Dillon,+Nicholas

NDspellingbee

NDconcept

nddesign

@NDVietnam Hi, My name is Nicholas Dillon and i am from Charleston, SC. I am a Sophomore here at the University and my major is accounting. This summer i worked as a production assistant on telivision advertisments. I was suprised to see how much work it takes behind the scenes to make such short video clips!!! I chose to take this course because i feel that it may the intrests i have in productions, whether they be plays or television comercials.

__Arabian Nights, What I Liked and What I Disliked__ My attendance to //Arabian Nights// was an overall enjoyable experience. As I mentioned before, until I enrolled in this class I had only been to one play, that being a musical production of the //Lion King//, when I was only ten years old. When I attended //The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild//, I found myself getting overwhelmed by the story and the acting and I left the playhouse feeling like I had missed some things worthy of paying attention. I feel that I am becoming a more intelligent member of the audience with each play that I attend. From this newfound intelligence, I have compiled five things that I feel were executed well from //Arabian Nights// and five things that I feel could have been executed in a better fashion. **Pros:** 1. The thing that made //Arabian Nights// thoroughly enjoyable for my date and I above all else was the humor. I considered Tulsa love child to be a pretty funny work, but I must say that Arabian Nights was downright hilarious. My favorite part of the entire play was the King’s description of his daughter in the first story. He describes her as having “humps like a hippo,” and feels that her fiancé will be “struck dumb by her ugliness.” My favorite character was the jester, mainly because he was the most humorous character. 2. I also liked the fact that //Arabian Nights// was a hybrid between traditional styles of acting and musical styles. Every time that I found myself becoming bored and uninterested in the plot the cast broke out in song and pulled me right back into the plot. 3. The attention to detail followed by the cast was exquisite. I noticed it first when my girlfriend pointed out the fact that every maiden of the king had an intricate henna tattoo on their hand. They were subtle, but really impressed me. I realized just how realistic the cast was attempting to be, down to minute details such as this. 4. I enjoyed the fact that the script seemed to be adapted to suit the audience for which it was being performed. The story of //Arabian Nights// has been around for centuries, but this performance was modified to include things relevant to today’s culture. Americans as a whole are known as being very sexual, a fact that could be easily supported by some of the lines of the play. In one scene, the baker proclaims, “the dough is rising, the dough is rising!!” I doubt that these lines were present in the original //Arabian Nights//. 5. Each actor in the play played numerous roles. This being said, the costume changes that each actor went through made it possible for such a small cast to handle a play that needed called for so many characters. **Cons:** 1. Although I enjoyed the fact that //Arabian Nights// contained many different stories among the main plot, I had difficulty following the transition from story to story. I feel that they should have projected some info about setting and events across the back wall of the playhouse as there was in //Tulsa Lovechild//. If they had, I would have had an easier time transitioning from story to story 2. I thought that the costumes used in //Arabian Nights// were exquisite, but the scenery and props were hardly such. The play was performed almost entirely without scenery and large landscape props. Maybe I am just being picky, but I would have liked to see more of these types of things. 3. Sometimes I felt a little overwhelmed. Maybe it was because there were a lot of people on the stage at many parts of the story. This could also be stemming from the fact that so many stories were presented in such a short time period. 4. I felt that the lights could have been utilized more. It seems obvious to me that the production was attempting to shy away from physical scenery, and one way this could have been easily achieved is through the use of lights. When I think of Arabia I think of magnificent colors, and the lights could have been used in a much broader fashion to achieve coloration of the set. 5. The actors at time seemed to be trying to “sell it” a little too much. I am not saying that I could do any better, but many times I felt that some of the actors made up for their lack of acting ability by being loud and obnoxious, or just downright overacting.

Nicholas Dillon Theatre 2100H Professor Farley Richmond 3 October 2010 __My Experience with__ //__The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild: A Roadtrip__// When I heard that I was to attend the play //The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild: A Road Trip//, I was very apprehensive about what to expect. My experiences attending plays was very limited up to this point. In fact, before //Tulsa Lovechild//, I had only attended one showing of //The Lion King// on Broadway. Before the play, I was worried that my limited experiences as part of an audience would make //The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild// difficult for me to follow and understand. I was also worried that the play would be boring and that it would have trouble keeping me interested. These worries were unwarranted, however, and //Tulsa Lovechild// caught my attention from the moment I stepped into the playhouse to the time “The End” was projected across the screen.

I was especially pleased with the plays mix between seriousness and humor. The play addresses serious topics such as love, death, and change. One would think that these ideas would be difficult for the actors to discuss lightly, but the script was able to achieve this goal mainly through humorous, witty one-liners. Tulsa was the most serious of the characters, and very rarely did she break her serious, down to business persona. This personality was balanced well against the narrator’s character and the character of the lesbian director. Without these comedic aspects, I feel that the play would have lost the attention of some people in the audience. I found myself on the edge of my seat for the duration of the play mainly because I was interested in what the next outrageous comment would be. Personally, my favorite part of the play was when the lesbian director of Ed’s television show enters the stage wearing leather chaps and a strap on sex toy. It took guts on the director’s part to put this scene into the play, but it was a risk that was well worth it because this scene sent the audience into a hysteria.

The characters of //Tulsa Lovechild// all worked together to teach the audience an important life lesson: that putting oneself in a situation that is unfamiliar and scary causes a person to grow. Almost every character in the play learns this idea in some way or another. For Tulsa, she learns this lesson through her love relations with Ed. At the onset of the play, Tulsa is presented to the audience as a guarded, cynical character. These characteristics are communicated through Tulsa views on politics and premarital sex. Ed makes multiple attempts to crack Tulsa’s thick shell, but Tulsa is unwilling to expose her true self to someone she thinks is a complete stranger. She allows Ed to exit her life completely, but then realizes that she must let her guard down and show her vulnerability to Ed if she is ever going to find happiness.

Bob, the Russian immigrant who owns the hotel where Tulsa was born thirty years before the time period being portrayed in the play, also portrays this idea of unfamiliarity as a cause of growth. Bob begins the play by telling the audience how happy he is with his life harboring travelers and hearing their stories. He then meets Rose and Valerie, twins who are conjoined at the hip on the run from a cult leader who decide to take refuge at his motel. Bob quickly falls in love with Valerie, the independent sister of the duo who is interested in having surgery to separate the two permanently. Bob decides that he love Valerie enough to sell his motel, raising the money for Valerie’s expensive operation. Although Bob is happy with his life as a motel owner, he embraces the unfamiliarity of moving to California with Valerie and her sister because he realizes that it is an opportunity for him to grow as a person.

The physical aspect of the play, including lighting, costumes, and sound, helped the audience better understand the ideas that the actors and director thought were important. The first thing I noticed was how the lights were used to show the audience where they were to concentrate. I consider myself a person who is easily distracted, but the use of the lights helped me to focus my attention on the characters and their ideas. I especially appreciated the fact that descriptions of the scenes that were occurring were being projected onto the back wall of the playhouse for the entirety of the play. I must admit that I occasionally found myself confused as to what was going on in the scenes. These descriptions helped provide clarity for my date and I when we were unsure about the events unfolding before us. The musical selection was very interesting, and I enjoyed the fact that there was a solid mix of popular songs from the 1960’s and the 2000’s. At times the music was used for foreshadowing, and at other times the lyrics of the musical selections did a good job of correlating with the events occurring on stage. I could tell that great attention was paid to the costumes of the characters, and the clothes that each actor wore adequately matched their personality. This idea could be seen easiest the costume selection of Valerie and Rose. Valerie, who was the more rebellious, sassy of the two sisters, was clothed in tight jeans and a leather jacket for the durations of the play. Rose on the other hand wore a long light blue dress that corresponded with her characters caring, motherly persona. As stated, these were just the most obvious examples and almost every character’s attire was used by the director to say something about that character’s personality.

I must say that I was thoroughly impressed by the attention to detail that everyone in the play seemed to have. I was unsure whether my experience was going to be a good one since //Tulsa Lovechild// was the first play that I have seen in years, and I was presently surprised by the amount of enjoyment that I got from my attendance. I must admit that I would have liked to have seen some of the storylines completed fully. Never does the audience find out whether or not Tulsa and Ed find true love. Also, the audience leaves the playhouse unsure whether or not the twins’ dangerous surgery is successful in separating their bodies for good. These complaints aside, I felt the play was excellent and //The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild: A Road Trip// has me very excited to see the other plays that are on tap for the rest of the semester.