Non-Realism in Theatre

"The Beauty and the Beast"

When watching a play or musical but in this case watching "Beauty and the Beast," many different aspects of the production must be analyzed to fully understand and gain the experience that the director, producer, and the actors want to give. One of the things you first need to identify when getting the experience you deserve from the piece of theater you are watching is how the stage is set up. For example, the spacing of things and how to make a huge space work for your production. Also the lighting and sound, and finally the scenery that pulls everything together regarding the stage. Another aspect is the costumes and how the costume designer works with the lighting and the concept of the play. Also what different things attribute to the fact the musical you are seeing is a musical and what makes it a musical? One of the major parts of the production is the actors and their acting. Finally, which is considered the most important part of theatre is the audience. In the analysis of theatre many different things must come into account to create the experience that is expected, and will also be evaluated in this essay about the musical "Beauty and the Beast."

The first thing you look at even before the actors are the stage, and what is on it. For example the props that they use, the lighting and how they space things. The type of stage that was used was the picture-frame stage or proscenium stage. However there was one slight difference is there were two stages above the crowd so that you can get a thought of different rooms and different places. Also they used a counterweight system, after the first set was done, the scenery was pulled away within seconds, and continued to do so until it reached the final set. According to the book "A good scene should be, not a picture, but an image." In "Beauty and the Beast," they accomplished this in certain parts of the play, however in a majority of the play this wasn't accomplished. However a good stage setting should help establish the mood with its lighting and stage setting. In this production it had its moments, in creating a mood for the audience. For example when Gaston and Le Fou meet with the asylum owner to negotiate the acquisition of Belle's father. Instead of this scene being on stage with a table as I had imagined it would be, the set designer decided to have them come from the ceiling. The farther back seats could see what was going on, on the floating platform however the Orchestra seats had difficulty, but this is where the genius of the set designer came in. There was a spot light on the three characters and their shadows were put onto the stage so it made the conversation seem even more ominous. The scenery in this design is a realistic one. The reason is because unlike unrealistic the set designers don't really have that much free reign to design whatever they want. Instead the designer has to stick to the specific design. They had different locales in the production. The first would be the castle of the beast, another is the west wing which holds the beasts' rose. Finally is the house of Belle and her father the inventor.

There are 7 objectives when working with lighting; the first being of course providing visibility, the next being reveal shapes and forms, another is to provide focus onstage and create visual compositions, also to assist in creating mood and reinforcing style. Another objective is to help establish a time and place, and to establish a rhythm of visual movement. Finally it is to reinforce a central visual image. The production of "Beauty and the Beast" it had a few troubles accomplishing the primary functions and objectives of the play. The play used different techniques in the musical like dimmers to create the mood. The type of sound "The Beauty and the Beast" used was a live orchestra and microphones to hear the actors.

Costumes can make or break a production; every member of the audience looks at them and judges on how cheap looking or amazing they look. In the case of "The Beauty and the Beast" the costumes were extremely cheap looking. One example is Gaston; the jacket he was wearing didn't even fit him, also a majority of the other costumes looked like curtains that were just cut and sewn together. However the time era was correct and it matched what