Tag Archives: Arabian Nights

Arabian Nights

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Wednesday’s presentation of Arabian Nights surprised me, both with the skill of the actors and the overall production. It was obvious that a great amount of work came to bringing this script to life. Not only was the set elaborate and the acting superb, but the story itself was an interesting and entertaining one. What I was particularly impressed by was the storytelling method, where stories were occurring within other stories. I had previously encountered this method in books, but have never sen it done live on a stage before. The actors did an excellent job with utilizing this method. Not only was there a natural flow to this story development, but everything was clear and I never found myself lost. I am very happy I attended this performance, as it opened my mind up to diferent methods of storytelling.

Today’s Class

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Today’s discussion was particularly interesting in the way that people linked the play Arabian Nights to what we have been discussing recently. When I viewed the play on Wednesday, I was primarily focusing on the story, and wasn’t thinking about how the play relates to the issue of copyright laws. However, now it is easy to see how the two are related. Of particular interest to me was the discussion of the improv. part of the play, where the class came to the consensus that this particular scene would actually be owned by the actors themselves. Intricacies such as these are what made this discussion particularly insightful.

Arabian Nights

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I thoroughly enjoyed last night’s performance at the Williams Art Center. I knew nothing about the play beforehand and was not sure what to expect. It was a great play about the power of storytelling. The cast brought the stories to life while adding personal comical bits to their roles. Each cast member had to play multiple characters, as the storytelling narratives call for, and they did a great job moving in between these different roles.

When I went to pick up the tickets for the performance the teller made a joke about our VaST class title. “So I guess you didn’t have to buy any books for the class”. The play demonstrated the power that stories and knowledge can have. We have viewed many different kinds of narratives from scrolls to book arts in this course. It seemed very logical that a performance as a form of storytelling, on the very subject of storytelling, would come next.