“To what extent do the arts help us to see the world with new eyes”

Description:

This week i was Reading the unit of perception in the TOK book, and i arrive to the question “To what extent do the arts help us to see the world with new eyes”

Analysis:

Theatre has a social/ritual function and there is always a representation of something more. Theatre can represent something in reality or our daily lives without showing something new but saying it in a different way. 

In history theatre has helped to express and entertain so for example irony in theatre has helped to make fun of something and see it with “new eyes” as it helps to criticize.

Many times there is a message behind something we see and we think it’s only for entertainment, but what theatre focus is more on how we say something rather than what we say. The form is more important that the content I think.

For example in the schools plays or the one act plays the story is pretty simple and we don’t focus on the message we want to transmit but we focus on the game, on the structure, and other theatre techniques and what is going to see good, what is going to catch the audience attention rather that what are they going to learn, because we can have a simple story as the one in “matter of dissection” and we can develop this and end up being a good play without seeing something with “new eyes”.

Connections:

Paucartambo: In Andean theatre we have seen that irony is used to make fun of authorities mainly. This was a different view of the authorities as in those times the authorities (wayras), the conquers were the ones that where “right” and they were the ones that rule so the takis help to show them in a different way, so with new eyes.

Interruptor: In this play we can see how technology instead of making people to get together to get further apart. This is done in a comic way using irony again. Here we can see technology with new eyes, not as we normally do and that we say that technology helps for different relationships but makes us loose those relationships.

Yuyachkani: This theatre group works a lot with seeing the world with “new eyes”. It shows as different side. For example in “los musicos ambulantes” we can see how the theme of discrimination is tackled. Also in “sin título – técnica mixta” we can notice how Fujimori is not represented as the one who helped to destroy the terrorism in Peru, as a hero, but he is represented as someone that didn’t respect the human rights and didn’t accept his guilt. So here we can see how theatre helps to see things with “new eyes”

Reflection:

There are many critics to the world we live on, to our authorities and to ourselves, but we can also see that the focus on theatre is the form rather than the content. In theatre does showing something with “new eyes” is rather a possibility than the purpose? So rather than theatre purpose to be: “showing something with new eyes”, I think the purpose of theatre is entertain. But as we aren’t showing ourselves in stage, we don’t see the actor but we see the character in stage is easier to criticize and as theatre gives the possibility to catch the audience attention it is also a good opportunity to show another view of something.