Off Topic: About Theater and Theories

Prologue:

This blog post is going to be a little different from all my previous posts, even the other Off Topics, because I am writing it as an assignment for one of my classes and I will get a mark for it. Yes, I am blogging for one of my university classes – for “Stage & Performance” to be precise. So you will get a real insight in my life as a student in Sri Lanka. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

As you might have guessed from the title of the course, it has something to do with theater; actually it is all about theater and theories concerning theater and models to get something on stage. “Stage & Performance” is mainly a theoretical class, where we discuss Aristotle’s ideas of theater, Augusto Boal’s concepts of performance and audiences, Peter Brook’s different types of theater and so on and so forth. But to get a more practical approach as well, we watched three different plays staged in three different locations here in Colombo.

The task at hand is to draw a connection between the live performances and the discussed theories. Therefore we are asked to write a “think piece”, a “blog post kind of thing”, about one of the plays, in connection with the theory we discussed so far.

We were never actually supposed publish this blog post online, but as I can call this little place in the World Wide Web my own, I thought why not. After all, I’m a blogger and I am supposed to write a blog, why not actually post it. Sure, it is a little off topic and we are asked to write to an informed audience, which means I have to assume that everybody who reads this knows a fair amount about theater theories, which is probably not the case, but I like the idea of sharing this with a greater audience then just my lecturer, and who knows, you might get something out of it as well.

                                                                                               

I have to assume that you are all well informed, but I do not have to assume, that you actually saw the play that I am going to talk about. So let me start with…

A Summary of the Play:

“Love Letters” written by A. R. Gurney is one of those plays that do not need a fancy stage with massive scenery, a huge amount of props, sophisticated lighting arrangements, elaborated sound tuning and in fact it does not even need many actors. Two actors, a woman and a man, is exactly the right amount you need to tell the story of Andrew Ladd and Melissa Gardner.

It all starts in their second year in school, when Andy writes a short letter to except an invitation to Melissa’s birthday party. Melissa replies after the party with a letter herself, saying thank you for the present she got from Andy. These two brief written interactions are the beginning of a lifelong correspondence between Andrew and Melissa. From then on they send it each other short notes in class and “get-well-soon” messages when they are sick or break a leg; they send each other postcards from their holidays, Valentine cards and Season’s Greetings; they send each other random letters just to see how the opposite is doing in life; they send each other letters just to keep in touch, even after their lives start to take different turns soon after grade school. Andy, who even as a child seemed to be a more conservative, more focused type of person, pursues a career in law and later politics, eventually becoming a U.S. senator. Melissa on the other hand is more of a free spirit with the soul of an artist. After she is done with school, she moves to Italy to study arts and tries to establish herself as an artist. Although she has a few exhibitions now and then and at one point she actually seems to have success with her work, she never really has a break through that lasts, but more than one break down that takes her to rehab. Melissa always seems to struggle with life and she never really finds her place in it. Yes, she gets married and has two children, but the marriage does not last and because of her bohemian lifestyle, with a fondness of alcohol and men, she eventually loses custody of her two girls. The only actual constant in her life are the letters from Andy and the ones she sends to him. But the same holds true for Andy. Driven as much by his own as his fathers expectations, he follows a very predictable way in life: school, college, military service, work and finally politics. He gets married, has three children, a dog and a house in the suburbs. If we forget about a brief episode during his military service in Japan, where he falls in love with a woman and despite the disapproval of his family gets married to her, his life seems to be a little too good, too straightforward. The friendship with Melissa and the letters seem to be his way out of this predictability, a way to express his true self. This ultimately peaks in a love affair of the two, but when it comes to the decision of giving up his “good” life for Melissa, or giving up the liaison with Melissa he chooses the later. It is only in his final letter to Melissa’s mother, after Melissa’s death, that he admits his feelings for her, and that he realizes the importance of her in his life.

“Is this theater?”

All this is presented to us by two actors sitting next to each other on stage and reading out the letters. We follow Melissa and Andrew through their lives only by hearing about it, but we never actually see one of the scenes they describe played out. Sure, we can imagine what they tell us and we can see it happening in front of our inner eye, but on stage is really not much going on. Which provokes the question: “Is this really theater?” The fairly simple answer is: “It depends on who you ask.” Augusto Boal, with his idea of a “Theater of the Oppressed”, would probably take this performance more as an on stage reading session, but not as theater that provokes the audiences, that engages them, arouses them, leads them to a revolution of the circumstances, or at the very least points out what is going wrong in society. And it is true, even though we learn that Melissa was practically raised by nurses and not her parents, that we have the topic of a U.S. senator cheating on his wife, that we get to know Melissa’s struggle of finding her place in life, it is all rather uncritical presented and not reflected.

However, if we consider the ideas of Peter Brook and his different categories of theater, we can see that such a restricted performance can be seen as a certain type of theater, or rather a mixture of types. Brook identifies (besides others) the “Rough Theater”, which is characterized not only by rawness of the production but also by the crudeness of the actors and the “Holly Theater” which enables the visibility of the invisible. When Brook talks about a “Rough theater”, he by no means talks about an unprofessional or unrehearsed or even a bad theater, but rather a realistic type of theater, one the audience can relate to and the actors can identify themselves with the characters. A theater that does not try to be larger than life, but rather tries to be lifelike and still provoking by showing the audiences outcomes of situations they most likely are familiar with, because they might have experienced them at one point in their life on their own. This is clearly the case in “Love Letters”. We laugh when Andy and Melissa exchange notes in class and get punished for doing so, not out of schadenfreude, but because we might think back to our own time in school and the day when we got busted for passing on a note. At least I do. And when Melissa comments on one of Andy’s Christmas card, where he gloats about his perfect wife, and his perfect children and his perfect life, with a sarcastic remark that she never wants to read something like that ever again, we can relate to it because it’s something we would have done too, at least I would have. But “Love Letters” does more. It reads out the written words of two people and just by doing so, the words come to life and we fill them with images and scenes, and we fly through 50 years in about two hours. “Marry Christmas from Andy Ladd” and another year passed by. A short “interlude” of an Elvis Presley song or something from the Beach Boys and we know we have moved on a decade. Brooks describes the “Holy Theater” as the idea of showing something that cannot really be seen, and this holds true for “Love Letters”. We can not actually see Andy and Melissa grow up and live their lives, but through the medium of letters, through the setting of the stage, through the focus on only two characters and with the help of music that captures the time and the mood of the scenes, we can imagine it. At least I can and I liked it.

And is this not actually what really matters, no matter what the theorists say or think. Isn’t it the audiences that make a play a success and aren’t they the ones who give the real feedback, during and after the play? Each and every one of them decides on his or her own, only really influenced by their previous experiences in life, if they liked it, or not.

As I was one of them, I decided for myself, that I did. I liked the plot, I liked the characters and I liked the actors. What else can one expect?

Weekly Review 16

Unbelievable, another week is over. Ok, it was a short one from the last WR to this one, as I wrote the last Review a couple of days late, but nevertheless the week was over pretty fast. It’s weird that the weeks where nothing special happens seem to be over even quicker than the exciting ones, or at least almost as quickly. I spent a good deal of the weekend doing nothing, except for lying in bed, sleeping and trying to get better. I was sick, and not in a good post-alcohol kind of way, although the symptoms were quite similar. When I got up on Friday morning I fell right back into my cushions, because the whole world started spinning around me. I felt dizzy and out of balance. A very unpleasant feeling, which luckily got better after a couple of seconds, but I still felt dizzy. I thought it was because of low blood sugar and that I should eat and drink something, but nothing worked. The dizzy feeling stayed with me all day and was even worse on Saturday. So I went to the hospital on Sunday to see a doctor. He checked my blood pressure, pulse, ears, everything was fine, but he still prescribed me something. I don’t think he really had a clue why I was feeling dizzy, but didn’t want me to go home empty handed, that’s why he prescribed me something and that’s why I didn’t took it. I felt better on Sunday and it was almost alright on Monday, so I don’t think it was a mistake to not take the meds. I never the less managed to see another play on Sunday. It was ok. Not the greatest play I’ve ever seen, but not bad either.

Tuesday was football and besides that, studying and living… the usual.

Weekly Review 15

Sorry about the delay, but it was a crazy busy week, especially the last weekend. I managed to get out of Colombo, because there was a literary festival in Galle (a town in the south) and just because I had to. We spent a night in Hikkaduwa, which is a little away from Galle, but has a nice beach. The festival was interesting, although we only got to see one session with three different authors. They read excerpts from their books and answered questions. I had never heard of the authors before, but they all seemed quite interesting. I even wanted to buy one of the books, to get it signed by the author but they had already run out of stock when I wanted to buy one. Nevertheless, I’m going to put it on my Amazon-wish-list.

After the session on Saturday, we rushed back to Colombo, because there was a presentation due on Monday, which still needed some preparation. Therefore Sunday was all about Language Policies and presentations. It was fun, and the topic was quite interesting. The presentation went well, I think, but I’m glade it was the last one for this semester. Only two final exams, a term paper and a think piece (what ever that is) and my semester abroad is over… Quite a lot of work actually, but I still got two more months in Sri Lanka.

Two months to do all kinds of fun things, for example going to the theater, which is part of one of our classes. We have to watch three plays and write about one of them. The first one we saw on Monday was “Colombo, Colombo”. A play solely in Sinhala, which means, that I didn’t understand anything. The play was divided into different episodes, each showing one incident that similarly has happened in Colombo in the past. At least that’s what I was told. I hoped for a more structured storyline, which you were able to follow even without understanding a word (like figuring out who is the hero, what is his problem, why is the lead female actress in trouble, etc.), but no, the play was too complicated to understand it, without understanding anything. The next two plays are going to be in English, so I hope I get more out of them. Tuesday was one of the rare occasions where we played football. Lately we are hardly enough players to have a good match, which is quite sad, cause I really good used to playing at least once a week.

A couple of third year students decided to have dinner together on Wednesday and they invited the three of us to join them, as three of them are participating in this years exchange program from Sri Lanka to Germany. They are going to be in Germany from April to July or August, so it was nice to get to know each other and to answer the questions they had about Germany and the university.

Time Flies

Ist schon ne weile her, dass ich das letzte Mal auf Deutsch hier etwas geschrieben habe, aber nun wird es mal wieder Zeit euch auf den aktuellen Stand der Dinge zu bringen und über die vergangenen Tage zu berichten. Der Hauptgrund, warum ich so lange nichts von mir habe hören lassen, ist der, dass eigentlich nichts passiert ist, zumindest nichts großes, wie eine Reise, oder ein besonderes Event. Eben nichts von der Sorte meiner sonstigen Blogeinträge auf Deutsch. Zu dem ging der Januar auch irgendwie schneller rum als erwartet, und dass obwohl eigentlich gar nicht so viel passiert ist. Ich hoffe die nächsten zwei Monate lassen sich da ein Bisschen mehr Zeit, sonst komme ich in Sri Lanka zu gar nichts mehr, worüber es sich zu schreiben Lohnen würde.

Mein vierter Monat in Sri Lanka ist vorbei und er wurde vor allem von  einem Thema geprägt: Uni. Neben einer Präsentation am letzten Tag des Monats, die meiner Meinung nach ganz gut gelaufen ist, stand eine Midterm-Klausur an, deren Ergebnis ich bisher noch nicht habe und eigentlich auch nicht will, die Anmeldung für die Final-Exams, am Ende des Semesters, sowie einiges an Texten die es zu lesen galt. Mal ganz davon abgesehen, dass wir ja auch weiterhin zu den Veranstaltungen gehen müssen. Aber eigentlich sollte ich mich nicht beschweren, auch wenn ich es gerne anderes hätte, bin ich ja leider nicht zum Urlaub machen hier, sondern zum Studieren, insofern ist es schon in Ordnung. Die vergangenen Tage waren jedoch recht Abwechselungsreich und führten mich, wenn auch nur kurz, zum Strand nach Hikkaduwa. Am Wochenende war in Galle, einer größeren Stadt im Süden der Insel das alljährliche Literaturfestival, bei dem Autoren aus der ganzen Welt ihre Bücher vorstellen, und zu Gesprächsrunden eingeladen werden. Zudem gibt es noch allerlei anderen Veranstaltungen wie Picknicks, Touren, Kochkurse, etc. Ein komplettes Programm findet ihr hier: GLF http://www.galleliteraryfestival.com/ Auch wenn einige die mehrere Tage da waren und mehr als eine Veranstaltung gesehen habe, sagen, dass man nicht wirklich viel großartiges Verpasst hat, bereue ich es doch etwas, dass wir uns nicht mehr Zeit dafür genommen haben, bzw. nicht mehr Zeit hatten.

Da wir am Donnerstag wie üblich noch Unikurse hatten, konnten wir erst freitags Richtung Süden aufbrechen, mit dem Plan in Hikkaduwa zu übernachten, von dort aus am nächsten Tag das Festival zu besuchen und sonntags zurück nach Colombo zu fahren. Da allerdings für Montag eine Präsentation anstand, musst der Plan geändert werden und wir brachen bereits Samstagnachmittag wieder Richtung Colombo auf. Dies ließ uns gerade mal genug Zeit eine Veranstaltung http://www.galleliteraryfestival.com/node/567 zu besuchen, die allerdings gar nicht schlecht war, und zum Mittagessen auf dem Festival, bevor wir für einen schnellen Sprung ins Meer zurück nach Hikka fuhren um von dort mit dem Zug zurück nach Colombo zu fahren.

Alles in allem waren wir noch nicht mal 36 Stunden aus Colombo raus, aber da ich mittlerweile der Meinung bin, dass es nicht gesund ist, all zu lange am Stück in Colombo zu bleiben, war es die Sache absolut wert. Ich glaube wenn man nicht ab und an mal aus Colombo rauskommt, dreht man ganz langsam durch. Das würde zumindest einiges erklären. Ich werde auf jeden Fall versuchen, es nicht mehr soweit kommen zu lassen, und in Zukunft öfter Richtung Strand oder Berge aufbrechen.

Von Samstagabend bis Montagnachmittag stand dann alles unter dem Zeichen der Präsentation in Language Policy and Planing. Wenn ich irgendwas aus dem Kurs mitnehme, dann vor allem, dass wir glücklich sein können, dass Deutschland im Großen und Ganzen einsprachig ist. Drei Sprachen in einem Land unterzubringen ist gar nicht so einfach und bringt meistens für die eine oder andere Gruppe Nachteile mit sich.

Was es heißt in einer Situation zu sein, in der man praktisch nichts versteht, weil man die Sprache nicht kann, konnten wir dann auch direkt am Montagabend selbst erfahren. Für einen anderen Unikurs (Stage & Performance) müssen wir verschiedene Theaterstücke anschauen, die in Colombo aufgeführt werden. Das erste Stück, das wir am Montagabend zu sehen bekamen, hieß „Colombo, Colombo“ und war komplett in Sinhala. Da ich nach vier Monaten in Sri Lanka gerade einmal bis 5 zählen kann, hab ich nicht wirklich viel von der Handlung mitbekommen, zumal das Stück keine klare Storyline hatte, sondern verschiedene Episoden aufgeführt wurden. Ich hoffe die nächsten beiden Stücke werden besser, zumindest werden sie auf Englisch sein.

Leider hatte ich im Theater meine Kamera nicht dabei, aber ich werde versuchen von einer Kommilitonin Fotos zu bekommen, die ich dann noch nachträglich Hochlade. Gleiches gilt für das Literaturfestival.