Friday, September 24, 1976 Connecticut Daily Campus Page 7
Arts & Features
Mobius Theater offers life-like experience
By BENJAMIN W. TIMMONS
The greatest difference between play acting and life is participation. As an audience.
' you simply sit and observe a play.
T‘
while life presents situations
where you must participate and make decisions. An Environmen-
tal Theater. such as the Mobius , A
Theatre at the University attempts to make going to see.a play a more life-like experience. Imagine being ushered into an entirely different environment, and sitting yourself down right in the middle of it. That is what happens at the Mobius. The spectators are scattered here and there. all throughout the multi- leveled set. The Mobius is a 25 square foot cube. and its designer Jerry Rojo. of the Dram- atic Arts Department has tried to utilize every inch of it.
maze of performance area.
Rojo calls this use of space “living spaces" In it, the per- formers and the spectators embark on a living adventure.
All .
around. platforms, stages. stairs ' and ladders turn the room into a
script. The environmental per-
The Mobius ‘Theatre is ‘an environmental theater in which actors often perform with the audience.
How can this be brought about?
The theatric experience becomes formers are living an experience fol‘ an example. Rojo U585 the
more than simply a large group of with the spectators. spectators sitting far away and spectators are even made a part “Macbeth." becoming theatre, (known as the proscen-
ium). the job of the actors and
watching a small group of actors assume roles from- a literary
Often, the
of the production, themselves performers.
Shakespeare tragedy in a conventional
Uncle Tom misjudged, says
CHOPIN. La. (UPI) —-— A man who believes his land ..-s once owned bx lltt‘ mar '...tmn fiction- all" as Stu:-H Icmct says Uncle Tom. tt -Saw uho worked on the giant pt.-an plantation. was a great titan.
Slave—beating Simon Legree. as immortalized in Harriet Beecher Stowe's book “Uncle Tom's Cabin." was actually a hard- drinking old bachelot named Rob- ert McAlpin who boasted of having fists toughened by beating slaves. according to Sterling Evans.
Evans owns an ll.0O0-acre pecan plantation in northwest Louisians which. he says. was once McAlpin's home.
Uncle Tom. the slave in Mrs. Beecher's book. acquiesced to Legree's beatings and helped build the stereotype of a shuffling black slave. Modern blacks use the term derogatorily to describe those who give in to whites. But Evans disagrees with unfavorable assessments of Uncle Tom.
“The Negroes. they don't like Uncle Tom." he said. “But to me he was one of the greatest
characters of all time.
He helped bring on the Civil War which helped bring on the end of slavery."
The 77-year-old Evans. who is white. has built a replica of a one-room, windowless cabin be- lieved to be the last home of slave Tom. The original was dismantled and moved for display at the Chicago World's Fair in l893.
Oldtimers in Natchitoches Par- ish identified two graves as those of McAlpin and his slave. Tom. Evans has placed brass head markers on the two graves and
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producers is to convince the audience that they are witnessing the scene that the playwright wants them to see.
In the environmental theatre. the spectator wouldnt think he
._ was seeing the dungeon below’
Macbeth's castle. he would be in the dungeon. According to Rojo. the power of environmental theatre lies not in illusion. but in ph_vsical participation.
In a similar vein. Rojo says that the environmental pcrl’ormct's‘ "don't 'do' a pla_v . they confront it." What this means is that the pla_v is simplv a guide for at lixing experience and not a drama.
To further explain the idea of environmental theatre. Rojo and his boss RiL‘hat‘d Sel1eel1llet' ol The Production (iroup. (The Theater compattv in New York that poinecred the concept). co- authored a book on the subject.
The work is titled. appropriately enou_t_r,|t. “Theatre Soaces and F.nvironntcnt."
Enviromncntal theatre is a rising concept ol‘dt'ama. now being ttscd in tnan_v parts of the xvorld.
U(‘onn is fortuanate in having Jerry Rojo, one of the pioneers of the concept. and the Mobius Theatre. one of the lirst environ- mental theatrcs on the catnptts Th is advantage enables students to experience an enviromncntal adventure.
plantation owner
surrounded them with wrought iron fencing.
Evans said a book written by D.B. Corley in I892 provided proofthat Evan's home. the Little Eva Plantation. once was owned by the man who became Simon Legree.
Mrs. Stowe. who was a 40-year- old mother of seven living in Maine when she wrote the book. said the story was based on true incidents. It was set in a Louisi- ana Red River plantation.
Corley. the first mayor of
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Abilene. Tex.. visited South Nat- chitoches Parish in 1892 lo lind the plantation. His book quotes contemporarics ol McAlpin dc- scribing the slave owner in the same tcrtns used in Uncle Tom's Cabin to describe the vicious Simon l.oi:,rce.
"He was all“ avs ver_v courteous and gcntlcmanlv in the presence of ladies." the book savs. "but his extraordinary crueltics to his slaves were contmonly talked about b_v both xvhites and blacks on the neighboring plantations."
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