https:/.../2019-09-05_td301_pt1.mp4

♪ (music) ♪

♪ (music) ♪

>> Hey spuds! It's Thursday!
I'm Emily. You're amazing.

This is T D 301: Introduction
To Theater.

We have a lot to talk about today,
so we don't have an intro video

today, but don't worry! We'll have one
next Tuesday in case you missed it.

Before we get started, let us go over to
Erin, who has some announcements.

>> Hey guys! So first announcement is
that we have some updated TA online

office hours. So me, Yasmin, and Kairos
are all going to have online office

hours that you can log into, kind of a
chat room and talk to us in real time.

Mine are going to be Friday's, from
12:30 to 1:30 PM.

Yasmin's are Wednesday, from 9AM to
10 AM,

and Kairos' are Thursday.
12:45 PM to 1:45 PM.

And we'll send out an email that
kind of has all of that as well.

Second announcement, remember to
email any SSD accommodation letters

to our favorite email address.
[e-mail]

>> Whoo! I made a typo!
>> Yep. That was wrong.

>> (inaudible) It's not going to
go anywhere.

>> This is why you should definitely not
always just look at the slide.

So [e-mail] I
believe is the right one.

Third announcement is that if you
go to the Mamalogues at the vortex,

they don't give your kind of standard
ticket. They're to give you like a card,

like a playing card, and program. So
just take a photo of that playing

card and the program, and use that
as kind of your ticket.

So. That's that. If you have any
questions, feel free to email us.

>> Hello again! Thanks, Erin!
Sorry about the typo on that slide.

Y'all, that is 100% my fault.
That's what happens when you don't

edit. Let that be a lesson to you.
So yeah. [e-mail]

is where you should send your electronic
communications.

There's something I was going to say.
Oh yeah.

We are going to update the syllabus
next Monday, so we'll upload an

updated version to the Canvas site.
That'll have the links to those

online chat rooms you can use for
office hours with the TA's.

So those are our announcements.
Again, before we really dig in,

I wanted to address a few lingering
questions that you all had

at the end of last class.
First of all, will all quizzes be

five questions? Yes.
When we get back our quiz

grades, will we also be able to see
the question and the correct answers?

So, sometimes though, the grade and
the questions will be released

separately. So the grade will go to
the gradebook, and then the questions--

we try to release them at the same
time, but sometimes it just doesn't

happen.

When the questions are released,
you'll be able to see them by like

clicking back into that quiz.
Third question.

Functionalism in regards to theater
is what exactly?

This is a good question. So
functionalism. I want you in your

brain, connect functionalism with myth.
Right? So theater functions

as a vehicle for myth. Myth functions
as a way to explain the world, right?

So theater presents myth to the
masses, and the myth itself

explains the world. And an important
distinction between that and

ritualism is that functionalism
assumes different ....

brain words.... assumes that cultures
can be on sort of different developmental

paths, or have a different endpoint.
Unlike ritualism, which sort of assumes

this single path from ritual to theater.
And functionalism, there can be different

paths, but the functions are similar
across the paths and that like

theater spreads myth and myth
explains the world.

So that is functionalism. I
hope that clears that up for you.

Yes. So that's sort of all of our
housekeeping for today.

Let's talk about like the good stuff!
What are we really going to be

talking about today? What are those
guiding questions that we are

going to stick to for today? So we
have many, you'll notice, right?

First of all, we're going to be tackling
this in a different way than we did

last time the question of "why
theater? What functions does it

"serve in society? What is its
place in the cultural landscape of

"the United States?" Then we're going
to take a nice, sharp left turn

into talking about what are some
key theatrical terms

and structures, some vocabulary,
so when we talk about the theater

sort of what's some common lingo
that we can use.

And then lastly, we'll be (laughs)--
just realizing something I forgot

to include on the slide! We'll be talking
about what are useful strategies

for reading a play. We'll be talking
about that Elinor Fuchs article

we read, and then if we have time,
what we're going to see--

I was feeling ambitious when I was
planning class today-- we'll talk

about different types of stages
that are used in the theater.

So that is, it's a lot. It's wide-ranging.
Welcome to Introduction to Theater, y'all.

Let's get into it. First let's talk
about theater and society.

♪ (music) ♪

>> Right. So if you remember last time,
we talked about sort of the

necessary elements of theater,
and the broad definition of theater.

And I spent a lot of time really
trying to give sort of a really

wide range of opportunities, or
wide range of possibilities for

what theater could be, falling within
those main elements of

performer, impersonation, idea,
space, audience, live-ness.

Tried to make space for us to bend
and stretch those-- the definitions

of those elements. Today, I'm going
to approach it in a little bit more

direct way and sort of get to the
most common, the core view

that people often take of theater
here in the U.S.

So a popular way for us to talk about
theater, to describe theater, is

to say the essence of theater is
storytelling, right? So last time,

I talked about the idea is like
a central, organizing property

of a piece of theater, but also
talked about how commonly that's

like a story, not necessarily a
narrative story, but a story

of dramatic telling of something.
So these are stories that audience

members can sometimes identify
with, and so that pulls them in.

"Hey I want to go see this theater
because I can identify with what's

going on onstage." Or it could be
stories that the audience has

never seen before, that really
opens our eyes to possibilities,

or engenders empathy within us,
or creates wonder within us.

Or it could be both! It could be,
perhaps, a story based around a

group that doesn't get a lot
of representation on stage often.

So the audience members can identify
with that and it's exciting,

because they haven't often seen it
before. Sort of -- put upon this

sort of what is often seen as like
a high cultural place, or really

shine a light on stories that
we haven't seen before.

So there's a lot of different ways
that audience members can connect

to stories that are represented
on stage, which is sort of one

of the elements of theater, that makes
it potentially, hopefully, right

theater makers, hope engaging to a
wide array of people is that

anyone can connect in some way to
what's happening on stage as this

like storytelling medium.

Right? Theater is also a cultural
artifact, right? It documents,

in some ways, like a moment,
in many ways and always.

It documents a moment in time,
right? History.

It's not necessarily aiming to say,
this is the history of this place and

this time. Often, theater, a play,
may not be set right in the time

in which it was written. I'm thinking
of Lynn Nottage play right now.

It's called "By the Way, Meet
Vera Stark," that she wrote

in the 20... 21st century? Late
20th century, but set like in

the mid-20th century. But the
play itself retains elements of

the time, place, the perspective with
which it was written.

So when we go back and read plays
that were written years, decades,

century, millennia ago, we can see
in the play-text itself, elements,

traces of that-- the culture in which
it was written.

Y'all. That was a lot of words
that I just said.

Let me distill it down.
So why theater?

Storytelling. People are attracted
to, or engaged by stories for

different ways. And...
Y'all. My brain.

It went to a place far away, and
then it's come back with us,

and I'm going to focus in and tell
you words, and in order.

So, there are many storytelling
mediums, right? In the U.S.

In worlds and in the world, around in
space. Maybe in the universe.

Who knows what those aliens
are doing out there.

And theater is just one of them, right?
So you can think about TV as a

storytelling medium, or film. Some
Youtube series. Podcasts even,

can be sort of different storytelling
mediums. And the proliferation of

these mediums, like across time,
sort of illustrates that pull

that we have as human beings to
engage in that both storytelling

of our own, but also an audience
seeing other people's stories with us.

And so theater, aims to, in its own
unique way, participate in that

history of storytelling. Now, theater
used to have more of a...

What's the word I want to use?
A monopoly on that storytelling medium.

Before there was Youtube, before
there was Netflix, before there were

movie theaters. Before there was TV,
before there was radio, there was

theater. There were people in front of
other people acting out some sort of

story or idea, right? But as time has gone
on, theater -- people have had

opportunities to gain that
storytelling performance in different

ways, yet theater persists. So why is
that? Why does theater still exist?

Why do people still go see it?

That's a good question. So let's
talk about a little bit, how

theater operates within sort of
the cultural landscape.

Let's just call them broadly storytelling
mediums. Pardon me. In the U.S.

But you can also think about sort of
performance art landscapes as well.

So that would include music, visual
art, dance, things of that nature.

So often, theater, because of the
barriers to access, it's more difficult

to access theater often than it is to
access, say like Youtube, or TV, or radio.

Right? Because you have to go to
a specific place at a specific time.

You have to pay money to go see
it. You have to be physically

around other people. It restricts the
way you're able to move your

body around in space, right? And often,
because of that restriction,

it gets placed within this cultural
landscape in the more elitist section

of our full idea of performing arts, or
storytelling mediums in general.

And I wanted to talk briefly about,
sort of like different ideas

about how we think about, or place
theater within that cultural landscape,

so I have on this slide, a few... I want
to call them sort of like spectrums

of placement. Often, they're thought of
as like, strong, binary ideas.

It's either popular culture or it's
elitist culture.

It's either sort of low-brow
entertainment, or it's high-brow

entertainment. It's either entertainment
or it's intellectual.

But I want us to think about these as
sort of like spectrum of possibility

that are moving, sort of like within
and around, in and out of each other,

all at the same time. Can something
be popular and elitist?

Can it be both entertaining and
intellectual? And how do we

move within those different areas,
and how those things work in

relation to each other.
Often it's relative.

So if we talk about like just the
world of theater in general,

often musicals are sort of painted as
this sort of popular, very entertainment,

think spectacle, Disney Broadway things
while plays are seen as this sort of

like high-brow, intellectual,
elitist sort of thing.

But if you go see-- y'all they made a
musical of Jane Eyre. Okay?

So there's Jane Eyre, the musical,
right, you can think about that.

Or, I'm trying to think of a really
farce play.

There's a play called like "Noises Off."
It's pure farce and fun.

There's actually a movie version
of it with Christopher Reeve and

Carol Burnett. It's really funny in
my opinion.

But how those things can break the
mold, or also how you think like

some TV shows, you might think of...
I'm trying to think of a brainy one.

All the ones coming to mind...

Uh, so you might think of...

There's this guy named Ken Burns,
he makes these like, documentaries

that are 12 hours long.

On like baseball, Vietnam War
and Civil War.

First is like, Sponge Bob, the musical,
which is a thing that happened,

that occurred, that is, I did not see it,
but it was in Chicago and I missed it.

Right? So all this to say that,
let me just rein this tangent in,

that there are different ways a theater
can operate within this cultural landscape

some of which are dictated by,
its accessibility to audiences,

and some of which are dictated by sort of
subject matter and how it is presented,

and those things can shift
in change over time.

But if we think about
how are people engaging with theater

in comparison
to other storytelling mediums,

or performing arts,
I have some information on there,

the NEA,
the National Endowment of Arts

does a survey of public participation
in arts every year.

So, in 2017 about 9% of adults
attended a play, like at all.

Once, one time.

About 9% of the adults in the U.S.

About 16.5-17% of people,
of adults in the U.S. attended a musical,

once.

Well, we might say, there's like probably
a good amount of overlap

between those two groups.

So like let's just be generous
and say like 20% of the adults

in the United States attended
some sort of like theater in 2017.

That's not like an insignificant amount,
but if we look at the number of people

who went to see a movie
for example like 59%,

it's like, blows us out of the water.
Right?

Way more people
are going to the movie theater,

let alone, like watching TV,
watching YouTube.

So in terms of like,
in comparison

to the number of people
engaging with it as an art form...

Theater, because of, its less, uh...

Mmm.. hmm...

The size of its footprint
measured in terms

of the number of people
participating in it actively,

it has a smaller, like, footprint,
than say, movies or TV.

Even though it's sharing
this storytelling medium.

(long breath)

Preventing myself from going on
an even longer tangent,

so we are just going to like,
avoid that all together

and I am gonna bring it back
to sort of what is the thing

that makes theater, theater.

What differentiates it,
what is the thing that makes people

continue to go to theater
for their storytellings,

sort of wants and needs,
as opposed to

the many other story telling mediums that exist.

So, in the thing
that I always come back to

and people often come back to,
it's a femorality.

So, when you go and see
a piece of theater,

it only exists in the time and the place
in which you are watching it.

You can never go back
and create it in the same way again.

Even if you go back to see
the exact same play,

even if you go to see it with
the exact same people,

it's still going to be different
because its happening

in a different time and place.

There's no way to recapture
that experience.

Right?

The outcomes can change.

An actor can forget their line,
umm, a light can go out,

umm, a baby can cry.

You know, anything can happen,
which is why for me

and often many people will say,
it's the exciting thing

is that its live
and you can never recapture it.

So, it makes it unique and special
in a way,

that even watching a recorded performance
of a piece of theater

can't capture it quite the same way.

Right?

It's often the same thing.

So, if we think about,
why do we go see sporting events,

why do we like, pay money,
often a lot of money

to go see like a football game,
a baseball game,

and like buy the ten dollar hot dog
and the popcorn,

when we could just, you know,
it would be easier to sit at home

and watch it on TV.

If its's sort of like a big popular game.

Again, it's like that same idea
that the atmosphere of being there

it's like the watching it live
is being part of the action.

Right?

So, often that femorality
that liveness is the thing about theater

that differentiates it
from other storytelling mediums

and often brings people back to it.

But, I also want to like,
invite you to find your own reasoning.

Often, theater folks,
when we talk about theater,

there's like a way we wanna convince you
that theater is really important

and you should like wanna go see it
and like, I want you too feel like

however you want to feel about it.

And if you go to theater
and it's not engaging enough

to you to want to come back,
that's, we need to figure out

like in the theater world,
how to create stories

that are engaging in an engaging way.

So. I'm trying to like prevent myself
from like telling you

why you should like theater
or why you should wanna go see it.

I wanna invite you to like find your own,
find your own reason to

or not to.

You know?
Live your life.

However, I do wanna like,
take this opportunity

to introduce you to some ways
in which theater interacts

with pop culture in ways
and in avenues that might be surprising

to you, that you might not expect.

Because like, sort of like,
all like performing arts

or areas of what
we might broadly term culture right there

are conversations happening
between different forms,

there are references that sort of
go back and forth.

So, a lot of popular sort of shows
and art forms

pay homage to plays, musicals of the past,
like in ways that we might not know.

So, for example,
y'all people love to adapt Shakespeare

into different forms,
in different settings, happens a lot.

We'll have a talk about the public domain
later on and life.

Few examples, right,
if you know the movie

"Ten Things I Hate About You",
it's so good.

Maybe you are too young
to know that movie like I do but yeah.

So, that is an adaptation
of the Shakespeare play

"Taming of the Shrew".

And there's always a musical adaptation
of it called "Kiss me Kate",

but less popular, less well-known.

There's a movie
starring Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum

called "She's the Man"
and that movie is based

on Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night".

Wild, right?

There's also, many people know the movie
"Mean Girls" came out in 2004.

"Mean Girls" is actually based on a book
called " Queen Bees and Wannabees".

So there's this book
called " Queen Bees and Wannabees",

they adapted into this movie "Mean Girls".

Then in 2017 they adapted again
into a Broadway musical,

you can pay like a hundred dollars
to go see "Mean Girls" singing,

dancing in front of your face,
ummm, very exciting.

I haven't seen it,so I don't know
if the show is any good or not,

but it exists, right?

So, this happens a lot,
like this ideas are the stories

that go back and forth.

And often times it's like in smaller chunks, right?

These bits of theater history
are well known.

Musicals or plays pop up
in sort of unexpected places.

So, I wanna play you a clip
of several popular songs that include

references to musical songs that
you might not have realized.

So let's go to that now.

♪ [ "Rich Girl" by Gwen Stefani"] ♪

>> ♪ If i was a rich girl
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.

Say I love all the money in
the world,

if I was a wealthy girl.
No man could test me,

impress me,
my cash flow would never ever end

Cause I'd have all the money in
the world, if I was a wealthy girl ♪

♪ [ If I were a Rich man- Fiddler on the Roof ]♪
>> Dear God,

you make many, many poor
people.

So what would have been so terrible,
if I had a small fortune.

♪ If I were a rich man,
Yubby dibby dibby dibby

dibby dibby dibby dum.
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.

If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard.

Ya ha deedle deedle,
bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.

If I were a biddy biddy rich,
Idle-diddle-daidle-daidle man. ♪

>> ♪ It's the hard-knock life
for us. It's the hard-knock life

for us.
Instead of treated,

we get tricked!
Instead of kisses,

we get kicked! It's the hard-knock
life for us. ♪

>> ♪ I don't know how to sleep,
gotta eat.

Stay on my toes, got a lot of
beef so logically, I prey on my foes.

Hustling's still inside of me,
and as far as progress

You'd be hard-pressed,
to find another rapper hot as me.

I gave you prophecy on my
first joint, and y'all lamed out.

Didn't really appreciate it,
till the second one came out.

So I stretched the game out,
X'ed your name out

Put Jigga on top, and drop albums
non-stop for ya! ♪

>> ♪ It's the hard-knock life
for us. It's the hard-knock life

for us! Instead of treated,
we get tricked!

Instead of kisses, we
get kicked!

It's the hard-knock life! ♪

>> ♪ It's the hard-knock life
for us.

It's the hard-knock life for us!
Instead of treated ♪

>> ♪ We get tricked! ♪
>> ♪Instead of kisses, ♪

>> ♪ We get kicked!
It's the hard-knock life!

Got no folks to speak of, so
It's a hard-knock row we how! ♪

>> ♪ Cotton blankets! ♪
>> ♪ Instead of wool! ♪

>> ♪ Empty bellies! ♪
>> ♪ Instead of full! ♪

♪ It's a hard knock life! ♪

>> ♪ Breakfast at Tiffany's and
bottles of bubbles

Girls with tattoos who like
getting in trouble

Lashes and diamonds,
ATM machines

Buy myself all of my
favorite things (yeah).

Been through some bad shit
I should be a sad bitch,

who would've thought
it'd turn me to a savage?

Rather be tied up with calls
and not strings

Write my own checks like I
write what I sing. ♪

>> ♪ Raindrops on roses
and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and
warm woolen mittens.

Brown paper packages
tied up with strings.

These are a few of
my favorite things.

Cream colored ponies and
crisp apple strudels.

Door bells and sleigh bells and
schnitzel with noodles.

Wild geese that fly with
the moon on their wings.

These are a few of
my favorite things! ♪

>> Those were a few of my favorite
things!

I had to say it, I had to do it, y'all.
So, in case you didn't recognize

those, that first clip was the song
"Rich Girl," by Gwen Stefani,

released 2004, pulling from the
song "If I were a Rich Man,"

from Fiddler on the Roof, written
in 1964.

And then there was "Hard-Knock
Life," by Jay-Z, released in 1998.

Based on-- or pulling from directly,
it's really like sampling the recording

of "It's a Hard-Knock Life," from Annie,
which is a Broadway musical written

in 1977. Y'all that story has been
adapted and revived in

so many ways.
That's a popular one.

And then there's "7 Rings," by
Ariana Grande, released just this year,

based on "My Favorite Things," from
The Sound of Music, 1959.

You might have noticed that was
from the movie of

The Sound of Music. There was like
a musical version on Broadway,

and then it was adapted into a
movie starring the incomparable,

delightful, Ms. Julie Andrews.

You all might not know about VHS
tapes, but when I was growing up,

I had a VHS of Sound of Music,
and I watched it like a lot.

Like a lot. It was good. So it
always reminds me of my youth.

Anyway, yes, right? So these--
the purpose was to illustrate the

point that like there's this pulling
from and conversation between

sort of theater and sort of more like
popular cultural forms, or

like more like widely engaged
or attended, popular cultural forms

that happens throughout time.
I want to address just a couple

of questions that you all had.
So someone asked

"what does high and low-brow
mean?" Thank you for

this question. I didn't define it
very well.

(laughs) So low and high-brow are
these words that are used to

describe how certain like cultural
forms are sort of painted

in society. I want to divorce that
from, like, evaluative judgements

about their worth, but typically,
low-brow entertainments

are like, again, those really popular
entertainments,

sort of their -- if you can think about
them as mass culture.

So, I'm trying to think of what would
be considered really low...

So like Spongebob the Musical might
be considered like a low-brow

musical, and high-brow is more like
hoity-toity, high society,

high culture. It's thought of as like
really intellectual, like only a few

people really understand it. See, I
said I was going to avoid evaluative

judgments, and then I definitely
painted a picture of that.

But so low-brow, you can think of
as like mass culture.

High-brow is sort of like really
intellectual and part of high society.

(laughs) What do I think of the
Team Starkid musicals that have

been released on Youtube?
You know, I only saw a clip

of them, but I'm intrigued by that.
It's people having fun with popular

culture and then adapting it into
different forms.

And Darren Criss is in them, and
it's Harry Potter, so I'm

a fan of Harry Potter. Speaking of
Harry Potter, whoo segway.

I also want to sort of illuminate the
difference, the --what's the word

I'm talking about-- the migration of
theater makers, theater practitioners

between the theatrical form, and
other performing arts, or

storytelling mediums. Right?
Because we're not siloed into

those different areas, there's a
lot of back and forth.

So an actor, like the actor who played
Harry Potter in the movies,

Daniel Radcliffe. He made all these
Harry Potter movies, and then he

went on to star on musical on
Broadway,

How to Succeed in
Business without really Trying.

He also starred in a play called Equus,
which is a wild play, that you--

we are not reading it in this class,
but it's intense.

And he was in that play...
And has been in many other

just non-movie storytelling
mediums in addition to his

Harry Potter Swiss Army man
life. And then I have a slide

that I have titled "The Most Ambitious
Cross-Over Events of All Time."

It's a title that amuses me. I hope
that it amuses you. Right, so

we have in the top left, Jonathan Gross
and Lea Michele,

starring in "Spring Awakening,"
on Broadway.

You might recognize them from
Glee. Y'all, so many people

on Glee either were in theater
before they were on Glee,

or starting doing theater after Glee.
You might recognize Jonathan

Groff from Mindhunters on Netflix.
And... He also starred as

King George in Hamilton, but that's
theater so that's like, not (inaudible).

And then we have Samuel L.
Jackson, and Angela Bassett,

starring in a play called "The
Mountaintop." It's about

Martin Luther King Jr. that was
produced on Broadway in 2011.

We have -- I'm not going to tell you
what they've been in because--

I'm just going to assume that you
know. And that, maybe we don't

all know who Samuel L. Jackson
and Angela Bassett are, but

if you don't, you should google
them. Your life will be better.

On the top right, we have Danielle
Brooks in the purple dress,

at the-- starring in the public
theaters of Shakespeare in

the Park production of
Much Ado about Nothing

as Beatrice.