Improvitional Theater: Saturday Night Live Essay

The set used for Vernon God Little was highly symbolic and simplistic; when we walked into the theatre we could visually see that there were flowers, cards and memorable items attached on the audiences seats above our heads, which already created a sombre atmosphere around the theatre.

I’ve adored theatre for as long as I can remember. From writing plays throughout elementary school, to being involved in Drama Club in middle school, to performing in community theatre in high school, and to visiting the theatre as often as I could from the very beginning, theatre has always been a part of my life. Every aspect of it engages me: the directors working to bring their vision of the show’s scenes, choreography, or music to life, the actors transforming into different characters through their expression of dialogue, song, or dance, the costumers and set-builders transporting the audience into the setting and time period with their artistry, the backstage tech and crew working quickly and precisely to keep the show flowing to curtain call, and the orchestra bringing the show to life through music. There is nothing like the experience of live theatre, both as a member of the audience and as a member of the cast and crew.

Theatre is a collaboration of various forms of fine art which utilizes live performances presenting before the audience on a stage at a specific place within a scheduled time (Dugdale 10). The message is communicated through a combination of various channels like songs, speech gestures or dances. Stagecraft skills are combined with elements of art to make the performance more physical and near to real life experience. Theatre is categorized broadly into drama, musical theatre, comedy, tragedy and improvisation. Any form of these accepts integration of various production modes and collective reception to influence the artwork being presented. As a result of this cooperation of items in the theatre

A discourse community is a group of people with similar ideologies, goals, life experiences and ways of communicating. A lot of us have been in a discourse community without even knowing it. They are so easy to be a part of, you are practically born into one, for your family has a culture and background, which fits the definition of a discourse community. I am actually a part of a few communities myself, and you probably are too. Some examples of mine are my family, being a UTA student, Italian, a woman and a part of UTA’s musical theater program. Which brings me to the most important community I have been a part of, so far in my life, Colleyville Heritage High schools theater department, I am no longer a part of it, but in the short four years I was, my life has changed for the better. In my paper, I will talk to you about my time at Colleyville Heritage High School theater department, and how the community gave me a sense of belonging, taught me how to persevere, by means of loving art and preforming. This will be backed by ethos, logos and pathos, for I have experienced all the emotions of joining a new group, along with the four years of taking acting, and singing lessons and doing shows, paired with real life events to prove everything in this paper is one hundred percent real.

What musical theatre does best is to be abstract, not literal reality. Julie Taymor director

"A Philosophy of Theater « " East of Mina. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2011.

Hayden used flexibility not only in comedy improv but when he presented. There were times when his presentation went offtrack but he found a way to tie it back all together and still get his message across. Flexibility is also something I possess since for my career I need to stay on my toes being ready for the different questions I

My viewing of the One Man, Two Guvnors production in 2013, and the feelings of chaos, shock, anarchic laughter and anticipation sparked my interest of exploring this play, and why its lazzi and improvisation added to the heightened experience I had, whist viewing this performance. I became interested in how much the One Man, Two Guvnors play written by Richard Bean, was based of the traditional Commedia dell’Arte play The Servant of Two Masters written by Carlo Goldoni. I planned to explore the extent of how much the play was improvised and the extent of how much it was scripted and planned. I looked at why Commedia dell’Arte used improvisation and the approach of incorporating improvisation and lazzi into a performance. I went about doing so by comparing the characters and the scripts of Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors to Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters. I researched the role of Improvisation and Lazzi in traditional commedia dell’Arte and compared it to its role in One Man, Two Guvnors. I decided to carry out my research by surveying audience members who had viewed the production of One Man, Two Guvnors , and finding out how the incorporation of improvisation and lazzi heightened the experience for the audience and impacted them.

Saturday Night Live celebrated its 40th anniversary in style last season. Sure, the three-and-a-half-hour special welcoming back alums and esteemed guests was entertaining, but the real celebration should be because of its talented cast. SNL often gets a bad rap because people are partial to "their" version of the show. If we look at the 2014-2015 cast ten or fifteen years from now, we might consider them one of the best ensembles the NBC institution has ever produced. Here's a look at the top 10 cast members from last season.

This past week, I had the opportunity to experience a magnificent play called Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin. This performance was the third of three plays I saw at the Arizona Repertory Theatre. The other two plays were Epic Proportions by Larry Coen and David Crane and Hands on a Hardbody by Doug Wright. These were the first plays I have been to, not only while attending the University of Arizona, but in my generation as a teenager. All together, these performances were amazing and have brought a newly improved insight to my perception of theatre. The hard work and dedication by the actors, directors, producers, cast members, and sound developers were absolutely incredible and I have tremendous respect for their efforts during the overall sequence of producing the plays. The most recent performance I saw, Born Yesterday, can be described and reflected on through various topics such as lighting, sound, directing and producing.

While watching the performance of the company, I notice how their choreography is displayed into action. The improvisation class that Robert Moses taught gives me an opportunity to really be engaged and focus on my habits to try to find an escape. Even though the Robert Moses Kin dance company is strictly a choreographic work, there are some improvisational components included in the performance, such as mirroring and the use of physical contact. By observing this performance, I am trying to base and look at it from an improvisational perspective.

When I first began directing, to me, the play was the thing. My mind was focused on the goings on of the stage with limited awareness beyond its borders. It seemed that dealing with the audience was somebody else’s job. If I directed a great play, I thought, people would come and like it. Job done. “Why this play now?” was a philosophical, intellectual question—but not something I really confronted in an educational setting.

Improvisation exercises were developed further by Viola Spolin in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and codified in her book Improvisation For The Theater, the first book that gave specific techniques for learning to do and teach improvisational

Academic and artistic interest in something is usually a sure sign that matters are unclear, conceptual boundaries are blurred and that old certainties are anything but that. There is also little doubt that the major challenges we face: the media revolution, globalization and migration, climate change, the erosion of public finances and services (to name just a few) – have all in some way a bearing on the public sphere, the realm where issues are debated and where citizens are free to enter and engage in discourse. As the public sphere is primarily a discursive arena located outside and between state bureaucracies on the one hand and economics and business on the other, it occupies a crucial role in the functioning of so-called free societies. The question to be explored here is what role theatre and performance in practice play in this realm and how performance and theatre theory can contribute to the debates.” (Balme

Ever since I took drama classes in high school I felt that we always put on an act. A show almost, that we put out for the people we interact with daily. Erving Goffman, “Canadian-American Sociologist” (Encyclopedia In., 2017) also believed this, he compared social interactions to the theater, where individuals take a particular role. According to Goffman this “theatrical metaphor consists of a stage, actors, and an audience” (Crossman, 2014). It also consists of the onstage, backstage and offstage. These three stages show different behavior on a person.