Deus Ex Machina

I saw a play at the Lycoming College Theatre tonight - "Machina", it's called, and addresses the suppression of women - and indeed, of freedom of thought - in society. It was an excellent play, in a conceptual sense. The script was strong and I have to say, it's something that I would like to read at some point, assuming I can find a copy of the script somewhere.

In performance, it also had its strong points. Firstly, the acting was top-notch. It was impressive to watch the actors really lose themselves in their roles - both the ciphers and the one actual character. The one character - and there really was just one - there were points in the play during which she really sounded like River Tam, from Firefly. The disjointedness of her speech and the odd tangents she would set out on that were triggered by the most random words were just interesting to listen to. Kudos to the actress for her memorization skills.

The set was fascinating. Very spare and minimalist, and all metal. The chairs, the gates, the structure of the set - all metal bars. The technical director must have had a helluva time getting everything welded, because there was no way they could have ordered all of that. The light effects were also very striking, especially during the his-and-hers scenes. At one point it was green-light-go on the man and red-light-stop on the woman, and the woman eventually shifted to the green-light. Also, another scene there was a violent blue light on the man and an equally violent pink light on the woman. These sorts of lighting effects occurred throughout.

Now, that being said, I had a few criticisms. It's mostly nitpicky stuff that only another theatre person would really catch, but some of it is relevant to regular audiences. Firstly, the light grid was really high up and the audience seating, as well as the thrust stage platforms, were not moveable - I just didn't see a practical way for the techies to hang lights. Moreover, some of the light cords "tails" were left hanging down, which was just a little bit sloppy, I thought.

The pyrotechnics at the end didn't work very well, but pyrotechnics are always touch-and-go, so I don't really have any complaints. Just a note.

My biggest problem with the production was that the lead actress did not break character as soon as the lights came up for the curtain-call. Something I will always focus on is that you DROP the character as soon as the play is over. She didn't break character, though, and she still wasn't completely out of it when the actors walked off stage. That is dangerous. I cannot even begin to express how psychologically-damaging it is not to break character as soon as you can, especially when you're playing a role which requires you to lose so much of yourself.

That being said, it was a strong production. It was a very strong production and I enjoyed watching - it's something I would like to do someday, actually. But it could have been done even better.

The past few days at home have been very nice and peaceful. I've been gardening with Mom - and let me tell you, weeding the raspberry bed? Not fun. And I've been cooking a lot, too. I get tomorrow off, since Sawyer is making a roast, which I'm looking forward to. Monday, I'll make groundnut stew, I think.