Props For You Pt.2

My favorite musical is Phantom of the Opera. I'm not saying it is absolutely fantastic.. I'm just saying that I love it. I think once you reach Act 2 it starts feeling absurdly long and it's kind of a disturbing story (but most musicals are!) and the song Masquerade can go die. BUT it has FANTASTIC props. I love the costumes and the sets how it is all arranged in a perfectly magical story. My absolute favorite part (and the reason I stay for the second half!) is I believe at the beginning of Act 2 when the phantom takes her down into the dungeon. I love the music and the boat and the eerie candles lighting the fog ridden water.

You see, Tabitha informed me that I missed two crucial aspects to theater-- costumes and lighting. They make a huge impact and here's my new train of thought on those two topics:

1. Costumes- modern day costumes- One thing that I enjoy observing about people is their personal style of clothing. Everyone has a different style even if those styles have a same basic trend. Quite often I see people wearing things and think, "seriously? ew." or "Do you actually think that is attractive??" So many people really wear the most unattractive or flamboyantly ridiculous outfits. 

But then I realized... I do too. I LOVE my ugly outfits. I love my moccasin boots and my teal shirt with the fringe and my pink lucky shirt covered with things I love... I thoroughly enjoy wearing those items of clothing. OR every so often I'll wear something that I'm thoroughly aware doesn't match or doesn't look good but for some reason I find enjoyment in doing this. 

So my revelation-- maybe these people I'm judging are like me.. Maybe they really do have a good sense of style. Maybe they know they look like a fat striped rainbow cow. 

Same goes with hair- I love ridiculous hair styles on myself but every time I see the girl in my oceanography class who has a random fan of hair sticking up on top of her head I become utterly confused. But maybe that's just her thing.. maybe she enjoys it-- not because she thinks it is attractive but simply because it makes her happy. 

2. Lighting- This builds off of costumes in the sense that we can put whatever lighting we want on a situation. We can spotlight certain things while we hide other parts of our lives and observations in the back corner of the stage. We can give any situation a positive lighting effect.. We have complete control as to how we light our stages and how due to that lighting we portray parts of our lives. 

It's quite fantastic taking one opinion and trying to see it from an entirely opposite perspective. I love doing that and I'm fairly decent at it as I learned writing argumentive papers for my ENG 102 class a few years back. It's also amazing how as you study a perspective different from your own you can see beauty and logic on both sides. You may even change your own perspective.

Our stages are whatever we want to make them- there will always be "ugly" costumes but whether or not we see them as ugly is up to us. Perhaps everyone else around us is a lot more like ourselves than we care to realize. 

So when you're sitting in class surrounded by idiots just think.... that's you too. In a good way.