the curious incident review

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

       During this fall season, I am honored to play a role in the amazing play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which is based on the book written by Mark Haddon and adapted into a play by Simon Stephens. This plays discussed a story happens around Christopher (acted by Amelia) who is a teenager boy with autism. One day, Christopher discovers that his neighbour’s, Mrs Shears, dog has been murdered, and during the process of finding who murdered the dog, he finds the truth that her mother has left he and his father has murdered the dog and has lied to him the whole time. The adventure of Christopher is tough and the conflict between he and his family are intense, but it also shows the deepest and most powerful connection between people which is love.

        The setting of the show in total is very simple, we used minimum amount of props and setting changes as we can in order to keep the flow of the play tight and thus encourage audiences’ engagement. At the beginning of play and throughout the play, we incorporated scenes that people walking around Christopher with different paces and gestures, and this directly represents how chaotic it is inside Christopher’s mind and how other people seems interruptive and confusing to him. Also, the blue lights that surround the stage and frame a rectangle contributes to the creation of Christopher’s world because in his mind, there are only right and wrong and everything are ordered and rational. The walking and confined stage remind me of the viewpoints that we did in class: the walking is about the tempo and high tempo shows more intense chaos while creating tension, and the rectangle stage is like the grids we did in class for exercise, and having gone viewpoints before really helps me to understand the meanings of the choices better. Another interesting director choice is that we put all the actors on both sides of the stage which firstly, reduce the time of scene change and furthermore creates a sense that Christopher is always “surrounded” by people because of his “abnormal” behaviors which represents his insecurity and uneasiness. But the choice has to be cautious as well because it’s easy for the audience to be distracted if the actors on the sides are changing clothes or fidgeting. 

        Because we were discussing moment work in the class before, I found that there are actually a lot of amazing moments that are incorporated in the show. One is when Christopher is recalling the beach moment with his mother while Ed discovering Christopher’s book. We divided the stage into three sections: Ed is on the stage right, reading the book, Judy is walking from upstage to downstage in the center, and Christopher and Shobian are having a conversation on the stage left. The division of the stage clearly shows that every moment is happening at different times and the change between each moment also involves the lighting change and sound change. When Judy is on the beach, the lighting is blue and there is beach music which creates a flowy and relaxing atmosphere and builds Judy’s character that she is dreamy and enjoy living in the fantasy, foreshadowing her choice of living her family to pursue a more carefree life. Also, we layered and ordered the moments at the same time, Judy came out when Christopher is describing her which is moment layering and they froze when Ed is reading the letter which is moment ordering. The combination of different approaches represents a contrast between reality and illusion which is emphasized a lot throughout the play. In Act 2, after Christopher left home, he always finds that Ed and Shobian talking to him. In order to distinguish his imagination to reality, we put dim wash spotlight on Ed and Shobian and bright full stage light when it is reality so that the audience can see the difference explicitly. 

       Acting as Judy, the most memorable moment I remembered is the interaction with Shobian when she is reading the letter. Judy and Shobian actually have an interesting dynamic between themselves because Shobian is the ideal mother figure for Christopher while Judy is the real mother. So when Shobian is reading the letter she is actually mad at Judy because she left Christopher, and Judy is trying to find excuses for herself and explain that she loves Christopher. We decided to let Christopher sit in the center stage, setting the train set and Judy and Shobian circling around him while speaking. The spatial relationship between Judy and Shobian really contributes to showing the dynamics, Judy is chasing Shobian because she wants to explain herself while Shobian wants to blame Judy so she goes after Judy which leads to the circling. Also, the level between Judy, Shobian and Christopher is also noticeable. Judy and Shobian are standing while Christopher is sitting which shows that they are posing their thoughts on Christopher because both of them have their own opinions towards the whole thing, but at the end, Judy sits next to Christopher which shows the reconciliation between them and explains the determination of Christopher of going to find his mother.

       The show is really intense in general, but I think it’s a great thing to present such an emotional and powerful play because it really strikes people and enables us to reflect and cherish the relationships we had. Also, all of my friends are impressed by the actors because they have deep understandings about the roles they played and are in character so well that allows the audience to be part of the story instead of just watching they performing. 

in class writing

in class writing

On monday, we did exercises about creating moments based on words from the     Laramie Project. Firstly, we created moments by ourselves, this process is interesting because we saw how different individuals interpret the same word differently which results in different elements incorporated in the moments we created. When Maddie was doing the word “indifference”, she used her facial expressions of disregarding and movements of turning around to show the narrative of giving no attention. And for me, I created a moment that I show absolutely no change in my gestures and facial expressions with a neutral stance to show that there is nothing affecting me. The different ways of interpreting “indifference” are both valid but have different dynamics, so when our group starts working on the project, we also hope to explore the different possibilities of expressing the solid idea with various theatrical elements to see what narratives can we create. 

Also, we incorporated one text into our moment. The text is powerful because it created the background and refined what is happening on stage. Because of the idea that every theatrical elements are equally important in telling the story, we want to explore how can text not dictate the narrative, instead, utilizing every element to express the story.

At the end of the class, we were trying to put every moment we created as small groups into a whole narrative. At first, we were confused because the connection between each moment is not explicit and there is not a clear storyline. But afterwards, we found the common theme in each moment that there is a symbol of power, so we decided to connect the stories through the sign of power, and we utilized the consecutive sequencing to put moments in order which is when one moment is happening, other moments freeze. This process helps me better understand how can we construct the narrative after creating moments. Also, it is vital to do it on our feet first instead of planning everything out because only through acting it out can we find what the natural instincts are and how can we improve that.

Different exercises

• the same thing we did in class, write words related to human nature and create small moments then connect them
• experimenting viewpoints with the lights, and see how the lighting affect what we interact with each other

collaborative project 1

For the collaborative project, our group decided to explore the narrative of movement: basically to what extent can the movement tell the story without the help of text which accords with the idea of Tectonic Theatre. Also, we want to focus on creating the story based on concrete text or idea and then express it with abstract elements including gestures, lighting etc. We have not ensured our stimuli yet, but we are really interested in a project called Rhythm 0 which is a performance art conducted by Marina Abramović. This social experiment involved Marina Abramović standing still  in the public and the audience were giving freedom to do whatever they want to do with Marina Abramović. At first people are pretty gentle, but gradually, people start doing brutal things like stabbing her. This experiment reveals how complex and disgusting human nature actually is. With the collaborative project, we want to explore the complexity of human nature by using expressive movements. And we are also going to apply the theories from Tectonic Theatre to help us create our project. For example, Tectonic Theatre emphasizes the equal importance of every theatrical elements so the play should not be dictated by the texts which is why we want to avoid using texts in our show. Also, we want to adopt the method of creating moments first then creating the narratives, so we are probably going to do exercise exploring some moments of movements or lighting or sound and then connect them, thus creating a piece.

During the class, we did the exercise with creating moments and building them together, thus creating a short story. This process really helps me understand the chapter I was presenting for the Moment Work. The book talks about three main techniques of constructing short narratives. First is consecutive sequencing which is putting the moments created before in order. This is what we did in class, when one moment is happening, other moments freeze and the story happens in chronological sequence. Then is moment layering which is basically layer one moment onto the other, so moments can happen at the same time. This creates a more complex narrative because moments have more relationships between each other. The last one is context which means creating another moment happening at first or at last. The context will frame what the audience perceive and sometimes even redefines the narratives. There are also other small techniques in creating narratives, and the two that stand out to me is keeping information from the audience and the Joe X test. Keeping information from audience means that producers don't have to over-explain everything that is happening on stage, and thus create suspense and invite audience’s engagement. So when we are sequencing the order of the moments, we have to think about when should we reveal the important knowledge to the audience. The Joe X test is also important because it emphasizes that audience are new to the story so we have to make the audience understand what is happening. It is also okay that audience doesn’t understand something, but we have to make sure that it’s only because we don’t want the audience to understand or we will reveal that later on in the scene. 

solo reflection

The solo performances of the three students are all very impressive and inspiring. Livi’s performance is the most striking and intense to me, because her incorporation of lighting and sound effects really creates the tension throughout the show which successfully express her idea of theatre of cruelty. In detail, the flicking of lighting shows how chaotic and uneasy Laura feels inside, and the different colors of light symbolizes the different emotions including anger, sorrow, regret etc that she is going through. And I really like how simple and focused her setting is which allows the audience to fully pay attention to her movement and emotion.

 Linda’s show is simple but it expresses the ideology of the alienation between the audience and the play clearly. Her choice of applying the narrator not only reminds the audience that we are watching a fake show, but also constantly distance herself from the story that she is telling. And I think she definitely chooses everything that appears on the stage with clear reasons. For example, the lovely puppet clearly makes contrast to the dark story which creates an interesting dynamic and each puppet, according to her, symbolizes some characteristics of the character which express Brecht’s idea of symbolism. 

Willjam’s performance is strongly emotional which accords with Stanislavski’s theory of realism. His beginning was so intense although we didn’t see his actual image, we can feel his anger through the sound and the red light which creates an atmosphere of tense. But when he walked out of the room he suddenly sat on the ground, and the light changed to blue. His level and the light show how sad and desperate he is clearly. Also, when he was explaining about the dog, he was very close to the audience and it seems like he is making eye contact with the audience which allows the audience to fully “join in” the moment and relate to what Ed is going through.

Those performances are all successful and the audience can really tell how devoted and talented they all. As a theatre student, I have learnt more about what solo performance is and how should I approach it, also, the techniques they used and the director choices they made are very beneficial to learn.