Eurydice

It's difficult to express how I feel about a play like Eurydice. On one hand, I've always like the somewhat stylistic form of theatre. I appreciate theatre as an art form, not just as another representation of reality that the audience comes to see. However, I believe it necessary for an audience member(any audience member sitting in the theatre) to have some form of connection with the play. Whether it is identifying with someone's struggles with loss, disease, or isolation, a really good play--which, of course, is all subjective to the audience member-- will be able to nail down all of these points and more, allowing the audience member with AIDS, for instance, to view a character's struggles with the disease with that much more of a connection.
My problem with Eurydice was that there weren't enough points of contact for me as an audience member. I liked the way she adapted the play off of the Greek myth of two lovers, and I think she did it without being cliche and too "Romeo and Juliet-like". However, I think it was written so stylistically that you lost out on some of the possible points of contact for the audience. One example would be the father's death(twice). Now, in her introduction ,she had said that this play was adapted both from the traditional Orpheus myth we get from Ovid and the too soon death of her father. For a Greek scholar, for example, the adaptation from the Orpheus myth would have given them a point of contact. For someone who has just lost their father, there's another. But that seems to all get lost in the excessive stage direction--yes, i also take issue with that, although I appreciate the poetry that the stage directions seem to be sometimes-- and Wonderland-esque world that is the Underworld. Sentences are so disconnected and yet cyclical--the double mentions of the wedding, for instance, which is one thing I think was done well-- that we lost a lot of the fluidity that I think would make the audience be sucked in.
I can also definitely respect that excessive stage direction is an art form. Susan Lori Parks does it, as i'm sure other authors do as well. But I'm not a huge fan. It seems like she's telling us how to direct/act the show, when she really should be stepping back and letting the actors and directors do their work. One of the beauties of theatre, literature, and other things is it's ability to depend on the reader for its interpretation. A director wanting to center the focus on her dead father and nothing else, for instance, should and could be given the chance to tend the show that way, focusing on certain aspects at the expense of others. But Sarah Ruhl seems to try to force us how to costume, how to dress, how to act. It doesn't seem like there's any room for adaptation, and unless the director/ actor/ audience is going to see every moment of the play exactly as she does, I don't think complete success with this plays performance will be possible.

Dialogues Day #1

Over the course of reading dialogues for the first day of class, i've discovered that, for me at least, there's a fine line between what I like and what I don't. It's difficult for me to explain why I like something, especially for this exercise. For one thing, dialogues are much more limited than monologues in my opinion. You can't just say to someone you're talking to(no matter how close you are to them) " I suddenly feel depressed and anxious because of my life" without the person thinking you're crazy and the audience thinking you don't know how to write. What you can say then, depends on what one would be able to say in normal conversation, most of the time not involving heart-wrenching revelations or admittances of your innermost feelings. On one hand, I think that to be difficult. You can't just come out and say something. On the other hand, it seems interesting.Like in so many of the dialogues here, you have to talk around something, using the characters' power of the spoken word to convey your message. Often what the characters are saying has nothing to do with what they're talking about directly(take Orphans, for example, I was quite confused as to what was going on the entire time) but in some way, what is happening to the other story of the other characters relates, or reveals something that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. I wasn't sure at first, but i've decided I like this, simply because of the realness of it. I definitely will try this in my monologues I think.
Another thing that I liked quite a bit while reading the monologues was when one character did essentially all of the talking and the other character just said, " Yes" or "No". I think the ability of those two words to say more than an entire page of monologue ever could is quite interesting(for example, in Closer) and demonstrates how a lot of actual "fights" go(very different from the dramatic yelling and screaming that usually happens in movies). One thing i'm trying desperately to stay away from in this is constantly talking about Shakespeare, because I love him, but could never hope to emulate him and will make myself crazy trying :).