Live Stage Performance

Watching a live stage performance is not something new to me. I was exposed to watching theatre since I was in secondary school. The first theatre that I watched is when I was in Form 3 in University of Science, Malaysia.

Watching a live stage performance differs from watching the movies or the television. To me, I enjoy watching theater more because the actions are live and there is no room for mistakes. In a television shows, you can make mistakes and the director can just simple cut and edit the faulty scene. Unfortunately, any directors of live stage performance won’t be able to do that. You can’t simple cut and edit a live performance!

Every time when you watch a live performance, even it is the same play, the sensational feeling and the perception of the play differs. This is because every time the actor and actresses are performing, the acting couldn’t be the same as it is a live performance. That is why to me, watching the live stage performance is much more interesting than watching movies because the feeling are real, and when there is a mistake or error in the performance, it is up to the actors and actresses to cover up their mistakes.

Perception of human's life

Human’s life is a cycle. In the “Four Ages of Man’, the poem explains how human’s life is actually a cycle that is predictable. We started out as a baby, pure and without any knowledge of anything about the world. Then when we became teenagers, we started to loose something. In the end, the poem states that “God shall wins’ which mean all of us will die eventually.

In the Sophocles’s riddle, it also stated about human’s growth. When you are a baby and still young, you will crawl. As you grow older, you will walk on your own feet. When it comes to the time when you are old, you will need to use a cane in order for you to walk properly.

Life’s Brief Candle also explains how man acts as an actor in this world and how the world is actually a big stage. Human’s life is just a cycle from the day that we were born. It is like a tunnel where the end of it the light that awaits us is Death itself.

Personally, I prefer he idea that was presented in the “Four Ages of Man”. Our life is very meaningful, even though we knew that one day God will win over us, we should not waste the life that He has given to us.

Reflectional on the Greek theatre

During the second class of the subject, I was introduced to the history of theatre. The handout that was given basically tells me more about what theater is all about.

In the first lesson, we were introduced to types of theatre, for example Greek theatre, Roman theatre, Medieval theatre and Restoration Drama. That was a lot of theatres. I didn’t know at first that theatres are divided into categories and era. What I know was theatre is just a theatre; a stage play performs by actors and actresses. I didn’t know that different types of theatres presenting different themes.

We also learned that in a tragedy theatre, it is just not tragedy; there are also a few types of tragedy. Apart from that, we were introduced to the dramatic and epic theatre, conventions of theatre and the stage characters. All of these things bring a different view and perception to the definition of theatre that I had in mind.

Before the class, I couldn’t imagine what I will earn about theatre in this drama class. Is it just reading and performing plays? Well, most likely I will need to read lots of plays and perhaps might need to perform one. It never occurs to my mind that drama is not just about reading the play. It is about understanding the whole play, including the stage directions and the performers.