Tomato Plant Girl

Tomato Plant Girl
(Audience Experience)
    The audience for this play was mostly young children. The set looked like something from Elmo's world. This play was great, but you can tell by the length of time that it ran, the dialogue, and moral of the story that this play was meant for children. You would think that with children being in the audience you wouldn't be able to enjoy the play, but in fact I don't think I would have been able to enjoy if they children weren't there. The energy in the crowd was just so alive, vibrant, young, and new. I believe that the children were a little confused about father nature. I could hear kids asking questions like "what is he doing?" "who is that?" I heard a mother tell her child that it was God making the tomato plant girl grow. Which made sense, just this part of the play was very confusing for the children when the man come out in an all white suit with a wand. Although the children loved the part where Bookworm was teaching the Tomato Plant Girl how to say things like "Please" and "Thank You". I could hear some of the children saying the words along with the characters in the play. 
     I have to admit that I was surprised at how well the children behaved. I expected the children to not pay attention, be bouncing around in their seats, and trying to go play on the stage. I was very impressed by how well everything went. You can tell that there was some very careful planning that went into this play. The children, and their energy levels were taken into consideration in almost every aspect. The play was short and sweet. The set was very colorful, and all of the characters were very energetic and over the top which helped keep the children's attention. After the play I felt very drained, and tired. I was ready for bed. I believe that the energy of the audience, and of the cast was so high that it was just tiring.

Puppetry (Performance Blog 1)

Puppetry Itself
-Puppetry is a very broad subject; but is a very interesting one. You might not know it, but we have been exposed to puppetry our whole lives. What do you think about when you hear the word puppetry? Talking puppets on strings that have dreams to be real? What about sock puppets that we create as kids? Shadow figures on the walls that you create with your hands?What about when you were a child and mocking your parents with your hands?
Types of Puppetry
-In America we associate puppetry with child hood; but in other countries puppetry is something that is thought hightly of. Something that is considered to be something highly sophisticated. It is thought to be another form of art. Another way in which we express ourselves. There are more types of puppetry other than just Shadow puppetry or sock puppets.
There are forms like the vietnamese water puppetry.This isn't puppets in front or behind a light source. I believe that this is the most original type of puppetry because not like the other forms, these puppets and puppeteers perform in water.
Just take a second and check out this video I got off youtube. (might take a minute or two).
NOTE: There's a band, and a screen that the puppeteers hide behind to operate these huge puppets with long sticks.


Now let's take a quick peek at the most common known type of puppetry. Which is shadow puppetry. There are several types of shadow puppetry. But I am just going to show you the most common.Shadow Puppetry


Puppetry and Rituals
Ventriloquism is believed to have started sometime around the early 16th century to communicate with the dead. However this has evolved into a type of entertainment.


Works Cited:
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.hanoitravel.com.vn/Vietnam-Water-Puppetry
textbook

Performance Response

     Not only was the performance shocking so was the audience, and the audience's reaction to certain scenes in the play. Prior to this performance I had never heard of this play, so walking in I thought for sure it was something like an old horror film, with poor graphics, and a lot of over the top screaming. Judging by the title of the play I thought maybe it would be for a younger audience. But as I sat in the theatre staring at the three quarter thrust stage, listening to bluegrass I could see that I could just throw my expectations out of the window. I was surprised that most of the audience was much older. In fact I only saw maybe a couple of children.
     When the performance began I watched the audience, most seemed bored at the beginning when the three kids were climbing down into the cave, but once the play kept rolling and all of the characters started to sing and dance, I noticed that everyone clapped in between each scene after there was singing and dancing. For me, this was shocking, normally when you watch a play you see it all the way through and then clap at the end. Then again, I have never gone to see a musical before, so this may be conventional and I am just not familiar with it.
     One scene, in which I was very surprised by the audience’s reaction, was the animal orgy scene. After all the animals entered the stage, and just broke out with crazy animal sex, I felt awkward sitting in the theatre. I thought for sure that all of the older people would have many negative things to say, but they laughed. They laughed even harder after King Kong come out on stage rubbing his nipples, the woman next to me laughed so hard for so long after the scene was over I thought she was going to wet her pants; then whispered to the woman next to her about the animal scene being her favorite scene. One word for that...AWWKWARD.
     I went to see this musical with my fiancé, and we discussed the play in the car on our way back home. He hated it, and criticized everything from the volume to the makeup. I, on the other hand, absolutely loved the play. Although I do agree about the volume, it was extremely loud. I left the theatre with a migraine. However; I do think that it was necessary for the performance to be loud if you take the age group of the audience into consideration.

American Musical

As we all know America has evolved very quickly throughout this last century, and one way to see this is through American Musicals. As we watch the musicals change throughout the decades, we watch America grow not only larger but together. We watch America go from racist musicals such as The Black Crook by Charles M. Barras in 1866 to the Musicals of the modern times that incorporate a variety of cultures. Traditions that American Musicals follow include the following: music, choreography, a script (set storyline). In these musicals you can watch how elements such as war, music, and trends in not just clothes but ethics impact these musicals. For an example: The Cabaret was originally written in 1951, but we can watch how the evolution of sex impacts this musical in 1972. There were several songs and scenes cut from the original musical to appeal to the audience of the 1970's.

In the image above you can see how African-Americans were depicted in history. The Black Crook it's obvious just by the title that when this play was written there was no concern about how offensive this is.

This image from the 2008 musical Memphis obviously deals with race in another light. It looks from the picture that race is not as much of a concern as it use to be.

DID YOU KNOW?
1. The Black Crook is the first know American Musical.
2. Most people think that is something is on broadway then it must be a musical, truth be told this is not true. There are many "straight plays". 

Works Cited 

 

information:

http://www.musicals101.com/1860to79.htm
baltimore21201.typepad.com
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068327/trivia
mith.umd.edu

 

photos:

www.thelmagazine.com
www.broadway.tv