…A wop bam boom
Awww….I’m going to miss this class. For real….Time sure does fly by when you’re having fun :).
It’s hard to pick just one piece that affected me the most, so I’m going to begin with the least succesful and go on from there.
Ok, so since I actually really liked this performance this might be a little bit of a contradiction but I believe that the least successful was Ralph Lemon’s piece. It was successful to me and maybe two other people, but for the whole class it seemed to be the one that people had the most problems with. Most of my classmates had problems grasping the meaning (although respectively there might not even have been a meaning). I really felt that it was an interesting experience. It opened my eyes to something new and challenged my views on what art/dance really is. Based on the majority though, it didn’t serve it’s purpose if people weren’t inspired or challenged by it.
Ok, phew got that over with. On to the next challenge.
The performance that affected me the most was “Beirut Rocks.” I actually liked everything from this semester,maybe some more than others, but this was the performance that started it all. This was the one that began the controversies and some of the major themes we explored in class. I’ll never forget that moment in the play when Nasa said that the world would be a better place without Jews and everyone in the audience gasped at the same time.
It was weird, while watching this play because I actually tried to place myself in all the characters’ situations and by doing that I understood where they were all coming from. Usually while watching a play you pick one or two characters you can identify with but with this one you could very easily be every one of them. Although they were different, in the end they were all the same: a bunch of young, scared, college students forced to come to the realization that war is cruel and it always bring out the worst in us.
This play strongly displayed themes of racial tension, like in “Do The Right Thing,” conflict and war, like in “Fahrenheit 9/11”, and the role of women, like in “Ruined.” Even after seeing three performances in a row this was the one that stuck in everyone’s minds when we discussed them in class, and the one we all felt we could most strongly relate to. That’s where this performance comes in as more successful than Ralph Lemon’s piece. My classmates were able to understand and discuss the major themes and the significance of the play. On the contrary you couldn’t really place Ralph Lemon’s piece with a lot of the themes discussed in this semester.(I mean you could…if you really tried =/ )
From this though stems the question, of what is art? Something we should look at and relate to or something that exposes us to new ideas and makes us question our old ideas? I believe it could be both but that it should be more of the latter.
And so, I tip my hat and bid my adieu to you (at least in writing). I’m sure I’ll see you guys around but this class was a blast and I hope everyone will have much success in the future~ 🙂
XoXoXo,
Olivia~ <3
