Show and Tell post Number 1!

 Blue Surge by Rebecca Gillman 

Recently I read the play Blue Surge by Rebecca Gillman.  It was written in 2001.  It was produced for the first time at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in the spring of 2001.  You can find this play at Middleton library, that’s where I checked it out and read it in hard copy because Reading shows hat are longer than one act on a computer screen just make me sleepy, but it is indeed accessible at Middleton Library.   

Blue Surge is about a young girl of about 18 who makes her living by being a prostitute and along with other prostitutes; work at a massage parlor as a front.  Curt and Doug are two cops that have been watching this parlor because they suspect it to be a prostitute front.  They go there undercover but they are successful in catching the prostitutes in action.  It is here that Sandy meets Curt.  Concerned for Sandy Curt offers to help her in anyway he can so that she doesn’t have to resort to prostitution.  Eventually this causes major riffs in his ability to continue having his job and makes his relationship with his fiancé fall to shambles and they both in the end fall for one another.   Through their relationship they inspire each other to look beyond their circumstances and try to rise above them and truly make something of themselves rather than just trying to gain independence from Sandy’s mother and prove herself to be better than her or by Curt getting a job that he rally loves and that is suitable for his intelligence. 

One dramaturgical choice that Gillman made that I found to be unnecessary but that I enjoyed is that she chooses to stage the scene when Curt and his fiancé Beth have their fight and break up.  She could have just cut of that scene completely and not written it in and just had Curt mention the blow out to Sandy or even Doug in dialogue.  I like that she did include it though because the scene personally made me sympathize for Beth and without that scene it would have been nearly impossible to evoke sympathy for her.  I like that she included it because it was a n efficient way for the audience to be able to see more of a struggle Curt had in handling things with Beth and that it wasn’t because she was a simply a mean person, but just because they weren’t on the same page.  I think if I had not read the scene of the blow out I would have just written her off as a crazy ex-fiancé and then Curt ending things with her partially for Sandy wouldn’t have been nearly as a big decision as it was. 

Another dramaturgical choice that stood out to me was that Sandy was the one who showed up to Curt’s door, not Curt coming to Sandy.  Typically we see the opposite happening, but Gillman made Blue Surge to be an exception.  I think that choice added a lot to the story and gave us a better understanding of Sandy’s character. Sandy acts like she has almost everything together and like she can handle herself and that she doesn’t really mind her job because it pays, but in that moment she had a weak moment and she was the one who searched for help, even though for the majority of the show se seems to be against outside help.  I feel like it shows a very hopeful side of Sandy early on in the play before the majority of people is aware of her hopefulness at the end of the play. 

            

Hornby's Progression applied to "How I Learned to Drive"

Consistently through Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive the characters seem to reference the image of Lil’Bit’s boobs and her sexual budding.  This repeats multiple times when Lil’bit is alone with Uncle Peck and when he is fondling her and also when Lil’bit is speaking with the women in the show and finally when her family including her grandpa are making fun of her large boobs and her sexual development.  This image foreshadows Lil’bit’s development not only physically but mentally as a mature woman.  Uncle Peck was the one who took the most notice of Lil’Bit’s development and therefore by the end he was he one who gave her the time of day and was there for her so that she could mature as an intelligent young woman and in the end she is thankful for that. 

            IN the Movie Harold and Maude a motif is that Maude often refers to how she is 79 years old and that soon she will be 80 years old, which foreshadows that she is going to die (kill herself peacefully) when she is 80 years old because that is when her life will be filled and complete.  The author and director used this motif to complete the production by making Maude always particularly bring this up when she is at a funeral or a burial.  The writer also made Maude’s character to be very free spirited. She lived as if she was going to die tomorrow and so when she would mention how she was almost 80 in a few days, it was a constant reference to how she really was going end her life.  I kind of think that a motif in film is very similar to that in theatre and that motifs can be executed in similar fashion through both mediums.  

"How I learned to Drive" by Vogel

In How I Learned to Drive, Vogel choose to have a small Greek chorus to portray every character except Lil’bit and Peck.  I think that this choice was made because the other characters in the play besides lil’bit and Peck were sort of not that significant.  I think a good term to refer to them would be “the peanut gallery.’ And so since the medium is he message I inferred that since Vogel chose to use a chorus it was her intention to not make them look like they had a huge effect on Lil’ Bit’s opinions and decisions.  So a greek chorus type approach would be a more effective way to convey this then if each character was defined and played by the same person.  O an audience a greek chorus seems more like an aid to the production, not necessarily an influence.  So I definitely believed that it was useful in that it honed on focus as to which character’s words were more weighted. 

            The fact that Vogel had written in the stage notes how often lil’bit breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses the audience at first very much took me off guard and didn’t make much sense.  My guess as to why Vogel decided to make lil’bit’s character and only little bit’s character to break the fourth wall is because the title of the play is called “How I learned to Drive” so the title is basically telling us that ths whole play will be from the perspective of one person and that it ill be set up in a “how to” way and when it comes to giving directions about anything it is important to be a specific as possible, so I believe that Vogel thought that she could write lil’bt to be the most true and blunt about what she was saying or thinking about the happening going in stage was to explicitly look at the audience and tell them to ensure that the audience was very aware of her understanding of the situations that presented themselves in the play.