Flash drama

Ilo McDonald

Mr. Champion

Drama

January 10th

Art Speaks Out: E-Portfolio

Flash drama

The Climate Change Theatre Action was founded in 2015 by Elaine Ávila, Chantal Bilodeau, Roberta Levitow, and Caridad Svich. They are based in every inhabited continent with representative playwrights. They have commissioned 50 5-minute plays related to the topic of climate change and climate justice. Their aim is to influence change and spread awareness about the importance and effects of climate change. They want people to be motivated by their plays to try and make a difference in the world. They wish to achieve this by writing plays to perform visually the negative effects of climate change and why we should try and stop it. These plays are available for audiences around the world to perform. The more people who use these plays, means that the message is being spread on a larger scale. This is a global movement, that the organisation intended for everyone to be a part of this movement all around the world.

Processes of flash drama include a script meant to be acted out between 10 seconds to 10 minutes in length. This type of theatre has many different forms. Generally, each of these forms includes many common elements such as limited characters, location, and technical design. This form of play is commonly used by schools and/or community groups. The set is almost always minimal or non-existent due to the fact that the play is so short that location would be too complicated. The concepts introduced by this genre are conflict, growth, development and humor. The technique of a flash drama is a short script acted out quickly by multiple actors with very limited props. These kinds of plays are used to show a quick story. Another technique is to make the play work in a set location, and to explain what you want in the short time of the story while making sure it is still interesting with enough detail.

The first play I will critique is called ‘Appealing’ by Paula Cizmar. The purpose of this play is for two reporters/photographers who are supposed to be taking appealing pictures for the media but in reality, attention should be on the devastation and ruined pictures, instead of the falsely beautiful ones. They argue about what they should show the public.

The playwright dramatizes the issue of fake news in climate change. This play shows that most companies try and make it seem like the whole world is just sunshine and rainbows when it is really not. It is destructed and disgusting all because of humans polluting. The different elements used are speech, persuasion and conflict. To evaluate these skills, I will start by saying that this play is very well structured and seems as if it would be quite moving. The playwright was able to achieve the goal of the play quite well as the words and arguments were very smartly crafted and told a good point. What worked in this play was that Lin and Ash both had different roles that in the end worked well together and came up with a compromise to their points of view. An example of this is that while people kept walking by throwing trash on the ground, the girl studying got more and more bothered by this, and it led to her trying to help her friend by telling people off and making them pick up their trash.

To summarize, this play was quite interesting and really made me think about the effects of climate change. This

‘Lin and Ash’, by Elspeth Tilley, e.tilley@massey.ac.nz “Sometimes my students tell me climate change seems too big, too global, too monolithic to do anything about. I wanted ‘Lin and Ash’ to give them a place to start, grounded in ideas of the power of allyship – or what something akin to allyship might mean in the climate action context.” This author is from Queensland, where she graduated with multiple degrees in literature and drama. She was interested in contributing to the CCTA because of her constant involvement of solving problems. Problems she has been interested in before are racism, sexism, and climate change.

The second play I will critique is called Lin and Ash. The point of this play is about two college students, one of which is trying to do her homework as the other one shows up in trash and tries to influence other into doing the same thing to reduce. Eventually the one doing homework gets too irritated by passers-by that she joins her friend in the trash challenge.

The playwright dramatizes the issue by making one of the characters very eco conscious. She is wearing all of her waste for the month. This results in her smelling pretty bad. She continues to wear her trash throughout the lay. The way this issue is dramatized is that it involves her friend and people passing by who litter as the girl doing the challenge comes up and gets angry at them. A specific example of dispute is when Lin first shows up while Ash is doing her homework. Ash notices what Lin is doing and gets confused and slightly annoyed. The different elements involved are conflict, reaction, and confidence. Skills involved include emotion, arguments and confusion. These skills are well used because they are represented pretty well by the actors. The techniques used are dispute and representation of an issue. These techniques are necessary to the play in the way that they really complete the whole play. The aesthetics of the play were quite nice, as it wasn’t a scattered play, and it was easy to focus on what was happening. The creator was able to achieve the purpose of the play by using all the necessary steps. The actors, if their job is done right can really show how important it is to use less garbage.

To conclude, this play was very interesting and really got me thinking about climate change. I would recommend this play. The idea of the trash challenge and influencing others or becoming outraged is a very smart way to draw attention to the issue.

The way theatre can draw such attention to climate change through acting is quite intriguing. The short and small-scale techniques used in this form of theatre makes it easy to perform but nonetheless effective to spread the message and overall help the world out in solving the issue of climate change.

Citations

Abdulrazzak, Hassan. “Laila Pines for the Wolf.”  Hassan Abdulrazzak, abdulrazzak.weebly.com/laila-pines-for-the-wolf.html#.

“Google Images.” Google Images, Google, images.google.com/.

Massey University. “Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley – Associate Professor in English (Expressive Arts) – Massey University.” Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley – Associate Professor in English (Expressive Arts) – Massey University, http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/expertise/profile.cfm?stref=815830.