A changing stage.

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Ellen Murray

Drama 101

A changing stage

There are many ways to make an audience feel as if they are watching true life happen before them.  Two plays put on at the University of Washington attempt to do just that.  They are Goodnight Children Everywhere and plays from the Ten-Minute Play Festival.  Both use a number of techniques to ensure the audience is truly embraced into the world of the play.

Goodnight Children everywhere, by Richard Nelson is the story of the reunion of a brother with his three sisters after being sent to Canada for safety during the war. The now, mostly grownup children realize it may be a lot harder to get along the way they did as children may then they thought. Directed by Mark Zufelt the cast portrays the 1940’s characters as being modern adults who just want to find a life of their own.

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The 2nd Annual UW Ten-Minute Play Festival, by various playwrights is a series of six non-related plays all between ten and twenty minutes long. Though the plays are not directly related they all have similarities in staging because the series is set on an arena style stage, which forces the movement to be 360 degrees to ensure the entire audience sees the dramatic actions. Directed by Mark Harrison and Mathew Arbour the series bring the audience to so close to the action they could reach out and touch the actors.      

There are, however, many differences between the ...

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