Concluding Statement

Throughout this semester I have grown a lot as a person. I have had to face some rough and challenging obstacles in my path, but overall I have been able to gather that although these obstacles were a major pain they helped me grow into a stronger individual. I will be honest, at the beginning of this course I thought it would be a waste of my time from what my friends had told me the class covered whenever they took it. I thought it was going to be a review class for me since I came from a theatre background where we would be learning about the theatre terms like prop, flat, down stage, gel, sight line, but it turned out to be much more. I got to learn about all different cultures and how they view theatre as art or even just an everyday part of life. From learning all these different types of theatre I also learned different perspectives on how to view art and even life in general. Although something may seem strange and unusual at first there is always something beautiful and unique about it once you take the time to break it apart into smaller pieces and examine those pieces slowly. By taking a similar theory I have been able to understand and appreciate the world around me more than what I did before. An example of this would be a rainy day for instance. Before I would have just seen a rainy day as an inconvenience, but now I can see the beauty in it. If it wasn’t for the rainy days the sunny days would not be as special. In addition to making the sunny days seem better it makes the nature around us more beautiful too. In addition to seeing the world around me like that now I can view people and art like that too. Even if I am not particularly fond of a piece of artwork there is always something about it I can relate to something I like such as common shapes, colors, textures, patterns, etc. In addition to seeing artwork like that now I see people like that too. Instead f seeing people as a quantity you either like or dislike I now break them down into smaller pieces so that I can no longer say I don’t like someone. I can figure out exactly why I did not see eye to eye with someone and I can acknowledge the differences between us, but appreciate the similarities too. Basically from learning about all the different appearances theatre can take on I have learned to appreciate and see the beauty in everything around me. I have learned that instead of labeling something as ugly, or saying I don’t like it just because of its surface value it is better to break it down into smaller pieces and then I can find everything’s inner beauty even if it is not initially evident to me.

In addition to learning a new view of the world around me I also learned a new view for the world of theatre and art in general. Before this class I never really thought about the theatre practices of other cultures and countries before. In a sense I thought these practices were a way of the past and were lost now. I ignorantly thought that all theatres were like those of the ones I visited and was involved in. Without taking this class I would not have learned exactly how theatre has evolved throughout the ages and how different cultures and time periods have their own alterations to the theatre set up.

Another interesting concept this class has made me realize is where exactly is the separation of real life and theatre. If you think about it we are all characters in a production we don’t even realize is going on. We all get up every morning and style ourselves according to how we want the world A.K.A. our audience to see us as. If you think about it we are all novice actors in our everyday lives. We pretend to get along with those we really do not care for, we act according to how we are suppose to considering our job titles, we costume ourselves to that our director’s A.K.A. employers or audience (the everyday public) see in a particular light. In a sense we are all members of the largest theatre production ever produced and many of us do not even realize it. In addition to us all being unknowing actors, there are actors who live double lives. They act as “themselves” in their everyday lives and then go to work where they are transformed into another character for the audience to view. In conclusion, this course has just made me really think about how the concepts of theatre, art and life in general are tied so very close together.