“Galileo, the Bible killer!”... or at least according to the citizens of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church in the play Galileo. The Cheshire Academy Varsity Players presented the show Galileo on November 13th, 14th, and 15th. It was in interesting story with many complicated aspects and characters, which may have been difficult for a high school audience to comprehend. The play was written by Bertolt Brecht, a man who believed in the truth. I, as an actress in the play, consider Brecht brilliant. All he wanted to do was create a better world by pointing out the flaws in our own. Unfortunately, I also feel like that wasn’t a message seen by the entire cast, and therefore not convincingly displayed to the audience - I think they could have been just confused. Overall, I really liked our acting skills and the ability to react as each individual character, but we could have worked on the delivery of our message - do not let yourself be oppressed.
Galileo by Bertolt Brecht is about the fight between a scientist Galileo Galeili and The Roman Catholic Church. The story of Galileo is often romanticized in modern literature. "The great man who invented the telescope against the evil church"... but is that the whole story? the answer, friends, is no. You learn in the beginning that Galileo was not the inventor of the telescope. He actually stole the idea (with the knowledge that he was doing this) from and inventor in Holland, and learns about it from his student, Ludovico. The play demonstrates the truth about Galileo. He was not the man everybody thinks he was. His priorities were with his research, yes but they were more so with his own health. Food, drink, and self preservation were things he valued over his own daughter - Virginia. Virginia was a sweet girl. She believed in God and that her father could to no harm. However, throughout the play, this develops. She begins to see him for who he was - a vain man. Alas, she is too late anyways. By the end of the play, Galileo has contributed to science. But he died alone, in the church. Eventually, so does Virginia. Nobody knows what becomes of Ludovico after he left Virginia, but we know that all of Galileo's friends have abandoned science. The story works out for nobody.
Each induvidual actor was amazing. Although we were speaking fast, and many lines could not be understood, we explained the story through expressions and reactions, and the audience could understand what was going on without catching every word.
Since I was an actress in the play, I have more criticism than I do praise - I know this play well, and could see what was done wrong. However, the main error we had was not something I recognized until it was over...
I have always been big on meanings. The songs I listen to have meaning, the things I do are trying to better the world... not always successful but I'm working on it. Mr. Aronson tried to explain "Epic Acting" to us. I got it, but not completely. The second night, he explained to us how we should talk to the audience - how most of us may be talking to another character, but in reality we are talking to the audience. That got me thinking about how none of my lines were really like that, and then about Virginia... who was she? I realized, after the last show, that she was the audience, in a sense. She was oblivious to everything - she walked in with the mindset of the romanticized story of Galileo the audience had. He was her hero - until scene 13. When she overheard her conversation with Andrea and she finally saw him for what he was, but too late to really do anything about it. This is what Brecht wanted the audience to do, only he wanted them to fix things before it was too late, before they experience the same thing as Virginia.
I wish we had all caught onto the real meaning of Brecht before the end of the show, but for a highschool cast consisting of new actors we did very, very well. I'm excited for the musical and to do more shows like this in the future, for the older plays are new to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment