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A disaster
“A disaster” was really a disaster. Watching this school play consisting of an unclear theme, inappropriate script language, chaotic plot, wrongful setting, poor cast and ill stage production was really not enjoyable. We audience were left with a sense of unfulfilledness. It is regretful to tell, but still it is the truth- during the performance, snores overtook applause.
“A disaster” was a play about maternal love shown from the story of a mother dying for her son in an earthquake. It was specially for students and parents.
A theme, as everybody knows, is the core of a play. Presenting it in a right and clear way is essential. But in the play, even a clear theme was not shown, mainly because the events taking place were not upholding the theme and the inter-relation was weak. Watch the part of the mother running in a silly way when the earthquake came and you will know how it failed to demonstrate what it was going to say when we realized the main focus of that part was indeed maternal love.
Another main important element of a play is script-writing. A single word from the script will affect the whole play, so it should be chosen carefully and appropriately. However, the scriptwriter had the script focus too much on polishing the literary features. He did a lot of unnecessary decoration. How could we say the script was well written when we saw a woman poeticizing her reminder to her son just when he forgot to bring his jacket? How could we say the words in the script were well chosen when we saw a mother rhyming her screams to her baby when the ceiling was going to fall? This tragic play should have been directed its type to comedy instead.
I managed to realize that the play was using a circular plot and open ending to trigger the audience to think and to instill the story of the woman and his son deeply onto the audience’s minds. Nevertheless, events appeared in an extremely fragmentary way, which made it very difficult for the audience to follow. The cause-and-effect relationship was lost in the play and there were no signs about how the story began. Neither the audience nor I could appreciate the “meticulously” organized but somehow overrunning plot.
The setting was wrongful and one cannot help criticizing as this tragedy had its time set in an ancient period of time. I simply cannot catch the scriptwriter’s thinking because he told the audience that is a good time to exhibit the beauty of maternal love. Yet, in my opinion, ancient time is totally irrelevant. In fact, a non-contemporary time means a more difficult choice of props and a longer time to design the backdrop. So here we can see how the disaster was formed.
More problems are related to the characters. It is the playwright and the cast who were to be blamed. First, there were too many lengthy dialogues in the play. It is true that characterization involves the use of dialogues. However, an overuse of long and unnecessary dialogues would ruin the whole play as it had not shown the accurate words and meanings of the play to the audience and it had only told the audience almost everything, but not shown it through acting. Second, the acting technique of the cast was disappointingly poor. Some of them spoke so softly that the audience could never hear a single word when sitting at the back. The delivery and pronunciation of the actors and actresses were simply poor.
When I watched the stage production of the play, an ill feeling arose inside me. The play was alright if we do not mention the awfully designed backdrop, the exaggerated make-up, the too-glaring costumes, the expressionless props and the too-strong soundtracks. Lighting was a significant problem too. Although the intensity of beam and the focus were carefully handled, the types of lighting were used wrongly. Side lighting should be used to show the characters facing a dilemma, but in the play, floor lighting, which is often used for frightening effects, was also used for a drama conveying maternal love. Weird! Nearly the same kind of mistakes appeared in every scene and this had already destroyed the whole performance.
This is how “A disaster” becomes a real disaster.
I was a lot disappointed with the drama team this time. Really hope that there will not be another disaster next.