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Cycle 5 Play Review

The document discusses two plays, The Duchess of Malfi and Amadeus, that the author saw performed at a high school theater competition. It analyzes the acting, technical aspects, and personal reflections on watching the performances.

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Ernie Coach
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14 views4 pages

Cycle 5 Play Review

The document discusses two plays, The Duchess of Malfi and Amadeus, that the author saw performed at a high school theater competition. It analyzes the acting, technical aspects, and personal reflections on watching the performances.

Uploaded by

Ernie Coach
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction:

I was given the opportunity to compete in the yearly UIL competition at Bellaire
High School.though its a real shame I’m not able to talk about our own show and
go and a podcast-long rant about how much I loved AIRNESS my focus will be
toward my experience watching other shows at the competition. Throughout this
experience I was able to witness magnificent and spectacular plays like The
Duchess of Malfi and Amadeus. Both plays were put on by brilliant directors who I
want to know their thought process for such things and how they go about
executing such intricate and complex pieces of art.

Acting: The Duchess of Malfi


The knowledge of acting is a gift and a curse like many things people are in love
with. Earlier in the school year I had the opportunity to compete in the Texas
Thespians Festival where I advanced onto the national competition. Within my
IE I found myself evaluating everyone else’s performance and giving them notes
in my head like plant your feet and such or like stand in neutral when slating
and not fidgeting with myself. At the competition I did the complete opposite, as
someone who loved acting and has been given plenty of notes for this journey,
was I able to think of any while watching The Duchess of Malfi. I sat in my seat
and soaked in the beauty of what was Mr. Savage’s play. Though the lack of
ensemble, the use of props and set were used perfectly. Everything on stage was
given purpose and had a reason to be there. Character work is something vital to
a performance as it sets you apart from someone on stage delivering the lines to
another character on stage. Watching their performance you could tell nobody on
that stage was the same person as they were when receiving awards. The
character’s choices appear clear and made for a good story being told. A note
that one of my favorite directors gave my class was if you're going to do
something you need to commit to the bit, when dude took his pants off and
began to strip and almost took his life or when they were crawling on top of the
cages it looked beautiful and clean. Finally something that I thought was really
good was when the Duchess was doing her thing with the man she had two kids.
My eyes were in awe and I was stunned when they had done their choreo. It
looked very clean and very indescribable. They were going in and through and
around and using the set to continue their choreography and their meaning of
the deed or that's what I interpreted it to be. I might be wrong. Something I
found hard to understand was that though the play was in modern time or near
modern time they were all barefoot or some of the characters, and I was a little
confused but I understand it’s considered a futuristic piece because it's portrayed
in such a long time from when the play is actually set.

Acting: Amadeaus
This play I walked in late for due to Airness performing immediately
before this one, but I did catch some things I liked and had noticed from the
play. When I had walked in I had noticed they had done something we had done
for a play for ours. For Romeo and Juliet we had nothing on stage but chairs in
order to build the set throughout the whole play. Though they had not done that
they had only flown in the Grand and had everything as far down stage on the
apron line but further down. And the only thing they had on stage was a couple
set pieces and a grand piano that looked like they had built it. The piano actually
looked really good and I thought it was real at first glance. The characters were
established very well though I missed the beginning where they had established
all of the main characters but two I was able to catch were Amadeaus and the
other person he was with who looked like they were competing with each other
but I don’t really remember what happened. Both the main characters were also
very well and looked like they had really put in the work in order to create the
work of art they had put on stage. Becoming someone else in order to tell a story
is very very very hard to do and they have done that very well. I sat in the very
back of the auditorium and had no issue hearing the characters on stage, their
diction and volume was good but maybe that's just because our space is that
good. Am I right?? Okay but seriously they were very clear the whole time.
Finding your light is something that us as Announcers had to do especially at
San Jac, In the play we saw Amadeous’ rival or the relationship between them
was having these soliloquies throughout the show and sometime his light would
be center down or stage right down or across where he would be at time and
from where I was sitting looked like he made it everytime. One of my favorite
parts of the play was when wolfgang and his rival were together and wolfgang
was telling the story of how someone was in his house or something and as he
was telling the story in his perspective the person he was describing and in his
house was on the other side of the stage on the piano reenacting what was being
taken in place inside wolfgang’s house. I'm pretty bad at describing and
explaining but imagine this: when you tell a story you kinda relive it in your
head in order to better tell the story, well imagine telling that story and your
actual thoughts being projected for an audience to see but not the characters like
us as the audience got to see what was going in his head and I thought it was
really cool because every action was being redone as if it was being done for the
first time for the audience. The ensemble for the show wasn’t very prominent like
our show or other shows I’ve seen except for one scene where the rival was
talking and having his moment and everyone backstage comes on stage with a
stack of papers and when the rival finishes his soliloquy everyone throws the
papers in the air in unison and it's the one of the coolest ensemble moments i’ve
ever seen except for the ones in AIRNESS.

TECH: The Duchess of Malfi


Things I admired from The Duchess of Malfi was how it was placed in a
modern time period and how the set was perfectly that, and also how the
costumes also perfectly matched them. The ensemble looked like they had
masquerade masks and or near the end in the final fight when the ensemble was
in the back with the cool masks and dressed with nice suits in order to give that
modern feeling. Another thing I really liked was the lights throughout the whole
play. And how they were put in the cage and wrapped around with gaff and the
only reason i know this is because during Area they were working on their set in
our holding room since our holding room was a shop and I saw them gaffing the
whole set to secure the lights but also how they had on stage specials which they
put a gobo on it (I don’t know what that is but I heard Reece talking about it and
thought it was really interesting). I don’t remember if they were used but I just
thought they were pretty cool. Also though the play was set in mordernish time
their props were really ancient looking but they were in really good condition.
For the final fight I don’t know if this is tech but imma put it in here the
characters while they were fighting were spinning each other around to get the
blood packs to spread to give the effect that they had been actually stabbed and
how it was slowly getting worse. Probably some of the best tech i’ve ever seen in
my life which says a lot about what i've seen.

Tech: Amadeus

Again I wasn't there to watch the whole show but from what I saw the
whole set was pretty empty and not really there, probably playing into the time
period and when the play is set. If i talk about the show Ii have to talk about how
the UIL set pieces fell during their show. They had a little area on stage right
where all the royals of the show would be depicted and someone knocked down
pieces on top of each other. Really unfortunate that happened to them, but
costumes were great and looked really good (maybe that's where all their money
went hehe). I like the plague doctor actor they had and that costume was by far
the best of the whole show.

Closing and Personal thoughts:


I really had a lot of fun watching the shows presented at UIL and watching people love
the same art and share the fun I had on that stage was by far the best thing I’ve
experienced in my life. I'm very thankful for the opportunity to be on the stage with the
best cast I have ever been with. Honestly I'm not looking for a grade out of this I just
want to let you know that I write these and care and my appreciation for this is beyond
me. Thank you Mrs. Boffone, I really appreciate you and love everything you’ve done
for me in order to make me a better person and actor throughout my experience in RBP.
Thank you,
Daniel Andrade

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