Theater Final Exam Essay

Submitted By NeoOfNazarath1
Words: 2686
Pages: 11

The Paradox of Lies That Helps People See The Truth
Art is the original expression of the unknown. In other words as professor Krebs put it “Art is a persons creative interpretation of reality.” Artist manipulate reality through various tools such as hammers, mirrors, bodies, voices, stencils and brushes to name a few. However, all art as Pablo Picasso stated, “…is a lie that helps us see the truth more clearly.” An art form that exposes some of the truths of this world is theater. Through theater, people got to see the reality of this world through the lens of writers, directors and actors. Theatre like any other art form has a message. This meaning can range from a personal to a political message. Furthermore, theater is a tool that is used to expose particular highlights and flaws of society. Some aspects of theater that separates it from other art forms are that people need a community to create a piece of theater. They are people doing lighting, sound, clothing and/or special effects so that the production can have the highest possible resemblance to reality. As Robert Cohen discusses the art of theater as, “… theater is, above all, a living art form—a process, an event that is fluid in time feeling and experience…” Theater is not like a painting that people just stick on a wall, it is an art form that evolves and changes by the different actor and directors. The scope of this theater class was seen in the wide variety of productions that we saw. The class experienced a highly dense story line from Who is Afraid of Virginia Wolf, we looked at how the body can create a wonderful art through Paul Taylor, also the class seen a deaf person expressing poetry and we also felt racism through the production of Detroit ’67. These are just some of the wide variety of plays the class saw, these experiences showed how inclusive theater is and how there is always something for somebody. Something interesting about art is that people know that they it is created and made up but its help people understand themselves and the world around them, art allows people to have an objective view of other peoples lives so they can better understand their own, but this is only attainable if people are willing understand and interpret art from their own personal perspective, which is increasingly difficult in this media age were thought is discouraged.
All art attempts to create resonance with people. Artists capture and attempt to create resonance through real, surreal, and expressionist art forms. Pablo Picasso in particular used expressionism where he put a lot of small pieces of different things into his artwork and made the person that is appreciating it come to the conclusion of what it is. This shows how one of arts purpose is to make people think, not to just look to admire its aesthetics. Understanding that difference was an imperative part of this class in comprehending and appreciating theater.
People have countless different reactions to theater and art. Krebs discusses these viewpoints through Albert Einstein theory of relativity, to describe theater and art as a matter of perspective. Furthermore, The meanings behind different theater productions are relative to the person experiencing the play. As Carl Sandburg put it, “No two persons register precisely the same to work of art.” This quote discusses how people have their own life experiences and subjectivities that give each person a unique reaction to apiece of art.
To understand the different perspectives that art induces is seen through the analogy of a mirror. A cracked mirror in particular. People can understand the realism of different art forms by how distorted the reflection of the mirror is. People can also comprehend the different perspectives that people have to the same art, through the analogy of a cracked mirror. This is just like a group of people in a room looking at a single mirror, it is the same mirror but people see different things from other angles giving