Over already???

Wow.

I think this was a pretty successful seminar for me, we learned so much! My favorite part was that we were analyzing stuff that I normally wouldn’t go out of my way to view. We were taught to look at art and ask ourselves not only if it is good or bad, but also why it is either of these.  What makes a piece of art “good” to someone? How can costume and scenery, stuff I often take for granted, add to the meaning of a piece? Questions such as these, and more, changed my perceptions of artwork.

Deciding what artwork affected me most was extremely difficult, but the work that first came to mind was The Metal Children.

In my high school English class we read a play with a lot of cursing. When one of my friends had to play the part of the foul-mouthed woman, she would actually say the curse words. It was interesting because everyone else refused to say them, and this girl never curses. Ever. She later confessed that she was a strong advocate against censoring literature, and I just found this so interesting. When reading Adam Rapp’s play The Metal Children I became even more interested in the subject of censorship, and the way it was presented. In the book it is highly debatable whether the town’s actions are appropriate.

The play affected me so much because it made me think about issues I can understand and relate to. It opened my eyes to the views of different communities and made me question the role of censorship in our own society. Since I do not usually read plays aside from the few English teachers assign, this play was refreshingly modern and engaging. Out of all the plays we read, this play was by far the best: I couldn’t put it down until I finished! Overall, the story was fantastic: it opened up a good discussion, and allowed us to analyze our own society through the issue of censorship. The play really made me think and form my own opinion on the issue, which was harder to do for some of the other works that I did not enjoy as much.

The work that I thought was least successful this year is an obvious choice:

RALPH LEMON!

Oh my goodness.

Just thinking about it still makes me hysterical with laughter. I mean who would have thought there was so much meaning in a guy twirling a sock on stage? Or, who would find the meaning of the holographic blobs (which was all I could see)? I certain didn’t find anything complex in it. I think the class just totally missed the mark with that piece. Yea, it was complex and abstract and modern, but no one was expecting it at all. When Catherine Profeta talked to the class, not many people knew what to say. It was so shocking to hear all the complexities and meaning that were everywhere in the play. It kind of made me feel stupid that I didn’t understand it, but at the same I think that I was not in the right mindset for viewing the “dance.” I was expecting music, form, and structure. This dance destroyed all my previous notions of dance pieces. In this way, I guess it was good that we were able to view something different, but it was too different to be considered truly enjoyable. The audience really should have been warned that they weren’t really going to see a dance.

Even though I think this piece was the least successful one of the semester, I still do not regret seeing it. It’s a good story to tell a friend. It also shows that one can find, or place, meaning into the most abstract and obscure things. To an extent, I enjoyed all the works we read and viewed this semester. They allowed me to view art in ways that I have not bothered to or even thought of before.