room.  Being a minimal show, I think this is effective and can speak to the six axioms. It allows transactions between actors and the audience, actors and actors and actors and technical elements. Each space of the stage has it’s own meeting. We have the string room, a designated spot for stones and one side is the underworld while the other side acts as the real world with a globe connecting the two worlds. The worlds intermingle. Focus really is flexible from both the actors and audience’s perspective. 

            Environmental and site-specific theatre enhance the production in my opinion. It would be cool to do this in a more found space other than the Studio, but that’s not the point.  I think the transaction between audience and performer is the most important thing, and creating an environment that allows that is very strong.

            I don’t necessarily agree with Kantor’s view. I don’t think that theatre has been sterilized and neutralized for one thing.  Theatre grows but those words make it sound like it’s stale and boring now. Playwrights work for years to create something wonderful. Not all theatre is site-specific or experimental.  Something made up as the production goes on could turn out just as bad, if not worse, than something that was planned thoroughly.