Cincin, OH School reports and Star Wars

We've all done it. . .

or may have done it. ..

we've used star wars at some point in a report for school and made it work. . .

I've probably done it more than I should, but it's fun, and sometimes gets us good grades.. .

Have you done it before?

 

Most recently in my Germanic Mythology course we were asked "If you could do a production of Wagner's the Ring. . . how would you do it"

mine is below. .
~~~~~~~~~~~

When presented with the issue of doing a version of the Ring that sprung completely from my mind, a singular thought passed through my mind. In a fantasy world I would be able to bring in characters from modern day fiction, and have them play the characters that may well have been their predecessors. Also bringing in the recent popularity of Reality TV by after key points of action freezing the stage and having the actors reflect on not only their character, but how the character they are portraying may have been inspiration for their ?real life? being.
Having Luke Skywalker prance across stage as Siegmund woo-ing Sieglinde as played by Leia Organa, or having a Mime Obi-wan Kenobi wondering in a pop out about if he was really just using Luke (his Siegfreid) as a tool to complete his work. Not only did I run into issues of interrupting the flow of the music, an integral part of Wagner?s vision, but also that not all the present day characters I wanted to involve were from the same current story. Many of the characters were from Star Wars as that is the story I am most familiar, but I also had wanted to bring in aspects from Tolkien?s Lord of the Rings, C.S Lewis?s Narnia and even pulling characters from the Disney movies of my youth.
The issues with this situation being not only the difficulties with combining characters from multiple worlds with Wagner?s storyline, but also the combined facts that adding in pop-ups would break up the continuity of the music and make a 12 hour opera into a 16+ hour monstrosity.
Instead of organizing it as the above I would direct my version directly to the Star Wars fandom. Again, because I know this story arch much better than I do the other ones. The people playing the characters would in fact be playing two characters: The Star Wars character, and their Wagnerian equivalent. The would-be cast list is attached to the report.
In lieu of stopping the action or interrupting the flow of the music, yet keeping the vision of tying the characters together on stage for the audience, there would be two options. First off the Opera would run alternating between the actual staging of the Opera and a seemingly open conference with the ?characters? as lead by a characterized Wagner or Lucas in between. Each actor would be prompted to speak, in character, about their reactions to key developments in Wagner?s opera. At this time, video clips of the previous night?s opera would be shown. Instead of having the feel of a Reality TV show, it would end up more like a football, post game commentary. This way it would invite an active look into the considerations of both sets of characters, while not interrupting the continuity of Wagner?s work. To accommodate this new break down of the Operas it would run through the course of two weeks. Friday night of the first week being DasRhiengold, with Saturday nights ?performance? being the character introspection while on Sunday, the actors would perform DieWalkerie as a matinee with the introspection following. The same set up would follow the next week with Siegfried and Gotterdamerung.
Of course not everybody would be interested in sitting in for the introspection, or willing to pay the extra entrance fees. Therefore, at each performance of the Opera section, that section in DVD format would be on sale after the performance. The DVD would have the option of viewing the introspection as extras, or over-laying the main action in reality TV form.
Since Star Wars fashions can be relatively close to the medieval fare, it would not be difficult to dress the actors in stylized Star Wars costumes. Of course there could be some differences, for instance the character?s clothing would fit the scene a little more closely. Those playing the Rhinedaughters would obviously need to darn more mermaid-esque clothing, while their normal fair would be fine for the norns. Luke wo

 

Color me impressed! I'd give you an "A" too!

 

Here, here, I must say, I am impressed as well. That was well written and does deserve an A.

 

very nice. I've done a report or two about John Williams, if that counts for anything.

~JW

 

post them we love seeing how geeky we can get