Theater Profile

A man named Joseph Papp founded the Public Theater located in lower Manhattan of New York City in 1954.  The Public Theater’s sole intention when it was first founded was to showcase the works and talents of up and coming playwrights and performers.  The first show in this theater was the musical HAIR.  This is a great opening musical because HAIR is a very critically acclaimed musical.  The Public Theater is not just for theatrical programming.  The Public trains the future generations of performers through the use of the Shakespeare Lab; which is an annual summer acting session.

The productions that are performed at The Public Theater have won many awards.  The awards in which they have won include 42 Tony Awards, 151 Obies, 41 Drama Desk Awards, and four Pulitzer Prizes.  Also, fifty four Public Theater productions have moved to Broadway. 

The Public Theater’s mission is to achieve artistic excellence while developing an American theater that is available to all people.  They do this through the productions of new challenging plays and musicals.  This is one of the primary reasons that I picked The Public Theater.  Not only do they put on fantastic shows but also they challenge the up and coming theatrical workers in many ways. 

This theater has great intern opportunities for a fairly wide variety of theatrical jobs.  Some of which include marketing, production, press, associate producer, and executive director.  The Public Theater hopes to bridge the gap between academic education and practice.  What better way to learn and get practice in a work environment than to do so in one of the country’s premier not for profit theaters?

This theater appeals to me because I fell like they have a great mission.  The theater wants to train the next generation of composers, actors and actresses, directors, producers, and many others.  They are much deeper than just showing performances.  Also, they have been around since the fifties and have produced some of the greatest performances ever.  Over fifty of their performances have been moved to Broadway.  Lastly, I love New York City.  I have been to the “Big Apple” several times and each time I find something new to enjoy.  I walked passed this building and had my mother tell me about it but at the time I was not interest, but after finding out more about it and taking this course, I am now ready to go back and go inside.

I also find The Public Theater to be inspiring and admirable for the fact that they have several different out reach programs.   The Public has an outreach program called Shakespeare In the Boroughs, which serves residents of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx.  This program provides residents of these places with free tickets to Shakespeare In the Park.  They will do anything to get people interested in theater.  They also offer sixty percent off of tickets to groups of students, which is a great way to get the younger generation interested in theater.  

How theater relates to my hobbies and interests

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. This quote by Stella Alder is very on point.  Theater portrays the truth about life and a social situation.  With that said it is very easy for me to relate my own interests and hobbies to theater in many ways.

The first interest and hobby of mine is basketball.  Basketball is my favorite thing to do, to learn about, and to watch.  Basketball relates to theater in many ways.  First off, all you need to have a theatrical production is an empty space, performers, and an audience.  The court is the empty space, the basketball players are the performers, and the crowd is the audience.  When I played basketball I loved to put a show on for the crowd.  I did a lot of things to get a reaction from the crowd.  If there was a nice play or a bad call I would show a lot of emotion and the crowd would react to that which would motivate me as well.  Also, in theater the actors have a script that they go through.  A director walks them through the script.  These actors would not read the script like robots, they would occasionally have free reign to improvise.  This is much like a play book for basketball.  A coach walks a team through a new play repeatedly until the team can run it in their sleep.  However, from this play the coach does not want his players to run the play like robots, going through every motion exactly as it is written because the other team starts to expect what is going to happen next.  Therefore, the coach wants some improvisation to catch everybody off guard.  The coach is clearly the director of the basketball team.

Another interest and hobby of mine is comedy.  Obviously comedy relates to theatre because it is a type of genre, but I like comedy in the sense that it is spontaneous.  I know a lot of people think this, but I believe that if cameras were to follow my friends and I around, it would be one of the funniest shows on television.  When I am with my friends we are just off the wall funny and not afraid to do anything.  We all love to cause scenes wherever we go.  During high school it would primarily take place in the lunch room.  We all would want the attention on us and as soon as it was on us we would start picking on each other.  The lunch room, or audience, would all laugh as we would just take turns degrading one another.  Other scenes took place in the gym.  We would do the most random off the wall things we could think of just to get a cheap smile and laugh out of everybody watching.

To be completely honest, I feel as though some aspect of theater can be related to almost everybody’s interests and hobbies.  Theater has such a wide horizon on what it is.  For example, I am a computer science major and I love finding out how things work and how to make them work more efficiently.  This interest or hobby of mine seems to not be able to relate to theater in the least bit but if I were a theater technician or engineer this job would be perfect for me.  I did not realize this until toward the end of the course but it has made me appreciate theater more.  I was not a fan of theater until I realized that I could relate my hobbies and interests to it. 

Interview a theater artist

Laurel Ripple is the drama club advisor at Galeton Area High School and director of the High School plays.  She teaches English at the school and got the position when the former advisor went to a different district, and the students begged for someone to take over.  This is her fifth year, and she is just starting to feel like she knows what she is doing, but admits it’s still a learning process.

Her first year, her experience was limited to a theater class in college and a love of the theater.  She tried the play Much Ado about Will which included different scenes from Shakespeare.  The scenes were short, and she got enough students to participate that there was not much worry about a lot of lines to memorize.  She had trouble convincing some students to participate, but in the end they did, and everything went okay.  There was little in the way of props and she found costumes in the school “prop room”.  The students performed alright, and everyone said it was okay, but the small town did not really have a love of Shakespeare.

The next year she picked an entertaining murder/mystery for the play.  It called for larger parts and a bigger cast.  She also scheduled the play around athletic seasons to make sure students would be able to attend all the practices since that had been a problem the year before.  She got a bigger stage crew this year since there were more props and scenery and costuming.  This helped a lot and gave students who were interested in participating but afraid to be on stage a chance to be part of the experience.  With other people taking care of giving the actors and actresses their cues, working the curtain and lights, and making sure the props were in position she could actually give direction on line delivery, reactions, and movement.  This was when she realized how hard it is to but on a good high school production, especially with 30 students back stage and one teacher supervising them all.  However, she also realized that she loved doing it.

A year later the school decided to add electives to the curriculum and her contribution was drama.  Ms. Ripple set up the course as an overview of the history of theater with select plays to be read.  She also included the various jobs of the theater and acting techniques.  Participation in some form of the high school play was mandatory.  This year she had the students pick the play, and they chose a parody of American Idol.  Another change this year was the students attended a theater workshop at Lock Haven University.  This helped the students a lot, and she learned so much from the program.  They learned various acting techniques in comedy such as double-takes that they brought back to use in the play.  Also, by having time during class to prepare the students had extra rehearsals.  Since the majority of the students in the play had been with her for two or more years, everything went smoothly. 

A year ago when Ms. Ripple began working on the play many of her actors and actresses had graduated.  She once again had to go and beg students to participate.  One of the things she likes the most about this position is encouraging students that may be a little of afraid of participating in a theater production to act.  The drama club is made up of all types of students in her small school.  Every clique has a representative.  Also, the biggest surprises have come through open auditions when a student comes forward with talent she never expected.

The drama club has gone from a club no one wanted to advise to a big deal in the school.  The students have taken trips to Broadway, participated in theater workshops at a university, and performed larger productions like Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Laurel says she is still learning, and still hunting for new talent, but directing the high school play has gone from a duty to one of the joys of her job.

Broadway

Currently on Broadway there are quite a few films and television shows that have been adapted into musicals. Sister Act, Ghost, The Adams Family, Spiderman, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Mary Poppins, and The Lion King.   Other musicals like Anything Goes and Chicago have played on Broadway off and on for years.  Some other musicals that have become popular include Wicked, Jersey Boys, Rock of Ages, and Memphis.

There are many ways to buy Broadway tickets, but the most inexpensive is the TKTS booth at times square.  The booth can be found at 47^th and Broadway.  There is also a booth at the South Street Seaport and in Brooklyn.  Although the lines seem huge even if you arrive early, they move quickly.  The only drawback is the discounted tickets are given as they are available and only for same day performances.  Because of this you should head to the booths with a main idea of which musical you would like to see with some back-ups just in case those tickets are not available.

Most people want to see Wicked, The Lion King, of Phantom of the Opera because they are familiar and very popular right now.  Sometimes tickets are hard to come by and the prices could be steep. If you go to one of the less popular shows and are not picky about seating you can find an affordable musical.  If you want to go for the bigger productions you need to expect to pay more.

When I was 13 I saw the musical The Producers.  I went mainly because my mother and cousin were going and that is what they picked.  I wanted to see The Blue Man Group or Stomp.  In the end I liked it.  The story was funny and even though I didn’t think I would like seeing a musical there was something different about watching a live performance.  Last year I saw Mama Mia! I went with a group and this was the musical that was chosen.  The story line was more of a chick flick style, but it was okay.  I would still like to see Blue Man Group or Stomp if I go again.  They seem more my style.  I am also interested in comedy, so I would probably like to see Rock of Ages or Silence, a musical parody of the film Silence of the Lambs.

One of the most interesting things I came across about Broadway is the ghost stories regarding different theaters.  One of the most interesting is about the New Amsterdam Theater where The Lion King is performed.  The people that work there claim the theater is haunted by a Ziegfield Follies girl named Olive Thomas who died of an “accidental” overdose in 1920.  Workers, mostly men, claim they see her after the audiences leave. She wears her Follies dress and disappears into walls.  There is a picture of her in the lobby and the workers say, “Good Morning, Olive” when they arrive and “Good-night Olive” when they leave.

Attending a Broadway production is an experience that I recommend to anyone whether they are interested in theater or not.  It is different from other theater productions and an experience that you won’t forget.

Show Report

The Producers was originally a 1968 Mel Brooks movie.  The movie won an Oscar for best original screenplay.  Brooks was encouraged by a friend to turn the movie into a musical.  He did, writing the lyrics and music himself. The musical debuted in 2001 and ran for over two thousand shows.  That same year it won the Tony award for best musical, best score, and best book of a musical. The original run starred Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

Mel Brooks is a comedic legend.  He is not only a comedian, but also a writer, actor, producer, director, composer and lyricists.  He is famous for his film parodies that influenced the outpouring of parody films that have hit the market in past years.  Some of these parodies include Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. He has influenced many famous comedic actors including Jim Carey and Andy Samberg.

I was fourteen when my mother, aunt and cousins took a trip to New York City.  My one cousin and aunt were attending a luncheon, and my mother decided to take my other cousin and I to a musical.  We got to the city in the morning to stand in line at the TKTS booth.  I can’t remember what we wanted to see, but when we got to the front whatever it was had sold out.  Because they want to keep the line moving, you don’t have a lot of time to decide.  We didn’t have a back up plan, so my mom asked for three tickets to see The Producers because she was familiar with the story and thought it would be good.

I had never seen a musical before and honestly did not really want to see one.  They seemed stupid to me with the singing and dancing in the middle of the action.  After I started watching the musical though I saw how it blends in with everything, and how seeing a live performance is so much different than watching a movie.  I was kind of surprised by how much I enjoyed myself.

The musical is about a couple of guys who decide that having a musical bomb on Broadway could make them a lot of money if they “cook the books”.  They decide to find an awful screenplay and set up a show to fail, so they can take off with the money that backed the play.  The play they pick is Springtime for Hitler written by an ex-Nazi.  There is a lot of comedy and funny songs throughout the musical.  It has a love story included, and even though the guys get arrested, it still has a happy ending.

I liked this musical the best because it was the first musical I have seen on Broadway, and the first musical I have seen that I really enjoyed.  I saw Mama Mia last year, and it was good, but I liked The Producers better.  I have seen some movies that are musicals, but it is not like watching a show live.  Also, I love comedies and parodies.  This offers both.