Women and War: A review from a (converted) skeptic

Before last Saturday, I think the last play I went to (willingly) was in kindergarten. At that time, I was living in Singapore and going to a girls-only school. I have vague memories of performing a dance while wearing a itchy flower costume and hearing the applause of parents who were jubilant to see their little girls dancing (badly) while dressed as giant flowers. Since then, I have not been interested in the theater, either going to it or participating in it. Instead of going to the theater, I preferred to watch television or go to the movies. In my view, plays were subordinate to these other forms of entertainment because a play was live, and any mistakes that were made were permanent. In movies and television, we view a polished final product, one that is free of any mistakes.

Then, one of my best friends auditioned for, and got into, the cast of Women and War, the one-act play that the school was producing. In less than three months, my view of the theater did a complete turnaround. Now, I saw the other side of the play, the one that the audience doesn’t watch:  the unfinished play that has grueling work put into it. I saw the work that my friend put into her audition, the number of times she recited her lines, and her devotion to the play. Even though I was not even in the play, I got roped into helping her with it multiple times, whether it was just with helping her recite lines with “the appropriate emotional response” (a direct quote) or tutoring her in the schoolwork that she neglected while she was practicing for the play. Eventually, I even bought a ticket to go see the play last Saturday, the last performance.

So on the 13^th of October, I found myself in the auditorium at school at 7 PM, waiting to watch a play with no idea what I should expect. I then viewed the hour long play, which consisted mainly of short depictions of American women through the various wars this nation has been in. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t like the structure or the plot of the play. For me, it was too beleaguering to follow the play’s multiple storylines, each of which was only tangentially connected to the others, sharing neither characters nor time periods. The play didn’t go in chronological order either, skipping from major war to major war and going back over again. Women and War was not a comedy, a musical, a tragedy, a romance, or a satire, all of which I would have been more interested to watch than a historical play, which is what this play was most easily categorized as being.

 

 

However, I did like the play overall. Even though I absolutely hated the subject material and the presentation of it, the play interested me. Instead of focusing on the story of the play, I was captivated by the performances of the individuals. Every single cast member, whether they appeared for only one scene or multiple scenes, was intensly focused on making the performance as close to perfect as possible. I could clearly see the effort that was put into this production, every production, by all the members of the cast and crew. When they were up on stage, everyone’s focus and determination shone through.

Now, I no longer ridicule the theater. I don’t think of it as subordinate to other types of entertainment. I realized that what makes a play so different from a television or a movie is that it is performed live, and the actors don’t get retakes. While I’m not going to rush to find a flower costume so I can dance across a stage, I might start going to the theater more. After all, I've got nothing to lose.