The World on Stage- States

On page 22, States is discussing a definition of what art is said by Victor Shklovsky. I found Shklovsky's definition to be very true and really interesting. He is explaining to the reader that people grow accustomed to the world they live in and begin to become detached from it. And when these people view an art piece, such as a theatre piece, they are "brought home via an 'unfamiliar' route." I completely agree with this! I find that growing up in the society that we live in, we really do get used to the things that happen around us.. we have even grown used to things that should be considered tragedies. Then, when we view an art piece that touches on a subject that we are accustomed to, we are suddenly brought back to the beginning. For example, where I grew up there were many homeless people and I would pass by them pretty much on a daily basis. But eventually, I began to walk by them and not notice them... they no longer seemed to be there. Then in my Senior year of high school I went and saw a student written play at a local high school. It was a play about some of the homeless people that lived in the same city I did and it told the stories of how they got to where they were or the reasons to why they act they way that they do. And suddenly, I was once aware of homeless people. After I saw that play, I could no longer walk down the street and avoid the homeless people that were there.

I really enjoyed this article over all, but that bit that I talked about stuck out the most and I found it most interesting. Any other thoughts?

-Laurel Lansford

Well one quote that really stood out for me was "I doubt that such clash would really occur in a naturalistic play in which theatrical time and real time were roughly identical"(pg. 30). I think one of the reasons for this is because the stage is a live imagination, in this world anything can happen because it is not true. The audience understands that what is said and do on a stage or play is not true, and this is why people go to a theatre live show real people and the amazing actors changing their personality due to their character. The beautiful thing with theatre is that time does not run you, you run the time you have on stage it is up to you when the play starts and when the character you are portraying stops acting. This is just what Shklovsky is saying "art is a way of bringing us home via an "unlike" route". Art, acting, pertending are ways to find new paths or meaning in our lives, things we have never experience before. This is what I think this article is taking about.

- Tiffany Lara