Thoughts on narrating in drama
Our school play of the year had just won a prize. After the showcase performance, we finally get a rest after all the rehearsals.
I have found that my sense of drama had been sort of blocked throughout the course of the whole thing. As an actress and a director, of course I had to keep thinking, but the fresh ideas always come after the big performance. In other words, I don't get to think deeper about drama until a heavy job is finished.
Recently, an idea started to form itself in my head. How often do we put narrators in a play? What kind of possibilities do they bring us?
When I was in primary school, I hated narrators. It was because in a classroom play, the shyest among our group usually becomes the narrator, whose job was to read out text like" 3 days later...", "After school that day..." or "So they lived happily ever after."
In those days, I never thought of interesting narrators.
About 2 years ago I watched the musical movie "Evita". Che, played by Antonio Banderas, is a character very much like a narrator. He sings about Eva Peron, in his wonderfully passionate voice, and comments on her life. Che actually lives throughout the whole movie, singing in various stages of the story.
It was from "Evita" that I learned to appreciate narrating in movies or theatres.
A narrator can exist as anybody, and can appear in any scene, situation or time. He/She is able to communicate with the audience in a very direct way (and for me like a closer relationship), telling the story, commenting on it and I guess they can still do a lot more.
A narrator can be an elderly person, a child, someone in the park, a bartender, a simple workman...There are all these ideas going around in head. Narrators can change their identities, even. They don't need to always stand downstage (in a corner, for classroom plays in my childhood)--any particular spot clearly visible on the stage will do.
Anyway, I wrote this down in my notebook as soon as I got hold of some of it--I am sure the idea will grow stronger in time.
Maybe...just maybe I will be able to use this in my next play.
I have found that my sense of drama had been sort of blocked throughout the course of the whole thing. As an actress and a director, of course I had to keep thinking, but the fresh ideas always come after the big performance. In other words, I don't get to think deeper about drama until a heavy job is finished.
Recently, an idea started to form itself in my head. How often do we put narrators in a play? What kind of possibilities do they bring us?
When I was in primary school, I hated narrators. It was because in a classroom play, the shyest among our group usually becomes the narrator, whose job was to read out text like" 3 days later...", "After school that day..." or "So they lived happily ever after."
In those days, I never thought of interesting narrators.
About 2 years ago I watched the musical movie "Evita". Che, played by Antonio Banderas, is a character very much like a narrator. He sings about Eva Peron, in his wonderfully passionate voice, and comments on her life. Che actually lives throughout the whole movie, singing in various stages of the story.
It was from "Evita" that I learned to appreciate narrating in movies or theatres.
A narrator can exist as anybody, and can appear in any scene, situation or time. He/She is able to communicate with the audience in a very direct way (and for me like a closer relationship), telling the story, commenting on it and I guess they can still do a lot more.
A narrator can be an elderly person, a child, someone in the park, a bartender, a simple workman...There are all these ideas going around in head. Narrators can change their identities, even. They don't need to always stand downstage (in a corner, for classroom plays in my childhood)--any particular spot clearly visible on the stage will do.
Anyway, I wrote this down in my notebook as soon as I got hold of some of it--I am sure the idea will grow stronger in time.
Maybe...just maybe I will be able to use this in my next play.