Solo Performances Thoughts

I was actually very surprised by all of the solo performances that I saw last night. Each of the performances were all so different, but were so amazing, and the amount of talent that each student has really shocked me. I was super impressed and could tell how hard they worked on their performance to create such abstract theatre. What I liked a lot was that there was a clear distinction between each of the performances and what theorist was chosen to study. Olivia’s was so dark, intense, and almost scary, and I could really see a lot of recognizable elements of Artaud’s methods and philosophies. I also enjoyed Linda’s and found it interesting to incorporate puppetry into her performance to show some of Brecht’s methods. It was clear that we were listening to a story being told, since she established herself as the narrator, which was also one aspect of Brecht’s philosophies. Willjam’s was also really good at portraying a spectrum of emotions with his use of naturalism. I think my favorite part was in the beginning when he was backstage yelling at Christopher and then came out of the side door and just broke down crying. I found this really powerful. He went from really scary and tense emotions, to being more confused about what he was feeling at the end. It’s clear that each of these performances contrasted each other, but they were all affective and impacted the audience. I also think they were all interesting and engaging to me because each of them got really into their character and gave it their all. I was really impressed with the additional technology that each of them used to enhance their performance. Especially in Olivia’s scene, the use of flickering lights intensified her performance even more. In Linda’s and Willjam’s, they chose fairly simple lighting for the main parts of their performance, but this allowed the audience to pay attention to them and their acting, which I really enjoyed and found interesting.