Theatre art: history, forms, and cultural significance

¶ … Shape of Things:

Theatrical Convention from Class: Suspension of Disbelief -- the audience is made to believe that a man or any person for that matter could become so obsessed with a single person that they are willing to completely change themselves, including having plastic surgery and destroying their interpersonal relationships for a person whose only appeal to them is a sexual one.

Potential Convention: Given the subject matter of the play and the heightened emotions the ending portrays at least on the part of one character that I would try to have the actors deliver their dialogue and their attitudes as realistically as possible.

In the Blood:

Theatrical Convention from Class: Pathos -- the audience is meant to feel sympathy for the main character of this play and to understand her sense of desperation and her inability to find a way to preserve herself and her sense of dignity and also support her children.

Potential Convention: Due to the highly tense nature of the play, it might benefit best by containing the setting as much as possible to a single setting, such as directly inside our outside the home of the impoverished family.

Wit:

Theatrical Convention from Class: The play relies heavily on singular perspective of the dying woman, namely the soliloquy and her direct discussion of her situation with the audience.

Potential Convention: Because of the isolated nature of the character and her disease, the theme of the play would be helped by having her physically isolated on the stage, such as by creating a large space between the main character and everyone else, including her doctors.

The Goat:

Theatrical Convention from Class: Satire -- the play deals with a man's relationships with a goat but this taboo could be any sexual feeling which the society considers to be inappropriate, the goat then serves the purposes of satirizing all taboo relationships and the reasons they are taboo.

Potential Convention: In order to sustain the universality of taboo, it would be a good idea to use not an actual sheep but an apparently artificial substitute.

The playwright's job is not only to tell a story but also to use the medium of the play in order to illustrate an important perspective on life to the viewer of that play. Throughout history, plays have been written on a multitude of subjects and with a wide array of tones and themes, but one thing that appears repeatedly regardless of subject matter is a commentary on the nature of existence. Human beings have lived on the planet Earth for millennia but it is as yet unknown exactly why people are here and exactly what it means to be human. Regardless of why a play was written or the subject matter of that play, one thing that echoes throughout all plays is an attempt to understand humanity or to comment upon it. To make a comment on humanity that the audience and see, understand, and internalize is the ultimate goal of a play and the greatest potential a play has which can be seen in the works The Shape of Things, In the Blood, Wit, and The Goat.

The theater can show a very dark side of humanity which people do not want to think about but which nonetheless exists. In The Shape of Things (2001), a young man named Adam has his entire world destroyed by Evelyn for a graduate studies project. She cajoles him into severing friendships, into severe body modification, and into a sexual relationship which he believes is based on emotional intimacy. Films tend to show the brighter side of humanity and exhibit happy endings where boy meets girl and real-world traumas seldom reach them. This is not reality. There are harsh people in the world just like Evelyn and foolish people in the world like Adam. Theater's potential is to hold up a mirror to society and show some of the things that people do not want to admit exists.

Suzan-Lori Parks' In the Blood is about a woman named Hester who has five children out of wedlock and is living in poverty. Unable to secure financial security on her own and living with a negative reputation, she finally determines to reach out to others because of her desperation. She has come to a point in her life where the chance to do right by her children means more to her than her own self-esteem or self-worth. Ultimately, this desperation is unrewarded and she winds up murdering her eldest child for calling her a slut. By identifying her as the negative stereotype of the outside world, the child clearly aligns himself as an enemy to Hester's self-esteem and therefore he must be destroyed. She winds up in prison and now the other four children are all alone and have no one to support them. Again, there is no happy ending and no solution. The children will likely succumb to their upbringing and carry on their poverty and depression to the next generation.

Wit, by Margaret Edson (1995) tells of a professor of English literature who is dying from cancer. Throughout her career as a scholar of the poetry of John Donne, Vivian Bearing has had more companionship with literature than with human beings. Her parents have passed away. She has no husband and no children. There are not even any friends to whom she is close enough to list them as an emergency contact in the hospital. Vivian's daily communication is mostly with oncologist Dr. Kelekian. He cares about the results of his experiments more than his patients. Dr. Kelekian does not care about Vivian but whether or not the experimental procedure he is using works. The audience feels for Vivian and at the same time conflicted because she is not a kind person. This shows the theater's potential because even a real character like Vivian can engender emotion, perhaps even more than an empathetic character would.

Edward Albee's The Goat (2000) deals with a man who falls in love with a goat, ruining his marriage and the relationship he has with his son. On the surface, this seems like a simplistic plot, but in reality the play asks questions about social taboos regarding love and sex. Our society looks down on bestiality and most people within the culture have negative opinions about it and we as a whole population do not really question why we have these negative opinions. Few people could see the play and agree with Martin's choices, but Albee is not asking this. Rather, he is opening a dialogue which can be extended to adultery, incest, masochism, pedophilia, and any other sexual taboos which the society looks down upon.