Assignment: Writing a Review
- Read the following professional and published review Laura Cappelle’s “As Stages Go Dark, Companies Stumble (Links to an external site.)”
As_Stages_Go_Dark_Compani.html
- Think deeply about the cultural (music, television, film) and artistic works that matter most to you.
- Write a short traditional essay that answers the following question:
What work of art or culture would you recommend that everyone experience? Keep in mind that you can recommend a book, a movie, music, a TV show, a live performance, fashion, architecture, dance, a work of visual art, a video game, a restaurant, or even technology. Think about something that has deeply impressed, moved, delighted or taught you — something you think others would benefit from experiencing too.
Then, explain why (this is your angle). What could you say to convince others that the experience is worth having? What details would you focus on? How does this work compare with others like it? Use evidence from your text to develop your explanations.
Choose a work (topic) that you feel can lead to a developed angle and scope. In addition, choose a topic/work that you can quote and cite accurately. In other words, be sure you have access to your selected work so that you can accurately quote and cite the work.
Guidelines
- Minimum 350 words
- Choose a work you know well, or one you are prepared to review multiple times
- In-text citation and source evidence required
- MLA8 format. In grading, I will be looking for the exact format taught in this linked lesson on the MLA8 Formatting Guide
- Write a thesis that contains 2 parts: topic and angle. In grading, I will look for the exact format taught in lessons on Parts of a Thesis (Links to an external site.)
- Follow Traditional Essay Structure (Links to an external site.)
- Support your thesis with evidence from your selected text (avoid personal experience or personal opinion)
- Works Cited and in-text Citations. Use the MLA In-Text Citations (Links to an external site.) guide and the MLA Works Cited (Links to an external site.) guide to properly cite your selected text
As Stages Go Dark, Companies Stumble.
International New York Times
Byline: Laura Cappelle
Several French theater companies, closed in the coronavirus outbreak, have rushed to put content online. Much of it is underwhelming.
PARIS – The 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote: “The sole cause of people’s unhappiness is that they do not know how to stay quietly in their rooms.” Yet at a time when much of the world has been forced to hunker down, French theater-makers are fighting to fill the void by making noise online.
They’re producing so much alternative content, in fact, that it is nearly impossible to keep up. Since France imposed a nationwide lockdown on March 17, each day has brought new announcements from prominent theaters. In addition to releasing archive recordings, some are making podcasts and videos; others are offering direct interaction with performers through one-on-one phone calls. The country’s oldest troupe, the Com??die-Fran??aise, has even started an online channel, “The Com??die Continues,” offering several hours of programming each day beginning at 4 p.m.
Under the circumstances, it would be churlish to complain about artists’ desire to connect with audiences in some fashion. Theater, which depends on crowds gathering to watch performers at close quarters, is experiencing significant loss and upheaval, with many stagings either delayed indefinitely or canceled outright. But a sampling of stopgap offerings often left me underwhelmed.
Many institutions are going beyond stepping out of their comfort zone by experimenting with formats that are firmly outside their area of expertise. Standards are high for audio and video productions these days, and onscreen improvising requires a different skill set than performing existing plays onstage, as the Com??die-Fran??aise’s first day of streaming suggested.
The company has a busy schedule, offering new content from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. and then two archive recordings – a mix of talks and house productions. A different actor serves as host every day: Serge Bagdassarian opened the run by lifting a tiny red curtain in front of the camera to start, mimicking a stage performance. His colleagues then presented scheduled segments like poetry readings, literary commentary for high school students and interviews.
The quality was uneven. An actor is asked to share a favorite French alexandrine every day, and Denis Podalyd??s’s choice – a desolate verse by Charles Baudelaire, “Adorable spring has lost its scent!” – proved thoughtful and apt. Others seemed to be awkwardly filling time, and an interview with the company’s director, ??ric Ruf, suffered from both poor audio quality and stilted questions.
The Com??die-Fran??aise isn’t the only institution that appears to be rushing out content without fully thinking it through. La Commune, a venue in Aubervilliers, has asked four local young people to share short daily vlogs – a laudable idea to reflect life in an underprivileged suburb of Paris – but the absence of editing means the result is no different from an incoherent series of Instagram stories.
The Th????tre de la Colline in Paris puts out a daily audio diary by its director, Wajdi Mouawad. It has its introspective moments, but it is also fairly unfiltered. In the first episode, Mouawad compares the hand-scrubbing that has been a fixture of coronavirus precautions to the “Out, damned spot” soliloquy from “Macbeth,” and says: “I must be responsible for something – Lady Macbeth without knowing it.”
So close to current events, the thought feels overwrought. Mouawad himself admits he lacks perspective, adding: “Taking stock is impossible. I don’t know how I feel.”
As if to underscore that point, the best podcast offering so far was inspired by a work from the 14th century. For the surprising, delightful “D??cam??ron-19,” the theater director Sylvain Creuzevault has asked artists from around Europe to read a different story from Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” every day. This collection of tales is narrated by 10 characters who shelter together in Italy to avoid the Black Death. The parallels with the current situation are obvious, but “D??cam??ron-19” doesn’t feel the need to spell them out, and the audio is beautifully produced, with soundscapes that match each voice. A handful of episodes so far have been in German or a mix of languages, and the rest in French.
Other companies are banking on theater audiences’ desire for more personal interaction. Anyone can join various initiatives at the Com??die de Valence, a venue in southeastern France: A giant round-robin story offers opportunities for creative writing submissions, while the director and performer Silvia Costa and the visual artist and musician Stephan Zimmerli respond to thoughts and fragments shared with them through drawings.
And then there is phone theater, led by the Th????tre de la Colline and the Th????tre de la Ville. If you’ve ever dreamed of a help line manned by artists offering a poem, an excerpt from a play or a chat, you’re in luck, but there’s a catch: Online registration is required, and, as of the end of March, there was at least a week’s wait.
Still, none of this is a substitute for live theater. Many institutions appear to operate on the premise that lockdown means boredom. For practical reasons, that’s untrue for many. Furthermore, the notion that theatergoers are starved for entertainment is misguided. On the contrary, the sheer amount of content available online is fostering a new kind of fatigue.
Theater professionals probably have a variety of reasons for adding to the pile. It may be a way to earn salaries while venues are closed, or to signal continuity in a struggling sector. For freelancers, it may also provide a new source of income, although the artists working with the Th????tre de la Colline and the Com??die de Valence are currently volunteering their time.
I’ll admit that I’d rather wait for theater-makers to fully process the consequences of this transformational moment. For all the talk of the immediacy of live performance, time and critical distance are key components of the creative process. Nothing I’ve seen online so far has matched the accidental resonance of Laetitia Dosch’s “Hate,” a 2018 production currently available for streaming courtesy of the Th????tre Vidy-Lausanne in Switzerland.
In it, the naked Dosch – presciently tired, she says, of “the current chaos” – builds an intimate relationship with a horse. The result is unsettling at times, but it speaks of solitude in an absurd context better than most quarantine journals.
Perhaps if we embrace the quiet for a little while, theater will make far more of the great lockdown of 2020 in the not too distant future than it can now.
PHOTO: Laetitia Dosch in “Hate,” which she directed, at the Th????tre Vidy-Lausanne in Switzerland. (PHOTOGRAPH BY Doroth??e Th??bert Filliger FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2020 International Herald Tribune.
Source Citation:
Cappelle, Laura. “As Stages Go Dark, Companies Stumble.” International New York Times 4 Apr. 2020: NA. Business Insights: Essentials. Web. 16 Oct. 2020.
URL
http://bi.gale.com.db29.linccweb.org/essentials/article/GALE%7CA619347817/3d3149194d4783440a1f86a34d36d9f7?u=lincclin_vcc
Document Number:
GALE|A619347817