Drama 457: Creating Drama
Once Upon a Time 6x in the West
Assistant Professor Jeffrey Fracé
Winter, 2013 This class was one component of a year-long process that culminated with a performance of the play "Once Upon a Time 6x in the West" as part of the School of Drama mainstage season. The idea of the project was to take a classic Western film like "Stagecoach" or "Once Upon a Time in the West", adapt it for the stage, and then present it in six different avant-garde theatre styles representing the work of influential directors and theatre companies of the last 60 years. While the initial idea came from Jeffrey, the process was very collaborative as the cast worked together to choose a film and to research different directors and companies. Ultimately we ended up not picking a film to adapt, instead giving our "six style treatment" to an original Western-style melodrama that Jeffrey had written, "The Story of Little Horse". The process started with auditions and callbacks in spring 2012, followed by initial workshops and preliminary discussion in fall 2012. The work started in earnest in this class in winter 2013 where we started to build the show. We had assigned reading each week about a specific director or company, and then we would work in groups to present a specific scene from the play in the style of that director. These scenes were then worked and adapted into the full-legth production that was performed in April 2013 in the Jones Playhouse Theatre. My favorite part of the class was taking the historical and theoretical readings about the directors and then applying them immediately in tangible, practical way. This both enriched and deepened my understanding of the readings and directors we studied and informed and the work we created in class, grounding it in specific aesthetics and concepts. Getting to then take the scenes and compositions from class to a mainstage setting with a full design and production team was a further joy that led to my favorite part of the whole process: sharing our work with an audience and seeing the reactions and receptions our play induced. Throughout this class and production, I learned so much about the history and forms of avant-garde theatre, what I liked and didn't like in performance, how my conceptions of what constituted "good" theatre could be shaken, and opened me up to a whole new way to view my role as a practitioner and consumer of theatre. And I got to do this while in dialogue with a fantastic director/instructor, cast, designers and audience members. Selected production photos at right. Photography by Frank Rosenstein. |
Review, April 24, 2013:
"This incredibly talented group of young actors throw themselves into the play with great relish...I was impressed especially with Ben Phillips, particularly in the Robert Wilson section that opens the second half of the play." -Omar Willey, The Seattle Star Full Review |