How To Make A Theater Play Critique With No Prior Experience?
July 12th, 2010 by admin | Filed under sports.So I have an assignment in my theater class where I have to make a critique of a play (any). I have no prior experience. For my critique I need to include theater words. I don’t know where should I begin. I’m going to a play next week and I don’t know if I should jot down notes while watching the play, or after.
What are your recommendations?
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Tags: Critique, Experience, Play, Prior, Theater
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Hello;
You are so lucky — first theatre play critique assignment and no experience — I tell you it doesn’t get any better than this.
You have fresh eyes and you are innocent … these are wonderful characteristics, sadly they are gone too soon.
Okay, here is the best advice I can give. It takes weeks of hard work by dozens of people to make this two hour presentation.
See if you can schedule a few minutes to talk to some of the people involved explain your assignment and that you are new to this:
All plays have a publicity person — their job is to help publicize the play — they will bend over backwards to help you! The director will be happy to explain a few of the ideas he had in doing his job. Any actor/actress will be thrilled to talk about their part. If you can talk to the stage manager you will get a wealth of information about the technical nuances of the play. Even the crew can be very helpful. Keep in mind these people are doing what they love and they will talk your ear off about every aspect of the production.
Go see the play … I wouldn’t take notes during the play, I would look for the items the people mentioned and if there is an intermission make some notes then. Be kind in your review and mention the people who helped you by name (they love to get recognition for their hard work).
Best of Luck,
Bill
P.S. Be Honest!
You need to make observations:
What do you see when you first walk into the theatre? What does the set say about the environment of the play? Is there pre-show music? Does the music set the tone of the play you are about to see? Observe the characters and the acting? Are they believable? Does one character stand out above the rest? What do the costumes say about the character and the time period of the play? Do they help to further establish the characters?
Was the lighting effective? Does the lighting help establish the time of day? Does the lighting help with the mood of what is going on within the scene?
The scenic design: Did it help to establish where the characters are? Was it believable? Was it realistic or did it merely give the suggestion of the place the characters where?
Was the production overall seamless? Did the scenes flow effortlessly into one another? Did one area of the production overshadow all the others? (meaning the acting was great, the costumes were terrific, but the scenic design or lighting took away from the production as a whole).
You have to have a keen eye to critique a show. You have to be aware of what you are looking for and what you are looking at. If you understand the basic words and knowledge of theatre you should do a great job. With every comment you make about the show you have to back it up by giving examples and justification for why you are making the comment.
Example: During the sound of music the voices of the actors were passionate and their songs were well executed, but my eye was drawn to the waving cyc that had several wrinkles and wasn’t stretched out. Due to the cyc not being tied down each time there was a transition in the songs or a scene I could see that actors must have been rushing by to get to their places because there was a ripple rolling along the back of the stage like a wave crashing on the beach.
Does that help?