March 6th 2020

Mrs Jackson had received an email from the art department of  Elizabeth Moir and invited her and some of her theatre students to go and watch their recreation of “An enemy of the people” by Arthur Miller. Mrs Jackson initially invited the grade 12 theatre group, which was a little hurtful, but they couldn’t end up going because they were all leaving for the upcoming long weekend. She then resorted to asking us If we wanted to go. We started off not sure if we should say yes or no but we all discussed and thought why not. Mrs Jackson wasn’t able to come either because she was also off for the weekend that night.

Anargi, Matthew, Harry and I Standing outside of the stables before going to watch the performance. Photo: Me

The Performance started at 7:30 and it was held at the stables at park street mews. The director had set aside some tickets for our group and we were ready to sit down and start watching. As we walked in you could already feel the mood of the theatre space, there was a cool blue, purple and green tone that had surrounded the space and on the stage, there was a living room created with the set. The stage was also a really unusual way of creating a background as 2 walls were used to split the scene and would be used to differentiate between the courthouse and their home.

When the performance started we were all incredibly confused about what was going on, this was of course because of how we didn’t know anything about the storyline or what was meant to be happening! We watched the whole of the first half in a state of confusion. After some research done at the interval, we figured out that the play is surrounded around the idea of what happens when the truth comes up against the will of the majority. Stockmann (the main character) attempts to expose a water pollution problem within his home town. His brother, the mayor, conspires with local politicians and the newspaper to suppress the story.

At the beginning of the performance. Photo: Me

With the knowledge of the second half of the play was MUCH easier to understand. There were some very creative directorial decisions that were made during the play. For example, they would make the performers come into the audience during the courthouse house scene so it would break the 4th wall and revert the whole auditorium into the jury. There was a great use of lighting and sound as whenever it was the end of an act they would play “Run Boy Run” by WoodKid and flicker the spotlight which created a very eerie feeling with the audience.

At the end of the performance, the 4 of us ended the night with dinner at Monsoon in Park Street. Watching this play was a great opportunity for us to get ideas for our director’s notebook especially when looking at the unique set, lighting, and technical decisions made by the director. Even though it wasn’t my favourite play I really enjoyed watching it and had a great time broadening my horizons in terms of watching live theatre. It was also incredible acting done by all of the students as all of them really got into their characters and the main character got into the mind of the character and performed it very well.