No Child By Nilaja Sun: Play Analysis
I attended the play “No Child” by Nilaja Sun on Friday December 4th 2015 at 8:00pm. The play was presented by The Department of Theatre Arts and directed by guest artist, Rosalind Cauthen. The play was in the Center of the Arts Studio theater– a small theatre that allowed the audience to be within only a few feet of the stage. I was sitting in the front row, so I was, in a way, part of the stage. The small theater made the scenes more intimate for the audience, and allowed me as an audience member to be able to capture the small subtle actions the characters made. The characters often interacted with the audience which I enjoyed. I have never been to a production where the characters seamlessly spoke to the audience throughout the entirety
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Often times in the switch between two scenes the students would come back with the same shirt on. For example: everyone in the class wore a light blue button up. This confused me a little because I didn’t know whether it was supposed to be a uniform school or not because that aspect of costuming wasn’t consistant. Also the stage crew often came in a little late to move old props which distracted me from the scene. The actor that played the three roles of Ms.Tam, Mrs. Projensky, and Doña Guzman did well with the former two characters but struggled a bit playing the Asian, Ms. Tam because the accent she used wasn’t believable. The prop that the students were using that contained the script was just an empty book. Ordinarily, this would work on a larger stage when your audience cant notice these things, but with the audience being so close, everything, including every mistake can be seen. The book should have at least had words in it to avoid breaking the scene for an audience member who might happen to catch a glimpse of the book. At the end of the play Janitor Barton, reveals the fate of some of the characters: Coca becomes pregnant, Jerome is nowhere to be found, Jose is dead and so on. I appreciated this scene because everything leading up to this established an audience-character connection, which made me curious about the future of the
Often times in the switch between two scenes the students would come back with the same shirt on. For example: everyone in the class wore a light blue button up. This confused me a little because I didn’t know whether it was supposed to be a uniform school or not because that aspect of costuming wasn’t consistant. Also the stage crew often came in a little late to move old props which distracted me from the scene. The actor that played the three roles of Ms.Tam, Mrs. Projensky, and Doña Guzman did well with the former two characters but struggled a bit playing the Asian, Ms. Tam because the accent she used wasn’t believable. The prop that the students were using that contained the script was just an empty book. Ordinarily, this would work on a larger stage when your audience cant notice these things, but with the audience being so close, everything, including every mistake can be seen. The book should have at least had words in it to avoid breaking the scene for an audience member who might happen to catch a glimpse of the book. At the end of the play Janitor Barton, reveals the fate of some of the characters: Coca becomes pregnant, Jerome is nowhere to be found, Jose is dead and so on. I appreciated this scene because everything leading up to this established an audience-character connection, which made me curious about the future of the