Parable of the Sower

Parable of the Sower - Will

Through the reading of the Parable of the Sower and then having the opportunity to attend the opera on Friday night, I was anxious as to how Toshi would portray such a complex plot into a simple opera. I was impressed with the performance and was even more so thrown off by the sense of comedic relief that was portrayed at times throughout the opera. Stemming from the initial reading, I was most intrigued by the presence of climate change and the look into a future with a breakdown in society, largely in part to climate change induced natural disasters. Lauren takes such an awareness to climate change and how it affects people, to the point she creates her own religion called Earthseed which is open to adapting to changes in order to find ways to survive in the changing world.

Seeing Lauren and younger individuals deal with the affects of climate change reminded me of Greta Thunberg and her School Strike for Climate Change movement that began in 2018 in Sweden. Heatwaves and fires in Sweden pushed 9th grade Greta to take a strike from school until something changed in the Swedish parliament. Although Greta wasn't fighting climate change as hands-on as Lauren was, she was fighting her own battle, with efforts such as starting the Fridays for Future movement, and speaking at international climate conferences and meeting with world leaders. I have attached a video below of Greta talking about her main reasons for starting her movement. It hits home for me as I have a lot of extended family from Australia.

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Politics and Theatrics

This post will focus on the correlations between politics and theater. Augusto Boal makes it a point to highlight how theater is political which makes me question: is politics is theater? Boal believes that by nature humans are political and since theater is a result of human activities it too is political. Politics and theater tend to portray different messages to society. For example, theater is not generally taken as seriously by people in society while politics is taken very seriously and impacts all people. Elections, voting, and media portrayals are all outlets in which politics is performed. If politics is a form of theater, then politicians would be the ones performing the theatrics. During the 2020 presidential debates between Donald Trump and President Biden, many people tuned in to hear out the political perspectives hashed out in real time. Eventually, as the debate continued the audience quickly realized that it was turning into a political spectacle based on ho...

Las Hijas de Violencia and Pussy Riot - Bella Blog Post #3

One thing that stuck with me from this week's reading was Las Hijas de Violencia. It reminded me of the forum theatre we did on Wednesday. More specifically, the power of confrontation against the oppressor. I think a lot of the time, they(oppressors) don't expect such a reaction which gives the oppressed a sort of power. I also think the use of the confetti gun instead of a violent weapon. In this way, the oppressed doesn’t become the oppressor through gaining their freedom. Then the addition of the song adds another element of surprise. The use of punk amplifies the harasser looking ridiculous as mentioned. They're bringing active energy to the problem of street harassment. I think their movement works because it makes noise and not just audibly. The article mentions taking inspiration from Pussy Riot. They are a Russian feminist protest and performance group that performs guerilla gigs of punk rock music in public places. They wear neon balaclavas and acid-bright tigh...

El Teatro Campesino - Will Blog 2

Yolanda Broyles-González's article "El Teatro Campesino and the Mexican Popular Performance Tradition" looks at the development and significance of the El Teatro Campesino theater company founded in the 1960s to support the United Farm Workers movement. Broyles-González argues that El Teatro Campesino draws on a long history of Mexican popular performance traditions like carnival and religious pageantry, as well as European avant-garde theater techniques. She examines how El Teatro Campesino's performances incorporated elements of these traditions, such as satire, physical comedy, and music, to engage audiences and create a sense of community. Broyles-González also explores how the theater company's performances challenged dominant cultural narratives and offered a vision of social change that centered the experiences and struggles of Chicano farm workers. A quote that resonated with me was that "the real language of African theatre is to be found in the stru...

Performance for Social Change

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