Time is essence

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is three acts dedicated to the dynamics of the city life in America. I absolutely love this play. It is so moving and teaches us all an important lesson. This play truly shows how to appreciate life, and not let it get by you before it is over. To take opportunity, and control ones like and just love to live was the message I got. Wilder really showed interest and made a point on two important things: relationships and time. Already discussing how time can steal life away from us, it also shows how all people take it for granted. Also, Seeing how this play was written in the 1930’s, it is amazing to see all the things that have carried over into this generation. such as in David Kelley’s television drama Picket Fences or the interactions between characters in Stephen King’s Needful Things. This play was so well written, always keeping me on edge and wondering what happened next. My favorite part of this production is just the simple fact that it has a valuable message sent out, and this message can be applied to everyone. 

Simple

I don't know. I liked this play, but at the same time I did not. It's weird. It did not have the usual drama or action or anything like that which is what I usually like and am used to. It was simple. I guess it threw me off a little because everything else we have read so far has had so much drama in it. This is was just so random to me. Anyway, at the same time I did like it because it was simple. There were no dramatic problems. It was just the way life went. The play was literally slice of life. We saw slices of these townsfolk's lives, and I liked. I realize that I am repeating myself, but I do not really have a good explanation for it. it was simple, but it still had meaning. The meaning was just to appreciate life more. However, it was not an over the top you must go out there and live your life to the fullest. It was a simple "hey you should be happy your alive" type of meaning. At least to me it was which was really nice. I was never a fan of things throwing their meaning into your face. I am a fan of subtlety.

Also, can I say that the stage manager is awesome? He was just so chill through the whole deal, and was just so natural. I also really liked how he filled in for other characters which amused me, and then became a character himself. He just seemed to flow and make the whole thing work. He also came off as a nice guy which is always a plus. He was down to earth, chill, and helpful. he was definitely my favorite hands down.

There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is three acts dedicated to the dynamics of rural America. Having been written in the 1930s, it is impressive to find a similar account of small town society as it is portrayed in modern times, such as in David Kelley’s television drama Picket Fences or the interactions between characters in Stephen King’s Needful Things. Grover’s Corners, the setting of the play, is a small town in the Northeast, filled with Republicans and Protestant Christians. I found it interesting to note that more of the town was indifferent to politics than religion, demonstrating the mentality that matters of faith are more important than government operations or reforms. The play also explores the theme of attraction, with the highly ambitious Emily falling in love with the risk-taking George. The underlying sexism is important, as demonstrated when Joe Crowell expresses his distaste at the idea of his teacher getting married or by the fact that George is elected President while the more academically-advanced Emily must accept the title of Secretary/Treasurer. The meta-theatrical element of Our Town can be seen in the character of the Stage Manager, whose multiple incarnations and ability to command other characters give him an almost God-like presence. I was thrilled when the Stage Manager gave me permission to go have a smoke at the end of Act I. Overall, Our Town reinforces an appreciation for life through its depiction of Emily and her short, yet happy, life and also through anecdotes concerning Joe Crowell and Wally Webb.

Time is of the essence

The structure and setting of Our Town was quite different from the other plays we have read in class being that the time span of the play covers years of experiences. I enjoyed the fact that it showed major milestones that occur in life and how quickly those moments pass us by. As humans we usually have no respect for time . This play helps the reader realize that all time is of the essence and that we should FEEL and embrace every moment and memory that were create in life because once it's gone , it's gone no turning back. I feel as if life is a much more enjoyable experience when we embrace each and every moment whether good or bad.

Our Town

I absolutely love this play. It is so moving and teaches us all an important lesson. I suppose I love this play so much because I fully believe in living life to the fullest and not letting opportunities just pass you by. I found the acts to be very nicely organized. The first act is about early life, the second about finding love and getting married, and the last about death. There is something so touching about the way Emily reflects on her life. Life is short and you really have to seize and appreciate every moment. I love stories that deal with appreciating life and inspire you to live to the fullest. I found a similar theme in the musical Rent: by the end of the story you realize that one of the most important things is to live for today and cherish your friends. We all need to realize that we do not have forever and we need to make the most of the time we have on earth. I truly love this play because appreciating life is something that is very important to me. This play emphasizes how important friendships and relationships are and how we must appreciate the people in our lives. Fun fact: My high school yearbook senior quote was "There's only us, there's only this; Forget regret or life is yours to miss. No other road, no other way, no day but today" :) Haha. Carpe Diem!

Victims of Time

I absolutely loved this play. There is nothing more important in life for everyone to understand that we are not immortal and that time goes by. We have a deadline and it's important to build relationships and enjoy what time has give us. Even though time throughout the play was a villain, it was a gracious one. Wilder did such a unique job writing this script.
I loved the role of the stage manager as he played the time keeper, but reached out the audience every chance he could. I also liked how the play was separated in three acts according to stages in life: daily life, love and marriage, and death.
Wilder capitalized on two important things: relationships and time. Already discussing how time can rob us of life, it also shows how all people take it for granted. After reading this, I was intensely nostalgic. As for relationships, every character formed one with another character. Be it neighborly friends, marriage, friends, school mates, or the milkman; their whole lives depended on the companionship of one another and to maintain that friendship.
At the end of reading, I bet everyone can agree that there is just something so timeless about this whole play.

Wilder's Wake Up Call.

I love this play!!! I like how it stereotypes our lives, and brings to light how  people just take it for granted, and just " go with the flow". Wilder sort of screams: wake up! He does so through Emily's character. in fact, the last act was my favorite. Emily philosophizes about life so greatly, and her love for it is sooo passionate, that she refuses to forget it. She is also talking about how life should be valued. I liked how the Stage Manager answered  her question of if humans appreciate their life while they are living, that only saints and poets do a little. It is very sad, but veeeeery true. The valuing and living the life to the fullest makes me recall Waiting for Gadot. I think Beckett there also wanted to wake people up from passive surviving, always waiting for something that would make their life better. But Gadot, what ever he may be, never comes; so the characters just wasted all the time they were waiting. In Our  Town Emily dies at an early age, and only then she realizes everything she had done wrong : she let her life just pass by in vain. This truly is a great play, that has definitely become my favorite this semester.

Out Town

I found Our Town to be a very interesting an intriguing read. I found that there were so many themes within the plot that caught my attention. There were many instances where I found myself analyzing the relationship between the characters and the message that the playwright is striving to portray. I think that one of the most important motifs mentioned is the importance of relationships between humanity. Even from the beginning of the play, the Stage Manager seeks to establish a relationship with the audience. The play’s titles assess the importance of community and companionship. I loved the fact that Wilder does uses the theatre in a realistic manner. Many of the scenes portrayed in the play are moments that would occur in real life: a milk man delivers milk, a family breakfast, two people fall in love. However, I found it interesting that the author sought to disconnect the audience from the theatre so that the message of the play would be ore prevalent.

"Top" boys.....

I'm not going to lie, I got really bored reading this play. I liked it, and the ideas David Mamet had  put forth, but am just not very interested in this theme. I love Mamet's plays ( like Oleana), so I was very excited to become equated with this one. It was horrifying to see the relationships that exist in sales firms like the one here. It is such an ugly business, where everyone is for themselves only, doing anything to get ahead. They have to lie to their potential clients to make their money. Their world is based on manipulations and scams. Mamet explosively criticizes that sort of work ethics. But it is true that you have to be brutal and heartless in that industry.  I know I would never be able to do that, because that goes against by personal moral code.

Top Guys?

This play was completely confusing to me. I did not like the way it was written. The characters, I'm guessing, are supposed to be cutting each other off in their dialogue but it just didn't "flow well" to me. In top girls, many women were bickering back and forth all at once and it still seemed real and natural. I suppose this story was more so written to be performed. I'm sure it would be much easier to understand and work much better if it were actually coordinated and spoken out loud. I did notice that it was similar to Top Girls but instead with all males. This play was about being the best, or being "on top" and how having a way with words can aid that. Speech and being able to convince and persuade others is a large aspect to gaining success. Profanity was pretty prominent in the play, being introduced to the reader in the first few lines. The profanity in this play definitely took me by surprise. This is the first play that kind of pushed it with cursing. I suppose the profanity in a way added to the masculinity of the play. This play was not really my favorite, It was somewhat confusing to read and did not really interest me.

Glengarry Glen Rose blog

Glengarry Glen Rose was difficult to read with all of the broken and interrupted dialogue. To be quite honest I was completely confused. This play also had a lot of profanity in it, which is something we haven’t seen in most of the plays. It is also a cast of all men no females.

I feel as if his play would be easier to watch than it was to read. Just like the last two plays we read I guess this play can be considered Epic theatre because I definitely did not make any types of connections with any of the characters. Though, I was confused while reading it I can state that some of it reminded me of Top Girls. The idea of doing whatever it takes to be at the top. Capitalism fosters greed in this play just as it did in Top Girls. It is interesting to see it from a man’s perspective versus a female’s perspective as in Top Girls. I am pretty sure the men in the class will have a lot of comments to make on this subject.

A Confusing play

In my opinion, this play was very difficult to read. I believe that it would be easier to watch this play rather than read it. At times I was very confused and had a hard time distinguishing the meaning behind some of the dialogue. I also found that many of the characters represented a significant entity in society.
I thought that the entire play was a negative commentary on the effects of capitalism and greed. I felt that the Author of this play, Mamet paid close attention to human behavior which made the play very believable but still confusing.

And that's our life. That's it. Where is the moment?

David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, for all the hype that I feel surrounds it and him, was truly a let-down. The most that I could find to appreciate was how the piece felt so much more modern than prior plays we have read. Like Top Girls and True West, something in the dialogue and the settings gives the impression that the piece was written for television. While Ibsen, such as in Hedda Gabler, might have appreciated the pauses that characterized the speech patterns of the early twentieth century, Mamet manages to capture the overlapping nature of contemporary conversation, a concept that Churchill seemed to recognize and yet negatively associate solely with women.

However, the plot (if you can find it) left much to be desired. Essentially, four salesmen hate the company that they work for and are either trying to outsell one another or plot the downfall of the company. While such loathing of one’s employers is an easily relatable topic, I am afraid it cannot constitute an entire storyline, and if it can, Mamet does a terrible job of trying. The play does not seem to be isolationist theatre, however it is impossible to feel anything towards any of the characters. Moss and Roma are simultaneously obnoxious and oily; Levene is desperate; Lingk and Aronow are naïve and pitiful; Williamson and Baylen are (for lack of a better term) assholes. A majority of the dialogue, specifically when Moss or Roma speak, is repetitive or, worse, altogether pointless. The first act was conveniently to the point in setting up the characters, albeit Scene 3 was ridiculously difficult to read, but the second act, which was almost twice as long, was truly boring. In all honesty, I have no idea how it all ends, except that Roma is still self-deluded and intolerable. Overall, I prefer to think Mamet must have better work than this to have earned the reputation that precedes him.

Not Bad

I found this play extremely interesting. I liked following the different men and their interactions with each other. The style reminded me highly of Waiting for Godot because of the way there was very little movement written in the play. The characters and sets were also barely described. Not describing the characters at all left room for casting giving anyone a chance to be a character which I liked. I was never a fan of strict appearance unless it was necessary. The lack of description was a mixed blessing I think. The set designers could create whatever they wanted as long as it went with the location described in the brief phrase before the scene starts. However, the fact that it did leave so much room for creativity can sometimes be difficult because set designers can do whatever. The lack of action probably was to let the actors do what was natural to them which would then appear natural on the character.However, while reading it, the play sometimes seemed to be a little boring because in my mind the characters looked too stationary at times. Besides that, the play was cleverly written and the characters were "real" businessmen acting as corrupted businessmen would. The ending was odd though and left me on a weird note. I would have liked to see all of the story instead of just having it cut off like that instead of having to imagine it. Either way, I enjoyed the play, and I can live with imagining what happens after.

Talking the talk

This play is so refreshing from Top Girls the other week. I thought it was clever and interesting to read. Even though I said it was interesting, I did get bored at some parts. The fact that it was written like True West helped a lot. I liked how Mamet wrote the play. It was all about the talk between people, essentially the back and forth. It nice for it to be short since there was only two acts. I also thought it was peculiar that the second act was drastically long, but it was necessary for the climax of the whole play.

The characters were equally interesting because you could clearly tell who were the strong salesmen, the weak salesmen, and the people they resented. Levene just reeked of desperation and I pitied him the most. It was sad to see that he had a great career but then lost it from the bad streak and robbing the office. Moss was fun to read just because he was so good with his wording to back Aaronnow into possibly robbing the bank. Roma was also fun to follow. He was my favorite because of his elaborate sale to Lingk and how he improvised the whole Dr. Ray Morton out of air to make Lingk believe that he was actually doing something important instead of avoiding the whole situation.

The basic messages I got out of this play were the importance of how to talk and success versus failure in the business world. The importance of talking involves how to talk to people to persuade them that they need what the salesman is selling. That essentially determines the success or failure of the salesmen. If they can’t give a good speech or out-wit a person, they won’t be able to make a sale.

Costs of being "on top".

Ok, I definitely loved Churchill's idea to have different women from different centuries and having a diner together as one of the scenes. I thought it was a very cool concept. I liked the play, and i think it is sort of relative to today. But I do think that she exaggerated  to say that women that achieved success pay a cost of not having a family, only broken relationships. I do not think it is entirely true.  I believe it is possible to try to manage your personal life and career. Now, I do agree with the author in the fact that most of the successful woman do not have children. I think children deserve and ultimately receive a lot of sacrifice and limitless dedication. As a career oriented person ( at least right now), I do not plan to have children myself. Especially in this artistic industry, become I an actress,  a playwright,  a director, or all the above. However I do want  to continue to have a deep loving relationship in my life. I do think to love and to be loved in return is an essential core part of a happy life. Over all this play touches the most feminist issues that are still actual today. Like advising a young woman who is looking for a job, not to tell the potential interviewer that she is engaged ( because it is assumed that women have children right after getting married). There are many more aspects of an unfair battles of competing for the positions that men intend to have. I cant wait to talk about it in class.

Top Girls

This play was interesting in a lot of ways. I liked how it started it off with strong women from throughout different cultures. Gret was absolutely hilarious because I felt like she was so old and out of it, but she was a strong feminist at heart. I also liked Joan just because she got away with pretending to be the pope, I'm sorry but that is all sorts of badass. The first scene was obviously there to show the differences between submissive women and strong women who don't let men hinder their success. They were all very interesting women. I didn't think the whole play was going to be about Marlene and the positive/ negative aspects of her success. Her daughter Angie actually quite scared me at times. She was thick but murderous for something she would never achieve. I still wonder if she ended up killing Joyce. I honestly liked the fight in the last scene with Joyce and Marlene because that underlined the whole point of the play: the women who don't care for the power and those women that do. I loved Marlene's character for her ballsy ways and getting things done, but she didn't have anything else to live for, which in the end saddens me. She obviously won't be able to help Angie, much less take care of her. I would've loved to know what happened after the play ended.

Not a top Play

Top Girls was to me a very odd play. I enjoyed the first act because it gave the history of all these women, and they all had very interesting stories. Although, reading the lines correctly gave me a headache every now and then, and I think hearing it live would be ridiculous because everyone speaks over one another. I also had the problem of forgetting who was who because of how they overlapped one another and the dialogue never stopped. I also did not know if the women were alive or dead at first. It becomes apparent that they are dead, but I then I began to wonder where they were and why they were together in the first place. I also did not understand why the first act was in the play in the first place and why only Marlene appeared again, but the other women were never heard of again. Reading other people's blogs, I see that the first act was suppose to get the point across that women are better than men, but I still do not see that very well. The rest of the play was alright, but it was not the best. The fact the Marlene was Angie's mother was interesting, but not enough that I was engrossed in the play. I very bored with it at times and found myself skimming some of the pages because I stopped caring. I would have rather read a play about the women at dinner. They seemed way more interesting than Angie and her problem.

Top ladies, not mennnnn

In the play Top girls, by Caryl Churchill is very oddly written play. In the start of my reading, I was very confused as to whether or not the characters were actually alive on earth, or dead in another planet, honestly. There were so many characters that I also had trouble distinguishing who was who, and what roles they held. Also, while I was reading and the script progressed, I never quite understood the first act, why all these women were together talking about their past and all these lovers they had, and their dramatic stories. I thought it was odd to bring these women up and then drop them all over again. Then I realized its because as the play moved on, it kept displaying the same type of message, that men are ideally better than women. Women cannot be a boss over a man because that would be unacceptable, and women can only be so smart. I also found it very sad that Marlene gave her daughter to her sister, and her sister Joyce doesn’t even properly take care of her. She puts her down, treats her of dumb, and does not seem to love her as her own child. Overall, this play is creative but very special. I can’t quite say I enjoyed reading it… It was very long and kind of hectic and boring all at the same time.

Freud would have a field day with this one.

Caryl Churchill, through Top Girls, takes a blow at feminism that not even the existence of Sarah Palin could match. In Churchill’s mind, apparently, women in businesses are, more or less, jokes of society, whether they be power-hungry, child-abandoning, self-empowered women (such as Marlene, Nell, or Wynn) or scheming, slightly-stupid underage runaways (such as Shona or Angie). As a matter of fact, she takes stabs at womanhood in general with her stereotypical portrayals of the tragically-unhappy-with-her-predetermined-position-in-life, control freak Joyce (and Pope Joan) and the desperate, subservient housewife Mrs. Kidd (and Griselda). Following this theme, Nijo is irrationally accepting of her position as a full-bred prostitute, Isabella Bird is seen as eventually accepting her place as a housewife in the British Isles, and Dull Gret, who I would not be shocked to learn was Churchill’s disgusting attempt at a homosexual character, was both boorishly male-hating and only capable of occasional caveman-inspired outbursts of dialogue. The disgusting menstruation reference between Kit and Angie seems to be further evidence of Churchill's own self-loathing for her sex.

That being said in concerns to the subject matter itself, let me turn attention to her pretentiously specific speech patterns. I have never seen a playwright make such a deal out of overlapping dialogue as Churchill did in this. I can only think that this was saying that women are too busy speaking over one another to listen and get anything accomplished. Considering she was a successful female herself, I have to imagine this was a poor attempt at self-satire and not truly a social commentary on the inadequacies of women.