What I've learned

These days we have learned a lot about the technical theatre. Personally, I believed this contains a lot in the drama. In theatre, everything should be at the right pace and correspond with each other. We also saw a bunch of versions about Hamlet. Each director has its interpretation of its theatre play. They worked a lot with the costumes and also the lighting.

They tried to put on their interpretations in the show. In the experience of watching all different kinds of Hamlet. I then got the feeling of utilizing props, costumes, lighting, setting, and etc.

Firstly, I want to talk about lighting in the theatre play. The lighting can help the audiences to clarify the time and also the mood in it. When I mentioned about moods, it states that some directors will have a lighter stage symbolizing the warm, clear surroundings in which allowed the audiences to see well during the movie or show. On the other hand, other directors might utilize a darker light, providing a scary and frightening background. Moreover, the light can also represent the time period. In some performance, the candlelight gives audiences a feeling of the ancient period, guessing it would be from a long time ago. Yet, if the directors have a brighter light with usual bulb, then the audiences will acknowledge that it was in the recent years. Lighting actually give us a terrific feeling of the emotions and time because we are all visual, so the first thing we see is the light, sometimes we wouldn’t know if he had a golden ring or not, but lighting is obvious to see.

Then, as I mentioned, different directors had different interpretations. You can see in my version of The Glass Menagerie, I exaggerated Amanda as an annoying, and controlling person in the play, making her as the person who provokes every event in the family. Moreover, in Hamlet, there is one version that emphasizes the mother actually was sad and cries for the death of the father King Hamlet. However, in another version, Gertrude immediately got married to Claudius. As a result, we can see from the versions differ from the director’s understanding.

Additionally, the costumes can be varied as well. Costumes play a huge part in the theatre play. Some directors used the bright color to illustrate the pureness and the supreme levels of certain character. For example, white can represent the hopeful, pureness of certain character. However, red then indicates love, passion, anxiety and aggressive. Claudius, for example, in the Kenneth Branagh, wears a red suit, in which represents his passion and desire of being a king. Yet, brown and grey will provide a poor situation of the character. For example, Tom has an ordinary outfit which symbolize his poorness. What’s more, red also is a symbol of blood, foreshadowing the king’s death related to him. Furthermore, costumes can also emphasize the class level of a character. The golden ring, money on his hand can symbolize the social status. With the decorations and jewelries on his hand, the person can be easily sited as the levels he or she is in. Makeup, moreover, can indicate the time period and the mood of the directors (the themes that the directors want to convey).

The stage size can be changed with the directors’ mind. Depending on his decision, the stage can be in different shapes such as Black Box, Proscenium stage, Thrust stage, and Theater-in-the-Round. The stage can express their intepretation of the stage. For example, Theatre-in-the-Round can be close related to the audiences, giving a deeper understanding to the audiences. Yet, the backside is that the setting will be hard to put on the stage, the audiences can get bored and loss of interest in the performance. However, the Theatre-in-the-Round can be engaging to the audiences. Some audiences can find resonances inside. Proscenium stage is a far-away stage which gets remote from some of the audiences. However, the Proscenium stage can shape well with the development of technology. It’s all for the audiences to get a scene of the special envoironment. Additionally, in film, some scene can be changed from the mood the of character. If the emotion is sad, the stage can be narrow and so as the lighting. Otherwise, if the character wants to portray the happiness or luckiness, the stage will be round and with fancy props.

Technical theatre is a vital requirement in the theatre. After I saw all different interpretation, I realize I can express it through lighting, costumes, stage, music. (However, we didn’t actually look over into music that much this week).