Salome

Tonight we went to see the play Salome written by Oscar Wilde at The Theater of Dramatic Art. Firstly, I should say that this stage was unlike any other stage I had ever seen before. The inspiration for this theater was Shakespeare's Globe Theater, so it is a circle and seats roughly 30 people on each of the 3 tiers. The stage is unique not only because it is in the shape of a circle, but it is also made out of a blue plexi-glass material that withstood the actors pounding and banging on it. I thought a few times it might break. The stage was also about 2 feet out from the rest of the back stage. Sometimes the actors would have to jump to reach the center stage other times a platform was brought out to connect the two. There was also a bottom tier to the stage that had stairs connecting the two pieces. The audience was seated around the stage in 3 tiers and you never had to worry about having someone else's head blocking your view. In the middle of the stage was a smaller platform that could be removed and a pully system was rigged up to move actors from top tier to bottom tier of the stage. It was very impressive.

The play itself was based on the death of John the Baptist or Iokanaan as he was known in this play. Iokanaan was shaved bald and to make it appear as if he had long, beautiful locks as Salome described, he was drawn on with magic marker that rubbed off during the performance. The music for this production was done completely by the cast, including an actor playing the drum and also an actress signing. If we haven't learned anything else from seeing all of these plays we know realize how incredibly versatile Russian actors are. They went through 6 or more years of training and can all dance, sing, act and some play instruments and get certificates on what type of weapon they are able to use onstage. They are able to do all of these things with ease and never cease to amaze their audiences. The actors tonight moved with such precision and each movement was slow and thoughtful. This may be because they had to be especially aware of their surroundings for fear of falling off-but it also added to the performance by making the audience aware of the movements and notice how important they are. I am very impressed by how serious the actors are. In one part of the play the angels brought a platter full of clementines to feed to Salome, but he dropped them all over the stage. Many of them rolled onto the bottom of the stage, but quite a few remained on top where all the action was taking place. Even if a clementine was in an actors way, they would move around it and ignore it as if it wasn't there. they never broke character or distracted the audience by worrying about moving the fruit. The costumes were both plain, but elegant. They were plain because everyone wore a white costume of some sort, but they were elegant because if you looked closer at each costume you could see intricate designs in them.

The play was well put together and kept my interest the whole time. The acting was magnificent aside from a couple of guards who were weird and trying to hard. I really enjoyed this play.