Cultural Arts Event 2: The Wizard of Oz

Summary and Analysis of the Wizard of Oz, presented by Fort Dorchester High School

 There is a young girl, named Dorothy, who lives on a farm in Kansas. A big tornado sweeps through her home, taking the house that she’s in off of the land and into the sky, miles and miles away from where it was picked up. Dorothy’s house stays in one piece and ends up landing in a place called Munchkin town right on top of the “wicked witch of the east”. The town is inhabited by little “munchkins”, and they graciously thank Dorothy for helping them get rid of the witch. The witch’s sister, the “wicked witch of the west”, comes to take her sister’s magical ruby shoes and avenge her sister’s death. An ironic situation arises when Dorothy herself puts the ruby shoes on, binding herself to them, stopping the remaining wicked witch from getting anything she wants. Dorothy must go to the Wizard of Oz to get home, and she meets some new friends on her way. We all know the plot.

 When I bought the tickets for the play, I thought it would be pretty similar to the movie. I set my standards too high, expecting the acting, singing, set, and script to be up to par with the film. I guess that was a little silly of me to do, since high school plays don’t usually match in quality with feature films. I was deeply disappointed in all of the said areas simply because I know that our school has the potential to put on a better show.

 First off, I have to say that I was astonished that there was no singing. Zip. The times that it was attempted, the audience received an earful of flat chant that made us want to stop them from going off to see the wizard. But it’s fine, we didn’t have to stop them ourselves. The guy in charge of sound control did it for us.

 That poor Toto. I heard that half of the time spent on getting ready for the play was used in casting for the perfect dog. Too bad the audience couldn’t tell how much the school liked the dog when he’d yelp in Dorothy’s arms or get pulled by the leash attached to her wrist that was reaching for her boquet of flowers. The owner was furious, and I’m sure Dorothy was, too. Toto could carry his voice louder than she could with hers.

 Munchkin town was thoroughly disappointing. There was nothing aesthetic, or even stimulating, about the set. The munchkins were adorable while they tripped over their hideous flimsy mushroom field that symbolized their whole city. I think that someone in the set department got “munchkin” and “smurf” mixed up. And where did the two other evil characters come from, Hocus and Pocus, or whatever? Their purposeless lines weren’t even funny, and neither was the ballerina tutu. If I was any one of the many, many children attending that show, I would have been very confused by the end of the play.

 There was one thing that I liked about this play. When the play started to get really boring and limp, there was a little mishap on the set. I was sitting there with my cheekbone on my elbow, slowly dozing off, when all of the sudden I see the most phenomenal thing that ever happened in all of the school plays that I’ve gone to see. The gates of Oz start to crumble, and it was an event just as delectable to me as the crumbling walls of Jericho were to the chosen people. Finally, after all of the bad and awkward acting from the main characters, there was something that connected them to the audience. Everybody, cast, crew, audience, was laughing. And they played it off so good, too. The Wizard of Oz himself made a reference to the set problem, blaming Dorothy for coming down and tearing up his city. The cover-up was so good that there were some older children who were asking their parents why everybody had started laughing.

Cultural Arts Event 1: "Hollywood Movies"

Summary and Analysis of “Hollywood Movies”

I left my house at 6:54 to head to my little sister’s school, ten minutes away, where a dance performance was starting at 7:00. Needless to say, when I got into the cafeteria it was jam packed with almost no standing room left. Parents and younger siblings filled the entire place. I shimmied my way through the crowd to find a less dense area to stand in and I waited a total of 27 seconds before the performance started.

I had come to one of these shows last semester for Christmas, and I remembered how long the head of the dance department had talked before the show (though I don’t remember anything she said). I was glad that I had missed it, even though she was wearing an afro-wig and I was curious as to why she had it on her head. I came just in time to hear the first song. This show’s theme was Hollywood movies, so all of the music and set-up had to do with Hollywood (maybe that’s what the wig was for?). They had used the same scheduling as the last time I came; the show would start off with a rendition of some famous song on guitars, then the dancers would have their turn to perform. That pattern would repeat itself the whole night. The guitar club players were all squished together in their tightly packed bleachers, laughing at the awkward position they had to lay their arms in to be able to strum. It was funny to watch.

Too bad I couldn’t hear them. I guess they were playing along with a recorded beat to keep their tempo, but the tempo was so much louder than their playing. Every now and then I could catch a little grinding sound, but that was about it for the first song. The first dance was up next, and as the dancers began filing up the stairs and onto the stage, my eyes started adjusting to what they were wearing. Their costumes were huge, bright-red t-shirts, thick wristbands, and long, rectangular American flag shorts. When they were all aligned and waiting on the “cue music”, their faces made expressions that I couldn’t help but pity. They were either so upset wearing the costumes that they were or they were upset that they had to dance in them (how, I don’t know).

The whole time they were dancing, that upset and nervous look never came off of their faces. That was pretty much how every dance performance was. The costumes were all slightly ridiculous, ranging from pajamas to scanty ice-skating outfits to what looked like a River Oak hoodlum. The dancers rarely looked like they were having fun; most were looking down at their feet, biting their lips, or flinging their stiff arms around self-consciously.

In every group of dancers there were a couple of people who were having fun. My sister was having a blast having everyone watch her while dancing on a stage, and so was another girl, in a different group, with the face of a 24 year old. All of the dancers did walk off the stage smiling though, happy with what they had just accomplished. I was glad to see that. For the rest of the night I would watch the dances, but it was almost like watching half time, or the super bowl game, for me. I was much more interested in the crowd of people that stood and sat to my left.

From the place I was standing, I was omniscient. Directly in front of me was the dance teacher. As each group was headed on stage, she would inspect them over. They would get all lined up on stage and she would stand there with both of her arms wrapped around her clipboard, putting it to her chest. When the music would start, she would start to shake her hips and wiggle her legs in a pattern that was very similar to the girls’, but not quite so obvious. It looked really funny. I asked my little sister about her later, and apparently the dance teacher does that regularly, incase a student found themselves stupefied by the crowd and needed help. I wish I would’ve seen her doing that the last time I was there!

In the middle of the show, the guitar club leader decided to ditch the drum tempos they had previously been using. The lady who was the head of the dance department started singing the lyrics to the songs that were being performed. She has a very full voice, and though it is not the best voice I’ve heard, it was very warm and strong. She would add little “whoah’s” and “umhmm’s” into the lyrics too, making people in the crowd start to nod their heads and tap their feet. It was a great thing to see, scanning the bobbing crowd in its entirety. Sometimes my eye would rest on someone’s curious or admiring face that was wondering why she hadn’t been singing earlier.

The lady who was standing next to me was doing the same thing as I was. There was a little girl with a pacifier, at about a 45-degree angle from my face, who was constantly moving. She was either dancing to the songs, kicking her feet up and down during the dances, gawking at the person with the blinking earphone behind her, or jumping up and down to try and get a view of her brother who was playing a guitar. She was so adorable. The lady next to me would laugh and giggle at the things she was doing at the same time I would. Any time she did something cute we would both turn to each other and smile. She was the one who tapped me and brought the dancing teacher to my attention.

The whole experience was enjoyable. Even though I noticed how the parents would start to head out the door right when their child had finished performing, I had a fun time. Even with that group of smart alecks that sat on the floor in the front of the cafeteria, whooping and hollering during the performance, I had a fun time. The event was no longer than it needed to be, I got to go and see my younger sister do her thang, and the people around me were so interesting.