My four Art Experiences :)

Experience 01:

On Thursday, Septmber 29th, I had the absolute pleasure of viewing the Rollins production of The Pillowman.

The Pillowman tells the story of Katurian (a writer of macabre short stories) and his brother Michal (Katurian’s younger brother that was tortured every night for seven years by his parents as an experiment to enhance Katurian’s writing abilities). As the play begins, we discover that the two siblings have been arrested by a detective and her officer partner and that the reason they are being detained, is because Katurian’s short stories are identical to the murders of two children and that there is a third child missing.

As I do not want to spoil the ending for those that have not had the opportunity to see/read this phenomenal script personally, I will say this:

I was in complete awe while watching this production. Not only is the story’s plot and script well written and detailed, but also every aspect of this particular production was breathtaking. The set was simplistic, and yet, it only enhanced the emotion of the scenes. The lighting and sound FX’s were astonishing and the scene changes were magnificent. Finally, the acting was superb. All five actors/actresses embodied their characters with such raw emotion, that the audience had no choice but to be sucked right into the heart of their tale. This was, by far, one of the best productions I have ever seen and, being an aspiring theatre major, morphed my vision of what a good play is. This performance affected me in a very powerful way, and will continue to linger in my mind for quite some time.




Experience 02

Twilight of the Golds is a play by Jonathan Tolins that I had to read for my RCC. The storyline follows that of a small family: Suzanne and Rob (Married), David (Suzanne’s brother), and Walter and Phyllis (Suzanne and David’s parents). Toward the beginning of the play, we discover that Suzanne is pregnant and that Rob has a connection through is work at Oxford University to get special tests for the baby to see what he/she will be like (healthy, boy/girl, any physical discrepancies, etc.) Well, they get the results and they find out the that only minor detail to the baby is that it has a 90% chance of being “Like David”, which means that the baby will be homosexual. Now to most of us today, this wouldn’t be an issue, but this is what causes the conflict for the play.

After reading this script, I was incredibly moved. I felt not only sympathy for David (read the play if you’d like to find out why ☺), but I also understood where Suzanne and her parents were coming from. I am a very open and accepting person, but I’m also somewhat traditional. So I could see and sympathize with both sides of the argument presented within the production. I for one, don’t think that abortion would even be considered an option for something like this, but that’s what Suzanne and Rob have to decide – and it makes for a very interesting and emotional piece of literature.




Experience 03

Last month, my best friend dragged me to go see Guillermo Del Toro’s Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark. Now, I’ll tolerate ‘scary’ or ‘gory’ movies under certain terms and circumstances, but I refuse to watch them by myself (or with only one other person), or in the theater. Well, that’s what we ended up doing: seeing it together in the theater. I was stressing myself out and I really had no desire to be there, and as the movie started, I was literally sitting with my feet in the chair, squished as far away from the screen as possible.

There were a few moments in the beginning that were extremely alarming and had the entire audience screaming out load, but shortly after the movie started, it lost its shock value. It was more of suspense than a horror movie (nothing like Del Toro’s Insidious). I mean, the story line was great, but the elements needed to make this a scary movie, just weren’t there. I for one, actually enjoyed it, while everyone else was leaving the theater with this depressed look on his or her face, I was smiling and wondering “Maybe I’ll actually buy this one! I quite enjoyed it!”.




Experience 04:

So far, I have been to two of the four RIP shows this season (one of which, I actually saw twice, so it was actually like seeing three of the four). Normally, I would say I’m not a huge improve fan, but slowly, Dr. D and the RIPsters are convincing me to accept this art form. The two shows have both been VOAT performances (Variation On A Theme), and I haven’t left disappointed yet. While I still can’t see myself as being an improvisation actor, I am starting to find the joy and interest in viewing these performances. It probably also helps that I knew many of the RIPsters and that I even have a fair few of them in classes.

While they’re still not my most favorite style of acting, I have enjoyed the shows tremendously. The actors do such a marvelous job, and they always leave you wishing the next show would come sooner. Who knows, maybe by the end of the year, I’ll have seen enough and will have been involved in it enough to even consider auditions for RIP next year myself. At the moment, that’s still a big resounding “No.”, but like I said, “Who knows?”