Exploration of Style

While Burlesque is a style often associated with stripteases, undressing, and playing to the male gaze, the primary element of Burlesque is parody. This installation highlights a fish tank parody, the way performers would use this parody concept in Burlesque. When the style began in the 1840s, it was parodies of opera and drama performances by the lower and middle classes. From the beginning, the style was meant to challenge what proper entertainment was. About 20 years into the styles invention, undressing became a part of the performance. This is how we know and see Burlesque today, a striptease parody performance that is controversial on purpose.

While a clown can be identified by its famous red nose and afro wig, that is not what defines a clown. A clown is a character who achieves its purpose of comedy by performing wild acts. They often perform physical comedy routines without dialogue, the purpose of which is to invoke laughter. The clown has roots with the "fool" archetype from Commedia Dell'Arte and Jester performance ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman history. Clowns often come in pairs or groups, a common duo of which would be the white clown (who symbolizes thought) and red clown (who symbolizes feeling). Clowns are used in theater for comic relief, and are often seen in absurdist styles of performance. The factor of clowning that this installation is meant to remind us of, is a specific discussion we had in the class setting. If it looks like a clown but doesn't act like one, is it a clown?

Clowning is a style defined by the comedic actions and classic makeup/dress of a clown. The goal is to bring laughter. They often have red noses and white painted faces. I believe that clowns not doing clowning... aren't clowns. There is a lot of terror surrounding clowns in the recent years, however this is not the true nature of clowns. Clowning is joy, it is laughter, it is comedy.

This installation is a representation of the way I view Large Scale Puppet Theater. The only reason the puppets are large scale is in comparison to us and the bodies that operate them. So, this installation doesn't look very big... but the puppet in the installation would probably look very big compared to the tiny little man that is operating him. Large scale puppets seem to be a tradition more than anything else, they are meant to make a statement. You can't have a giant puppet on stage without having the audience wonder why. And therefore you shouldn't have a giant puppet on stage without knowing why yourself! They make a statement and that is the beauty of them.

Absurdism Installation^

The following installation is an expression of absurdism. I poured salt and pepper on the branch in my school hallway. This is not something you should really do on purpose, but it isn't against any rules. Why not? It doesn't matter. There is a dust pan and broom right there, a trash can right there, but you may still feel the anxiety.

The installation I have created for Epic Theater still includes some action (a mouse swinging in a hammock on 'stage'), however the audience (second mouse and plastic toy) are seated in such a way where they can clearly see the fan blowing on the hammock to make it swing. This is an example of some tactics used in Epic Theater, where the audience is often encouraged to think logically, and is not given anything to wonder about visually.

Epic Theater Installation ^

The Alienation Effect, or Verfremdungseffekt is a common method used in Epic Theater. Brecht became known as the first to name term, originally called the distancing effect, by writing an essay on the use of this effect in Chinese theater. Clearly he was not the pioneer of the Alienation Effect, however he did popularize it. The idea is to assign the audience an active role in the performance, and make them think critically through the artistic work. Some examples of how the Alienation Effect is used are the stage directions being read aloud, place cards or promoters, and speaking directly to the audience (breaking the fourth wall). This is essentially the opposite of suspension of belief, meant to evoke logical thinking rather than emotional response.

Brecht was a German theater practitioner, poet, and playwright born in Augsburg in 1898. He dodged the draft in 1917 by enrolling in medical school, and began studying drama while in there. He worked in dramaturgy for a while, but made a name for himself as a playwright; writing The Threepenny Opera, Drums In The Night, In The Jungle, and many more. He is credited with the coining of the term 'Alienation effect,' by writing an essay on the effect in Chinese theater. He is famously known for creating Epic Theater, a style which combined the methods of Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold.

Machinal, written by Sophie Treadwell, is an example of an expressionist play. Treadwell wrote the play based off of the true story of a woman convicted of murder. The dialogue of the piece is written with repetition, far from how humans speak naturally. The plot flow is disorienting and dream-like, as we follow a girl through certain large plot points of her life. A lot of time passes between every time we see her, and the story is more conceptual than realistic. The way the piece is written is almost more important to its expressionism than the storyline, as the characters speak in a way that seems like they could not actually be communicating. Treadwell's play follows a stenographer who moves through society as she is expected to, as a woman. By the force of society and the circumstances around her, she is driven to the murder of her husband (previously her boss).

This expressionist installation was inspired by the shadow-work often associated with the expressionism style. I used a projector and screen to create the shadows, as inspired by Pilobolus which always is a large inspiration in my work. When seeing what is placed in front of the projector, you would expect a different image to show on the screen, however just like in expressionism it shows up as a much larger size and a less rescript shape.

Expressionist Installation ^

While studying the style of expressionism, we watched a video essay that brought up a lot of interesting ideas. Some of these ideas about expressionism included promoting an emotional response by cinematic means, letting the audience lose themselves in the unsettled nature of the design rather than attempting to keep their focus on something specific, and having all or most of the characters be mad as a way to thrust the viewer into a world overcome by madness. There were specific scenes that stuck in my mind visually as well. The first was from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, where the town is a painted set including curved walls and slanted doors that make the whole setting feel claustrophobic. The second, from the same piece, is the shadow work and forced perspective done by the tall lopsided windows while Caesar is asserting his independence from the Dr. because of a beautiful woman. The third is from The Golem, where the contrast of the sets was the most interesting. The town created with actual buildings, and the palace which has a more ornate feel that opposed the town's aesthetic. I can see myself using certain aspects from this video essay in my own work, for example shadow-work. I plan on using shadow-work for dream sequences in the play I am writing for my senior thesis next year. Also on this wavelength, I hope to accomplish the larger than life feeling in my work. I hope to be able to allude to the non-singularity of characters in my work and want them to be seen as anyone.

More on Melodrama.

This installation represents realism by expressing the realistic truth of the life cycle. All things, human or otherwise, exist in this order... living, dying, then dead. What happens in between is different for each life, but the order stays the same. The installation highlights the lives of 3 different plants, in this case parsley, lettuce, and cockscomb flower. For each plant the cycle of life is the same, no matter how common or exotic. The living parsley, dying lettuce, and dead cockscomb flower live in bottles that once housed cheap alcohol, exposing a common middle class indulgence. But there is more to even this than meets the eye. If this were a permanent installation it would look very different by the end of the week. The plants, all living without water, would all have completed their life cycles, and all by dead.