• Performing arts experiences

I have attended 4 shows in my life, One Musical and two operas. The musical I went to was recent and was Der Starlight express in Bochum. I went there with my uncle and I enjoyed it a lot. The stage was incredible, and the use of the stage was very natural. I thought the stage would be used to show off like ‘Look, we have an incredible stage!’ but it did not feel like that. The stage was an integral part of the story. I went to one of the operas twice but in different places and they were interpreted very differently. This was the Opera Die Zauberflöte which I went to once with my mother and once with my father. The first time was just like I had expected a story with some Arias in between but the second one was a bit weird. It started normally except for the fact that the female characters were weirdly sexual. After that it only got worse there were set pieces that seemed to be just there to show how cool their stage is and served no purpose in the story. There were also things I didn’t understand but that probably didn’t have anything to do with the play but more with me. I also went to an opera called Ariadne van Naxos in Maastricht but the only thing I remember is that my ears felt like they were bleeding afterward.

4.    Attached

5.    My task

I went to the Light and Sound professional. It was definitively interesting although a bit dry at some points. He explained how everything is planned like how long they must prepare for a new performance. I was surprised by the amount of time they had because I always thought that it took months to get everything ready for the show but apparently, this isn’t the case, and they have to do everything in a very tight time frame. It was annoying that someone in the team’s meeting was constantly muting the professional, but it was still interesting, nonetheless.

He talked to us about how the stage changes based on the type of play being performed. He said that for some plays it’s way more work to prepare than with other plays. For some plays, the stage is very important and he has to coordinate with them intensely. For some plays, the stage lighting isn’t as important as the other things. In these cases, he has a lot less to do.

The thing I took away from the meeting was that I will never become a light and sound engineer. Even though I will probably become an engineer it won’t be this kind of engineer. Based on what he described I think you have to have a real passion for show business to do something like this because it’s hard work without a lot of pay. I’m not a very artistic person I like math and physics. My entire family on my mothers’ side are engineers. My grandpa, my uncles, and my aunt are all engineers. The only ones that aren’t are my grandma and my mother who is a professor at the university. It’s not like I’m pressured into becoming an

engineer, but my talents are directly in line with it.

6.    Non-applicable

7.    What I remember from Kuhv

These Kuhv exercises are the most interesting ones to date for me. They were very thought-provoking. I finally realized the purpose of art. In my opinion, there are two types of art: wake-up art and satisfying art. The first one is the thing that I realized because after reading through Kuhv and watching that weird video of that woman sitting on a chair I realized that it was meant to shock and to break you out of the monotomid of daily life. I mean this in the sense that we are all generally doing everything on autopilot, but this art is different than anything that you normally see causing you to wake up and think. The other type of art, in my opinion, is satisfying art with which I mean it’s not mean to shock but just to be beautiful. It is meant to be admired and enjoyed. Maybe other people think this is completely wrong, but this is what I think, based on the history of art we learned about in Kuhv. The wake-up art is constantly evolving because the old ones become mundane. This even kind of explains modern art for me. I think modern art is so popular with certain people because it creates disappointment. People expect to be shocked but instead it’s just something strange but familiar which is also shocking differently.

8.    Reflection:

Performance art is  art that is performed by actors.

My research question was: “How does the experience of music change in different animals?”. I thought this was very interesting, but we never found a concise answer. The professional didn’t help with this because it’s not his field and it’s more of a neuroscientific question. This may not have been a good research question because of the scientific nature of it.

We used one of the stories from the Robot extravaganza as inspiration for our story. We modified it quite a bit but it was still heavily inspired by that story. The story we used was that the main character is a robot who doesn’t know she is a robot. The drama is created by her finding out that she is a robot.

I did the light and sound task. It was very fun to do the light because it was very analytical. I wanted to illuminate the set evenly from every side. The way I wanted to do this was by having light come from 4 different places. This normally wouldn’t be possible because there is a set in the way of at least one of the lights. I got around this by placing a diagonal window in the set and making a light reflect off the back wall. I am very proud of this because I rarely have an idea outside of math or physics. I love thinking about things. I always try to do mathematical problems which I know are impossible. I don’t know why but this felt just like that. It was very fun even though it was way simpler. The only problem was presenting because I absolutely hate public speaking. The anxiety beforehand is generally even worse but this time I hadn’t prepared well enough, so I felt very insecure. Because of this I rushed through my presentation and did very illogical things like holding up the model of the room I made and pointing at parts of it while screen sharing during which people can’t see your camera.

Working in the group was fun which was both a positive and negative thing. It was positive because it was fun but negative because it caused us to work very inefficiently.

The teacher, Emma, was a good teacher but, the research question exercise was a bit confusing. I’m not sure if that was made by here but I wanted to mention it anyway.