{"id":8639,"date":"2020-11-10T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8639"},"modified":"2020-12-07T09:23:31","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T14:23:31","slug":"staging-and-choreography-theater-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8639","title":{"rendered":"Staging and Choreography: Theater Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"She<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For our deep dive into staging and choreography (generally, on-stage movement), my \u201chow to watch a play\u201d class viewed Roundabout Theatre\u2019s 2016 production of the musical She Loves Me<\/em>. You\u2019ll recognize the story from its many incarnations, most recently in the film, You\u2019ve Got Mail<\/em>. Amalia and Georg are clerks in a perfume shop who really get on each other\u2019s nerves. Yet they have the same secret: a pen pal with whom they are falling in love. Each other, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our class learned a handy theater word during the discussion of this musical, diegetic: Diegetic elements<\/a> of a production\u2014sounds, singing, dancing, movement\u2014grow out of the story\u2019s narrative. If there\u2019s dancing, the actors know how to dance and know they\u2019re dancing, as when the King of Siam and Anna waltz away to \u201cShall We Dance?\u201d Quotidian action, by contrast, encompasses the daily, undramatic tasks the actors perform\u2014buttoning a shirt, tying a shoe. The story doesn\u2019t depend on these actions. When the Kyra Hollis character in Skylight<\/em> makes a spaghetti dinner onstage, she\u2019s engaged in quotidian action. A third type of movement is termed abstract, and it is neither of the others\u2014like the Sharks and Jets of West Side Story <\/em>singing their anthems while dancing in the streets. A high school classmate of mine scoffed at the film (which I loved passionately) because \u201cguys don\u2019t do that.\u201d Abstract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why does analyzing the type of movement matter? Because, explained course director Adam Immerwahr, artistic director of Washington D.C.\u2019s Theater J<\/a>, \u201cit forces you to think about the purpose of the choreography (movement),\u201d and what that choice conveys about the mood, the character, the story\u2019s time and place, or even the plot. When an actor puts a gun in a desk drawer, you know that weapon\u2019s coming out again. Or, recall the movement created by the turntable in Hamilton<\/em>. Why did the creators choose to have that? To me, all that swirling expressed the turmoil of the era, the passage of time, and the evolution of multiple characters\u2019 relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When deconstructed for our class, the patterns of movement in She Loves Me<\/em> turned out to be unexpectedly intricate, creating satisfying, if subliminal, messages. Movement\u2014even abstract movement\u2014needs to be motivated, which means that actors can move on certain lines, but moving on other lines will create confusion. As Amalia is about to meet her pen pal, her movements in \u201cWill He Like Me?\u201d\u2014alternately walking forward and backtracking\u2014were timed perfectly to the anticipation and hesitation expressed in the lyrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A musical typically has a lot of staging and choreography, but even the two-person play Red<\/em> we watched had a lot of movement (much of it diegenic). In fact, with only two actors, movement is critical to keeping the story going and the audience interested. Staging helps the audience know where to look, as characters emerge in prominence and others melt into the background. And some staging is created just for the beauty of the composition. Nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019d like to take one of these excellent courses, check out the Theater J website<\/a>. New classes are starting soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For our deep dive into staging and choreography (generally, on-stage movement), my \u201chow to watch a play\u201d class viewed Roundabout Theatre\u2019s 2016 production of the musical She Loves Me. You\u2019ll recognize the story from its many incarnations, most recently in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Staging and Choreography: Theater Magic - Every on-stage movement is carefully planned to achieve a specific effect. Movement moves the audience.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,104,147],"tags":[747,1772],"class_list":["post-8639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-the-morgue","category-theater","tag-adam-immerwahr","tag-theater-j"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2fl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8639"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8642,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639\/revisions\/8642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}