Proof was the first play I have attended at MJC. I thought the theater department did an excellent job at producing it. Being that the play took part on a proscenium stage, and given the size of the theater, in addition to being in row B I felt very connected to the actors and actresses. The actors performed marvelously. I thought it was amazing that the play interacted so well with only one backdrop. Catherine was excellent in her role, acting back and fourth between anger, depression, love and hate. She has very good qualities about her and looked as if she had been acting for a long time. I had a feeling that the profanity did not belong in the play, I felt like it was thrown in just for the cause. It looked strange when the actors would cuss, it did not look natural as if they almost had to force it out of their mouths.
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I have never seen a young woman look so absolutely beautiful in my life. I think that I have seen an angel before my very eyes. I feel that I could lose my nerve just trying to speak to her. Please help me be able to communicate in a eloquent manner, so that I may possibly be able to impress her. Come to my rescue! I need you to help me express my thoughts and feelings in a fashionable manner. I knew you once before, though you, indeed are distant; I can still see you standing by me somehow. I need your help, so desperately…
In the depths of my soul, I know you are the only one that can save my life from the perils of an injustice world. I also know that you are the only one that may be able to love me truly for who I am. And after all I’ve done, when even doubting your existence while crawling thru the muck and filth of my own sin; have the audacity to question you for help… I need a savior. I can truly say I need an entity that is omnipotent and powerful; one that I know can, without a doubt in my mind, heart or soul, lift me up from a whimsical world… Full of despair and anguishing heartache. Save me, I pray. Read more…
Dante Alighieri wrote La Divina Commedia in the early fourteenth century. Edgar Allan Poe wrote the “Adventure of Hans Pfaall” in the early nineteenth century. Two works with more than five hundred years of separation in creation yet, two works whose central theme is one in the same, the idea of transcending the confines of this world and rising to the unknown. The dictionary defines transcendence as 1: a state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience, or 2: the state of excelling or surpassing or going beyond usual limits. In the course of these two works the main characters both make journeys to the moon, but both for plainly different reasons. One could also argue that the two works parallel the two definitions given just above. The purpose of this essay is to compare the idea of transcendence as it is presented in Dante’s “Paradiso” with the way it is presented in Poe’s “Adventure of Hans Pfaall”. Read more…
