small planets

Commentaries on London theatre by Dartmouth students, Summer 2018

Author: Laura Edmondson

Reflections on the London theater scene: sixteen small planets

This blog includes a series of reflections on productions attended by the wonderful Dartmouth students on the Foreign Study Program in London during the summer of 2018.  The posts below include reflections on a wide range of styles and genres: the immersive Sounds & Sorcery at the Vaults, a Spanish-language adaptation of Carmen, a site-specific work at the Tower of London, the bloody Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh, Othello at the Globe, the new plays One for Sorrow at Royal Court Upstairs and Julie at the National, among many others. These sixteen postings reflect only a percentage of the many productions that the students attended during those nine intense weeks. The concept of “small planets” is drawn from Elinor Fuchs’s influential essay on dramatic criticism, “Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play.”

New worlds ahead

The title of our class blog, Small Planets, is inspired by Elinor Fuchs’s classic essay, “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play.”  (A reminder that you’re expected to read this essay, as well as two other short essays on theatre criticism, prior to our first seminar on the 23rd . . . )  Each production we’re seeing this summer–whether it’s an installation paying homage to carrier pigeons of WWI, a production of Othello at the Globe, or an interactive exploration of virtual reality–presents a world of its own, a world that we’ve been invited to inhabit.  A world with its unique soundscape, geography, language, and politics. We seek to enter each of these new worlds with a spirit of adventure and critical awareness.  We seek to be audience members who are, as Fuchs puts it, “aroused to meaning.” May our journeys begin!  Safe travels to London, and see you soon.

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