The Prime of Ms. Theatre

This day in age theatre is in an everlasting evolving change. There are so many different types and forms between simple and complex theatre that are known to us and not known. The question of how to create a new type of theatre to encourage younger individuals about the passion and visions behind the process has been asked and repeated to me a lot this semester. In Dr. Walsh's Senior Capstone class we also had a day full of discussion about this topic. Being able to spread the word out about the enriching and wonders of theatre has been a struggle. There is a dying age of theatre patrons who we relied on for this great performing art form. One way to bring back the joy and enthusiasm of theatre is to start young. In my opinions I would start making theatre a safe place where children can learn and see things that encourages them in the correct ways. As a child, I wanted to take acting classes; but because of the incredibly high fees of an acting coach or agent my parents were turned away from the idea and encouraged me to do another extra curricular activity. Now that was back in the day, today in this present state I feel like we should reach out and have classes offered at schools or day care centers where it would be easier for the parents to allow the children to stay in a safe place at a reasonable time. Also with the fees I would recommend making it an affordable payment that is able to cover funds for small children's plays but not break the wallets of the parents. Also looking for sponsors that could help donate to educate these children through theatre would be a way growing business firms could figure out a way to promote their business through the use of theatre. It's a win win situation in my head. Only way to know if it works is to start it soon. After college who knows, I may be starting up a new movement to bring back theatre to its prime.

  The oppressed is a huge topic. Maybe theatre can be the answer. In Dr. Feltcher's class my group went and performed an Invisible Theatre experiment to see how many people would get involved or react to the scene and conversation to which we performed. Our scene consisted out of scripting a story of sexual harassment in which our objective was to see how many people took sides of agreement or disagreement. It was a unanimous debate because most of the audience agreed that sexual harassment is wrong. However we brought up other situations asking if the audience members would get involved if they witnessed a situation of sexual harassment. Most people said they would wait until after the situation died down. Some said it's a social awareness feeling to not bother or comment on other people's business. But let me just ask; what if you could have changed or stopped the situation? That effect is called the bystander effect which I am a firm believer of because often times just one person speaking up can cause others to join in a movement. And even though we don't want to be rude and in other people's personal business; it is up to us as a society to look around every once and a while and improve on what we can. Being the bystander in a difficult situation could change someone's life. It's kind of like what Maggie said in her prompt. She asked why didn't you stop the gang? It was because of weapons. Well, maybe taking a chance to make the noble move to step out and stop the gang could have worked too. We may never know because it's not just our thoughts we have to worry about it's also the thoughts of others. The reaction to a curve ball in theatre. Just like in our experiment we curved our script around the audiences interjections to create the scene presented.