Creativity
What is atmosphere or mood?
What is the
emotional affect of the product on the audience? How does it make
the audience feel?
In
what way does the product tap into cultural myths, symbols, or
archetypes?
How does the
product offer enlightenment or meaning?
How does
the product artistically tie to the rest of the production?
What is Atmosphere or Mood?
To
create atmosphere or mood means that the audience engages in emotional
and intellectual activity when confronting the relationship between
mise-en-scène and dramatic action at a particular
moment in time.
Let's break this down.
Emotional activity means that the patron feels
something.
Intellectual activity means that something
is meaningful to the patron, that the patron understands something.
What the patron is actually seeing and hearing
is the mise-en-scène. Mise-en-scène
is the physical (both sight and sound) surroundings and includes
the space relationships defined by the theatre architecture
and all of the design and technical elements. It also includes
where the actor is in the performance space and the actor's
physical and vocal expression. Mise-en-scène is
the totality, the whole, of all of these parts.
Dramatic action is what connects the drama
to the audience. For lack of a better way to write this, it
is the action of a thread moving outward from the human soul
of the actor portraying a character and connecting to the human
soul of the audience member. When exploring dramatic action,
the theatre artist looks at dialogue and its subtext as a kind
of action, characterization, themes, plot structure, motivation,
character objectives, relationships between characters, movement
of the actors, rhythm, pace, and directing style. Dramatic action
as connecting thread is the whole of all of these parts. Its
focal point is the character as portrayed by the actor.
And, finally, because theatre is contextual
and active, the atmosphere or mood changes from moment to moment.
To create atmosphere or mood, the mise-en-scène
must closely relate to the dramatic action. It needs to be so
close, that the mise-en-scène becomes one with dramatic
action. When it's right, when all elements of both mise-en-scène
and dramatic action are excellent, they catalyst one another;
and when they mix, a transformation can take place. It is that
transformation that creates an emotional and meaningful experience
for the audience.
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