Right now I'm taking an "Arts Core Seminar" class at the UCDC Center. Everyone takes a seminar and because I'm participating in the Arts Initiative program this quarter I'm taking a seminar course that's only partially political in nature. The theme is arts activism. Our professor wants us to look at the mission statement of the institution for which we are interning and compare it to our day-to-day work routines. The idea is to examine how each of us as individuals fit into the greater picture of what our internship sites claim to be doing. Basically throughout the quarter I will be critically determining whether or not the Studio Theatre is living up to its proposed goals. I'm supposed to journal everyday... Which I haven't been... So this will be the first.
The mission statement can be found here: http://www.studiotheatre.org/about/
In summary, the Studio Theatre is all about producing exceptional contemporary plays (oftentimes world or US premieres) in small blackbox-style playing spaces. From the two shows I've seen so far this seems to be the case. The close proximity between the actors and the audience demands a level of theatrical craft that can't be faked. The lighting design and fight choreography in Sucker Punch were phenomenal. There was a scene where the two actors were fighting each other back to back, each one reacting to the movements of the other. It made me appreciate just how much training and rehearsal the actors put into the execution and exact timings of their boxing choreography. The final fight scene was done on a rotating platform so that added another aspect of drama and intensity. Overall the play went by very quickly. It started abruptly with the sound of a speed bag being hit and rebounding. Then the house lights went down and the stage was set. The ending felt very much like a sucker punch. A lot of it had to do with the actors' believable portrayal of their characters' struggles and it really hit me in the gut. I don't think that experience could have happened without the feeling of intimate connectedness that the Studio manifests in all 4 of their performances spaces.
The other show I've seen was more like performance art. It was called Dogugaeshi and it was one of the five or so performances comprising the Basil Twist Festival hosted by The Wolly Mammoth and Folger Shakespeare Theatre Companies. The show was based off of an ancient Japanese art form which draws upon puppetry and visual art. The illusion was that the paintings coming on and off stage seemed to be receding into the distance when really the set was only 10 feet deep. The most exciting part for me was a scene where the entire set seemed to deconstruct as a result of some external factor. A storm? The concept of chaos? This show was a little bizarre. All of it was in Japanese but I did get a few subtitles during a scene where people were being interviewed. The video footage of this was projected onto one of the many canvases. The use of two-dimensional projections in this performance was interesting to watch as it overlapped hand-painted images drawn to three-dimensional linear perspective running on and off stage. The project was aesthetically beautiful and cleverly done (I got to have the pleasure of waltzing backstage to check it out) but the context and purpose was a little unclear to me. The reception afterwards with the rest of the cool people that got to go on opening night was pretty fun though.
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