The Last Stages of Play Production

Throughout this semester, the largest focal point has been on the production of our various plays. Seeing how my particular group decided on reforming the entire Othello play into fifteen minutes, we have experienced multiple complications. The majority of which involved rewriting the play to a Law and Order theme, switching genders of characters to that of the actors we have available, and coming up with appropriate and believable dialogue for a tragedy. However, I believe our most problematic situation is that of our individual roles in the play production. For instance, three of our members wish to be the head of the group, resulting in multiple power struggles. Such instances involve stepping out of bounds in regards to the specific duties as actors and directors. Two actors, for example, wish to take more of a lead approach in regards to directing the play and writing the script. This is obviously not their duty and has created various conflicts in the group as a whole. When it comes to the director, she does not allow anyone else to maintain their own personal duties and takes it upon herself to dictate to everyone. She does not allow individual interpretation of characters by the actors themselves and she completely does not allow the production designer to do any of her own responsibilies. For future classes, I believe it would be beneficial to encourage production groups to work more as a team instead of forcing students into specific roles. From what I see, this has only resulted in dissatisfaction with specific roles and the typical corruption of power.