My thoughts on "Joe Turner's Come and gone"

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I thought this play was super suspenseful. From the Juba scene on I really wanted to know what happened to Loomis.

There was something I wanted to bring up. Wasn't there a character in one of the Harry Potter book's? I'm pretty sure he was a Professor and a bit on the mysterious side if I recall. He may have been black as well, but that I'm not positive on. I'm thinking J.K. Rowling may be a fan of August Wilsom. What do you guys think?

Forgot to post the video....

I couldn't find the clip of the scene, but here's the trailer. The majority of the movie is Liam Neeson going undercover to sabotage someone and get his daughter back. It reminded me of Salieri.

Cool. That was different.

I liked "Spinning Into Butter" a lot. It was something different to read and it had a theme that I don't come across all that often. There were some "Oh, no she didn't!" moments during the racist monologue that made me snicker in disbelief. I know this isn't much of an original opinion, but I thought the higher-ups were douche-bags. They were trying to be un-racist but were subconciously making it worse. They picked a good setting too. Vermont is a little on the racist side, and in the same way too. Good play overall, though. I did find it a little messed up that Simon did all that to himself for attention(that's how I took it). Anyway, Vermonters should have this play programmed into their heads. Or maybe they shouldn't. I'm not sure.

Amadeus was...meh...

I didn't really care too much for Amadeus. Having Mozart's character be as immature and stupid as he was made the play feel a little less attention-grabbing. I think it took me a couple sessions to get through the play because I just was losing focus and couldn't care less about any of the characters. I guess that's not completely true. I liked Salieri. He reminds me of the dad in that new movie, Taken(which I suggest everyone see) when he "sabotaged" Mozart from the inside; kind of like a double agent. I'll post the scene I mentioned from the movie below.
I also kind of thought the Venticelli's weren't that useful. I would think the movie could identify the "rumor" element just as well without them. I didn't like the story, most of the characters, and I didn't have much better to say about the movie. To me, it seemed like it wasn't worth reading.

Art Wasn't All That Bad...

I mean I haven't read that many plays before so I don't have much of a standard, but I thought Art was pretty good. I'm usually not much for reading, but I enjoyed reading this. Yvan was probably the character I could relate the most to. That, and I think he was the primary source of humor. Don't get me wrong, Marc and Serge were pretty funny as well, but Yvan stood out to me for some reason. It could be the fact that I suppose he could be considered the main character. Being the neutral party, pointing him out as the main character would feel less one-sided, at least to me. All in all though, Art was enjoyable. I could silently read the lines and picture how an actor would say it. Pretty enjoyable.

Brief insight into the class thus far

I've never really had an English or Literature class dedicated to a single genre of writing. Now, I'm not much for reading, but I do enjoy a good tale; I just usually get them from movies and video games. It's not that I am against reading, but as an activity it has a hard time holding my attention. Anyway, looking at the semi-lengthy list of plays, it's fair to assume I'll get a lot of diverse stories this semester. I'm OK with that. I just hope I don't get picked to read the lead role in class. I suppose if no one else wants to, I will. I'm not nervous; I just keep to myself.

What is the point?

Well Darren, I'll tell you the point. Entertainment all started with plays and improvisation. Is it so hard to believe that some people still enjoy it? Not really. I'm pretty sure if we didn't have the standard HD television programming we do now, almost everyone would love plays. That's not to say there isn't a difference. Here's the good qualities I personally see in each.


TV/Movies

• Cool special effects.
• Able to show things that are humanly impossible, such as gore. It gives more freedom to present an idea in a more powerful way that is simply impossible to recreate in theatre, at least not to the same intensity.
• Camera shots/angles have an effect on viewer perspective. You could, for example, give the viewer a look through the eyes of the main character and see what they see.

Theatre

• More personable. You are within yards of another person who is human; you may or may not be able to closely relate to this person.
• Drawing emotions from the viewer is far easier. You are literally watching another living, breathing person suffer hardships or celebrate happiness right in front of you.
• Far less expensive to put into production. Even with scarce resources and potentially no money, an incredible experience can still be delivered with the right techniques.