Shakespeare Wallah

Shakespeare Wallah was the first movie that I watch during my drama class this semester. It was an adaptation from a Shakespeare play. My first impression was uh oh I think this is going to be a boring movie but I was wrong. It turns out to be interesting. It was a movie about cross-cultural beliefs. The hero, a Hindustani falls for two girls; one is an Indian actress who’s very cheeky and matured. The second girl was Liz, also an actress whose characteristic differs from Manjula, the Indian girl. I really like the movie because it shows how cultures and beliefs do play an important role in our daily lives, even when we are making the decision to find the right person to spend our lifetime with.

Pygmalion

When I first watch this movie, I really like it. it was a movie about a flower girl whose from the lower class society who transform herself to mingle with the upper class society. Liza, the flower girl seems to challenge Henry Higgins, s professor to teach her how to speak standard English and how to become a lady. Henry took the challenge and did manage to teach her everything that she asks for. Through the process of teaching Liza, Henry grows fond of her and eventually falls for her. Luckily, Liza seems to love him back. As for me, the important message of the story is that when you learn a language, is does not mean you only learn the language. It also mean you learn the culture of the language. As we can see in the movie, Liza feels awkward and out of place when she visited her old neighbourhood. Now that she is a lady, she feels that she doesn’t belong there anymore.

Review on Macbeth

In class Dr Edwin had taught us what is tragic flaw. Personally I think I do understand well what tragic flaw is. But Dr Edwin had insisted the whole class to watch Macbeth, as an example of a tragic flaw movie. Yes I have read Macbeth before but the experience of watching and reading is totally different. I was quite sleepy during the first half of the movie. To me, reading the play is far more interesting. Well, perhaps it is because of the unfamiliar actors and actresses. Things started to change when the plot of the movie is changing. When reading the play, we know that Macbeth die in the end. Watching the way Macbeth dies on the screen makes the play livelier. His tragic flaw was expressed greatly when the scene where they cut of his head was revealed. After watching this scene I did truly understand what tragic flaw means, falling from the highest, respected place in the society to the bottom where nobody notice you. That was happened to Macbeth, from a king to someone who is doomed to die.

Why Teiresias is a powerful seer

Teiresias was a priest of Zeus, and as a young man he encountered two snakes mating and hit them with a stick. He was then transformed into a woman.As a woman, Teiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, including Manto. Tiresias's background was important, both for his prophecy and his experiences. Greek mythology contained other hermaphroditic figures (including Hermaphroditus), but Tiresias was fully male and then fully female. Also, prophecy was a gift given only to the priests and priestesses. Therefore, Teiresias offered Zeus and Hera evidence and gained the gift of male and female priestly prophecy.

As a seer, Teiresias was regarded as inerrant. In Greek literature, Teiresias's pronouncements are always gnomic but never wrong. He is generally extremely reluctant to offer his visions like most Oracles. Often when his name is attached to a mythic prophecy, it is introduced simply to supply a personality to the generic example of a seer. In Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Oedipus, the king of Thebes, calls upon Teiresias to aid in the investigation of the killing of the previous king Laios. At first, Teiresias refuses to give a direct answer and instead hints that the killer is someone Oedipus really does not wish to find. However, after being provoked to anger by Oedipus' accusation first that he has no foresight and then that Teiresias had had a hand in the murder, he reveals that in fact it was Oedipus himself who had committed the crime. Outraged, Oedipus throws him out of the palace, but then afterwards realises the truth. Thus, Teiresias was seen as a powerful seer because the downfall of the mighty Oedipus was seen by Teiresias.

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.