Yerma and the game

Description:

This week we went to see “Yerma” a play written by Garcia Lorca, in the theatre AAA, the play had an interesting game, one of the characters, “Yerma”, was represented by three different actresses, sometimes two where in the same time and sometimes one.

Another interesting proposal was the scene when Yerma and Victor have relations and this was represented by still pictures and there was a sound record being played which narrated it.

Analysis:

The game of the play was obvious since the beginning, and I think this was something good because if not it would be very confusing. The game catch up the attention of the audience as there was always one actress being the “strong” image of the character, I mean the one that do the main actions and said the most important. The other two actresses who accompany the first one help the text to rely in the actions, body expression, postures, face expression which they adopted. This technique made the script to be more theatrical as the actions showed what the text meant.  

Some of the parts in the play where very slow and I think this made the audience distract. Maybe in this parts because the script was dense and had a lot of symbolisms the game could be better used. So that the text could be “digested” better the actresses instead of adopting a fixed posture they could mime the text.

The still pictures help to represent in a very “theatrical” way the situation which cannot be put into scene performing the actual action. These technique catch up my intention because the position of the body and the forms the 4 actors create where strange and the attention was caught by the beauty of the different postures and how the body could represent those images but also because of the curiosity to understand this “constructions” with the human body.

The lights in this scene created intimacy but I think there where to dark so the still pictures couldn’t be seen with clarity. The lights are an element in theatre which are to help the performance but if these are use incorrectly this lights will be a barrier, a problem, instead of a helpful element.

Connections:

The game we are developing for the one act play I think helps to catch the attention of the audience, but I think we need to explore this game to be able to look to the advantages this have and in what it could help. The game will be very helpful to represent various characters, but is this all? Is there any other advantage that can be taken from this game? Now that I try to think in one I can’t find one, I think this would be founded during the rehearsals as we explore the game.

The game used in the school play this year help to show the story from different perspectives but it also help to tell a part of the story telling it only to one character so this help the audience to know the story but to keep it hidden to other characters. It also helped to explore the puppets as the difference sizes of puppets would be used depending on the perspective.

The lights used in “La cocina” in some scenes used to focus the important characters but without stopping the actions of the other characters, so in the dim light actions will continue to happen and with a light that was focused to some characters the subplot will be introduced and will give information about the story without stopping the other actions.

Reflection:

A game is there to relate the audience with the play, but when the game doesn’t, it means the game didn’t work? Or was it “abscent” for that moment? The game pruposed for the one act play give us limitations on face expression and also meeting up two characters represented by the same actor, will this create any conflict? Or because the game came first and then the story it will be easy to go beyond this limitations?