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Mirror game

31janvier

1) The author:

The name of the author of Mirror Game is Dennis Foon. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, on November 18th 1951. He studied in Cooley High School in central Detroit.

During his youth, Foon is a witness of raciallity and lived in a divided environment filled with discrimination and intolerance. He fought against it through plays20 years later...

He began his career in the theater in 1975, when he founded Vancouver’s Green Thumb Theatre for young people. He discovered that the theater examined the children’s lives ans helped to reflected their real concerns.

In the last of 20 or 30 years, he began to write ans produced plays such as “New Cannadian kid”, “Mirror Game”, “Seesaw”,”Little Criminals”, “War”, “Liars”.

He has written or staged dramatics plays focused on the concerns and worries of young audiences.

Dennis Foon is interested in young subjects such as social workers, teachers ans police officers,  he portrays with compelling credibility, the increasingly perilous world of children who must endure systematic racism, school bullying, the trauma of the divorce, and dysfunctional families. So he was been working in particulary for youg audiences.         

 

The plot:  

This play deals with violent's problems between chidren ans their parents (the domestic violence, parents who hit their children) but also the evilbeing of adolescents in society and how they gonna found a solution.

The characters of Bob ans his parents, Maggie, Sarah, Joe, Mary and Luke will be taken to illustrate these situations.

 

For teenagers, on the way to adulthood, are caught in a mirror game which seems to require them to reproduce the violence they suffered at home. Dut the cycle of violence can be broken...

 

The

 play is fun but not frivolous, modern without embarrassing effort to be fashionable. It addresses issues that affect each of us while being naturally entertaining, but never oppressive.

 

The characters:

 

Bob is a teenager who struggling with his physical appearence, he is Maggie's friend and secretly in love with Sara

Maggie is secretly in love with Bob.

Sarah is in relashionship with Luke, goes out with him. She can't stand her stepfather who always has arguments with her mother and hit her.

Joe is Sara's stepfather, not self-reliant, he dosn't help the familly ans he is menasant. Mary is Sara's mum.

Luke is Sara's boyfriend.

 

2) The play can be useful from a social point of view because it deals about actual problems. More other, it tagets to  young audiences, with teenagers so we can be confuses with the characters, take their role and analyze our own life.The acting is a reflection of our lives: parent's conflict, love stories between teenagers, the autonomous... The play may increase awareness of our attitude in daily life, will need to improve, change orbuild.

 

 

 

Houncanrin Nelly

Laure

Thomas Dujacques

2 commentaires

"Mirror Game" review

31janvier

We saw a theatre play by Dennis Foon in Palaiseau, it is a play about young adults, teenagers who have problems with their families, their sweethearts…
The actors were always on stage, but they didn’t always act, sometimes they were in the dark. They were not playing but they used props like books, make-up or balloons. There was no setting except when the parents were talking (at the back there was a little window with a microphone). The parents were represented by a big voice, and each time they “became” teenagers we always heard the same music. At the beginning and at the end, we heard the same music,it was a little bit psychedelic.

The actors interacted with the audience, especially Bob who always spoke to us directly. For example, at the beginning, when he said “She touched me.”, he was looking at the public.

The play stages four teenagers who have important trouble, like Luke( he was beaten by his father when he was a kid, and this is the reason why he beats Sarah). Maggie is alone all the time, her mother doesn’t care about her, Sarah is very tortured and she hurts herself to feel free.
Those problems are expressed by the play of the actors, by the lighting. For example, the whole performance was played on a dark stage, does it mean that their lives are awful ?

Each character had a place on the stage, Luke was at the back on the left, Sarah on the right and Bob in the foreground on the left, and Maggie on the right. They were all doing something special when they were not acting : Luke was doing sport, Sarah was smoking or making up, Maggie was reading and Bob was listening to music.
In fact they are represented like normal adolescents.

We perfectly understood  the play, first because we had already studied the scenes, and also because it was interesting to see an English play with adolescents. Even if they all suffer, it was very funny; Bob was the funniest character.

 

 

Sarah Tanase and Maya Lombard

un commentaire

Gertrude and Jennifer's review.

31janvier

Jennifer: Hi, Gertrude! What did you think of the theatre play we went to see last thursday?

Gertrude: Dennis Foon’s one? I enjoyed it! I didn’t think I could understand a full play in English. On the plus side I thought the topic was really interesting: everyday we have to deal with our own problems and we don’t imagine other people’s difficulties, which could be much more annoying.

Jennifer: I think it was an important theme because talking about those problems is a way to help people who have to face them.  

Gertude: I agree with you, what problem did you think was the most important to deal with?

Jennifer: They are all important but I think violence on women like the relationship between Luke and Sarah is the most important topic of all.

Gertrude: You can’t be serious! Don’t you think Sara’s ideas of suicide was really moving? I almost cried!

Jennifer: Of course it was. However I really liked the couple Sara/Luke.

Gertrude: I’m sure you did! You couldn’t keep your eyes off him!

Jennifer: He was so handsome!

Gertrude: I liked Bob. He was so cute!

Jennifer: We’ll go and see their next play, won’t we?

Gertrude: Of course! I have to go, I have a math test and I didn’t study…

Jennifer: Neither did I… Luke will be absorbing my thoughts!!

 

 

Manon and Léa.

3 commentaires

Critique "Mirror Game"

31janvier

"Mirror game"

 

First, to me it was clever just to make the parents’ voices heard, we could see the influence of  the parents' attitude on their children  thanks to this process, I think. To put just four chairs as setting shows that the situation the  actors played can be a general case. The props (weights, lip gloss, books …) just show the different personalities of the characters and personally I found them really cliché but realistic. I understood the play easily because they talked in everyday langage, they talked fast but they articulated; they just talked as we could talk and it was easy to understand.

The costumes were simple, I didn’t like the music between every scene, but it was not very important. The interpretation of the characters by the actors was good and the audience very receptive. It was very funny to see, because of the script and because of the performance of the actors, but from my point of view it was a little bit superficial. But maybe that was what was  interesting, because it makes fun of teenagers.

 

Fanny.V

un commentaire

Mirror Game (without mirrors)

31janvier

First, we particularly enjoyed the staging in general, which permitted us to understand the story without understanding English very well. The actors were very expressive.

The way that they interpreted  the parents (only with their voices) was very original too.

The actors succeeded in making us laugh or think about relationships between parents and children.

Although the staging was explicit and understandable, the setting was very disappointing : we expected mirrors, or something else, but there was only a few chairs.

Music was totally unlinked with the problematic of the play, just a techno rhythm with very elaborate lyrics... (love me... ♪ kiss me... ♪ love me... ♪ kiss me...♪)

The public was a bit noisy, I think it was unpleasant for the actors.

Finally, it was a good play, very funny but a bit simple as far as the setting and the music were concerned.

PASTOR-GRAMOND GREGOIRE

DIOP MOHAMED LE MAGNIFIQUE :)

un commentaire

Mirror Game

31janvier

On Thursday 13th January, we went to see the play "Mirror Game", a play written by Dennis Foon and directed by Andrew Wilson. The play was in English and it told the story of four teenagers: Bob, Maggie, Luke and Sara. Bob was in love with Sara, Maggie was in love with Bob, Sara went out with Luke and Luke beat Sara...

The play wasn't too hard to understand. In the theatre there are other aspects than only the text, like the lighting, the set, the acting in general. So it didn't matter, if we didn't understand every word.

The set was interesting, because it consisted only of four chairs. It worked really well! As the set was very simple, the actors could do what they wanted on the stage. There was also a light game with the parents' shadows. We didn't "see" the parents, we only heard their voices.

We also liked the music very much. It was composed by Darko Rundek. We especially liked  the "theme song"! The music also helped us to understand what was going on.

So we liked watching Mirror Game very much and we hope we will see an other play like that soon :-)

Maija and Kathleen

Ichbinbruno

un commentaire

Mirror game/ MANE-CHARLOTTE'B

31janvier

FOLLOW-UP WORK

I found that each character had an important role in this play, I noticed that the story could not evolve without the intervention of each character.

All  the actors spoke very clearly so that even if half the audience was not bilingual, they understood all the dialogue exchanged by the characters. Moreover, the audience's concentration proved that they understood the play..

The fact that Andrew Wilson chose the same actors for the roles of the parents and teenagers was a very good idea, besides, even if the parents were in the dark we could perfectly see their gestures, their reactions because the director had chosen to leave enough space for the audience to see everything.

The actors went from the role of the parent to the role of the teenager, it was interesting because in a few seconds they completely changed the way they played and I think the audience must have been really impressed.

They put a lot of energy in the play ,I imagine how difficult it must be to move from one emotion to another in a short time as Sara and Luke did, or when they became angry in their role as parents and then came back on stage very slowly to resume a normal conversation with Bob or Maggie...

Mané Alexanian & Charlotte Bekache

un commentaire

Mirror game

31janvier

We found the staging in general quite interesting but there were some aspects what we didn't like. The music was inapropriate and a little ridiculous.We found that the setting was strange because it was too simple, with only four chairs and some props. However weunderstood the whole play well because the actors articulated very well and the text is not very complicated.

 

 

Yéris and Enzo

2 commentaires

Mirror game, estelle bontemps

31janvier

Last thursday, we saw Mirror Game, a play staged by Andrew Wilson and written by Denis Foon. First, we enjoyed watching the performance because we could easily understand the whole play thanks to the way the actors spoke and the gestures they made.

The four actors interpreted  their characters very well and they speak sometime to the audience, wich listened attentively. The setting was only composed of four chairs, one for each character. At the back of the stage, there was a window through which we could see sometimes two of the characters who, when they weren't on the scene, became the voices of one character's family.

The actors' costumes were very simple, it was usual clothes. The lights were subdued in the serious moments, and bright in the others. The music was present throughout the play, especially in joyful moments (when Sara was dancing in a night club).

Andrew Wilson staged the play written by Denis Foon in an original way.

2 commentaires

Mirror Game

31janvier

   Last week, we went to the theater in Palaiseau (91), with our class to see Mirror Game, a play written by Dennis Foon. It deals with teenagers, and the relationships between them and with their parents.

    We really enjoyed the story, because it could be our life, the characters are teens, just like us. We found that the actors understood the feelings that teenagers have.

    About the music, it was very good like the play of the actors. They speak  English very well although two actors were French. We could understand everything.

    The setting was a little poor because there were only four chairs but it was interresting to see two actors make parents' voices in the background, in the shadow.

    At the end, we met the director, Andrew Wilson. We had a discussion with him and the actors, and we were able to ask some questions. They were very nice, and it was a good moment which helped us to understand the play.

                               Gournay David and Poullain.C Charlotte

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 commentaires

 

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samedi, 18 mai 2013, 15:58:40