Theatre Report Essay, Research Paper
It was on Saturday October the 16th that I saw the play called The Clearing in the McGinn/Cazale Theatre on Broadway and 76th above the Promenade theatre. To be exact the theatre was on the fourth floor and you had to take the elevator and then walk up a flight to get to it. I went there by myself and I dressed up nice because I expected that everyone was going to dressed up nice, but to my amazement everyone was dressed casually.
I got there about 7:30 and when I walked up to the theatre I did not see many people of my age waiting to see the play. Most of the people were middle aged. I got lucky because I got the last ticket and the place was sold out that night. Even though I got the last ticket it wasn t a bad seat. My seat was located on the right side and in the middle row.
About at 8:05 everyone started walking in because the play was about to start. I did so too. There was a man standing at the door checking the tickets and ripping off the stubs. Then I proceed further and on my way I noticed a room which had many controllers sound mixers and etc I thought to myself that, that is probably the room, which controls all of the lighting and the sound effects.
I could not find my seat so I asked the usher to show me to my seat. The seats were really nice. They were covered with green velvet and spaced so you fit in comfortably. After I sat down I looked around and noticed that there were only two sections of seats directly placed at high angle in front of the stage. The stage was a regular proscenium stage that is it looked like a picture frame. This proscenium stage did not have a lip on it.
Then I looked around on the stage and it had a wood floor like a cabin. The floorboards were not nailed close to each other. The boards were painted in a brown color and some parts of the floor were painted to look like it is patches of grass and dirt. There weren t many things or props placed on the floor except for a dead tree. There were other things on the stage but I did not consider them as props. They were boards that looked like doors behind the tree and on the sides. I guessed that they were there for blocking and used to represent walls.
All of a sudden the lights went out went out about 8:15, everyone quieted down. The music started playing, it a dark and gloomy music and it gave a sense that nothing really good is going to happen. Then the light from numerous spotlights filled the stage. When the lights went on the actress was already standing by the dead tree. She stood there and watched into to the audience like there were no people there.
She had a sad and a troubled expression on her face, and she was wearing a dark dress that did not look like it wasn t very expensive that showed right away that she did not have a high social status. Her dress looked kind of weird to me because it was a time play, and you don t see that kind of a dress nowadays on people. It was big going close to the ground and it was a dark color. Ofcourse the women who had a higher social status wore fancier dresses than the one I described now.
The men were dressed funny too. Their pants did not seem to be sewn good so they looked kind of awkward. They also wore pirate boots. One of the characters looked like Robin Hood because of the way that he was dressed.
I think that the lighting designers did do a good job with the lights. The different intensities and the different colors were focused, turned on and off at the right time to set the mood of the situation that was performed for the public. The spotlights that were used were different not only in the shape but that some of them were old and others were new and very advanced like the ones that could change color.
The cast that was got together for the play was very good. I think that the producer did a good job in picking out the actors for their parts. They reflected their characters well it was like they transformed and became the characters, portraying their emotions fears and everything else that they did. I liked the job that the actors did but the play itself the way it unfolded was a little too predictable for me, but otherwise the play and the other elements of the theatre were good.