On Jan 15th about half of our class went to Richard III and half went to Mother Courage at The Fomenko Studio. This show was preformed on their smaller stage and it was one of the smallest spaces we went to while on this trip (so far). The set reminded me of a white indoor patio. The whole wall of the patio that was facing the audience was glass panes and there was a piano against the right wall that they used for most of the songs that get preformed throughout the production.
Instead of having a cart on stage that moved with the characters while they are traveling they decided to just have a storage space on the side of the theater open up to reveal all the things that Mother Courage kept with her to sell.
I had mixed feelings about this production. On one had I really enjoyed it. I loved the music they wrote to put with the words. A lot of the songs were staged inside the patio with a band of accompanying instruments, and they really put on a show for each of the songs, making it very clear that each song was its own and kinda separate from the story line in its own way. They also used varying genres of music that kept the songs lively and kind of pulled you out of the action you were witnessing on stage. A lot of times they would have a quite moment on stage but then the music would start up really upbeat and loud that kinda shocked me sometimes.
Katrina would step to the side to stand in front of a pillar to sometimes narrate and would nod or smile to the stage director whenever she was ready for the voice over for the sign language to start. I enjoyed seeing that and it got a good couple chuckles out of me.
At the very end of the show Mother Courage comes out and sets her scarf on the ground and crouches next to it as she puts barbie dolls and cigarettes on the scarf, desperately trying to get passer buyers to buy them. That final image that they decided to have the audience leave on is ment to help you empathize with Mother Courage and also make you think about all the people that (especially prevalent in Moscow where we saw the show, but also any major city in the world) sit or stand on the corner trying to sell you things from their pockets. That these people haven't always been in that situation, it really humanized the people we pass all the time on the street that so many of us just choose to ignore.
What I mainly didn't like about this production was the scene when (spoiler!) Katrina dies. They had lady voice over for all the characters in that scene and the wife and husband of the house were dressed up as a bush and you couldn't see their faces. And how Katrina died I found really cheesy, cause the soldier that killed her drastically overacted the shooting of the gun and making the noise for it while Katrina kinda did this flopping in the wind movement for too long and then fell over. I didn't much care for the whole approach of that scene because it did alienate me, but u felt like it alienated me too much compared to the rest of the show. Its hard for me to understand why they chose to just have that scene really disconnect with the audience. I think it would have been better if the whole play had been done in as drastic of a way as that or if they evened it out a little.
And i do think this production did a good job of making me think about the events and the people and their motivations so, I guess it did for me what the director had probably been intending for it to, but I did find the last scene hard to watch.
Instead of having a cart on stage that moved with the characters while they are traveling they decided to just have a storage space on the side of the theater open up to reveal all the things that Mother Courage kept with her to sell.
I had mixed feelings about this production. On one had I really enjoyed it. I loved the music they wrote to put with the words. A lot of the songs were staged inside the patio with a band of accompanying instruments, and they really put on a show for each of the songs, making it very clear that each song was its own and kinda separate from the story line in its own way. They also used varying genres of music that kept the songs lively and kind of pulled you out of the action you were witnessing on stage. A lot of times they would have a quite moment on stage but then the music would start up really upbeat and loud that kinda shocked me sometimes.
Katrina would step to the side to stand in front of a pillar to sometimes narrate and would nod or smile to the stage director whenever she was ready for the voice over for the sign language to start. I enjoyed seeing that and it got a good couple chuckles out of me.
At the very end of the show Mother Courage comes out and sets her scarf on the ground and crouches next to it as she puts barbie dolls and cigarettes on the scarf, desperately trying to get passer buyers to buy them. That final image that they decided to have the audience leave on is ment to help you empathize with Mother Courage and also make you think about all the people that (especially prevalent in Moscow where we saw the show, but also any major city in the world) sit or stand on the corner trying to sell you things from their pockets. That these people haven't always been in that situation, it really humanized the people we pass all the time on the street that so many of us just choose to ignore.
What I mainly didn't like about this production was the scene when (spoiler!) Katrina dies. They had lady voice over for all the characters in that scene and the wife and husband of the house were dressed up as a bush and you couldn't see their faces. And how Katrina died I found really cheesy, cause the soldier that killed her drastically overacted the shooting of the gun and making the noise for it while Katrina kinda did this flopping in the wind movement for too long and then fell over. I didn't much care for the whole approach of that scene because it did alienate me, but u felt like it alienated me too much compared to the rest of the show. Its hard for me to understand why they chose to just have that scene really disconnect with the audience. I think it would have been better if the whole play had been done in as drastic of a way as that or if they evened it out a little.
And i do think this production did a good job of making me think about the events and the people and their motivations so, I guess it did for me what the director had probably been intending for it to, but I did find the last scene hard to watch.
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