Original Intent Theater seeks to revisit divers theatrical conventions which developed out of the original impetus that impelled people throughout history to express themselves through dramatic forms, but doing so with the understanding that these conventions may need to be rethought in order to both tell the stories of our modern society, and to fit the problems of producing plays in modern theater precincts (especially on a small, relatively inexpensive scale).
Examples from the current production:
In the production of Barcinda Forest, the use of blank verse is revisited. The forest creatures speak in blank verse in order to provide a sound that is different from the language of the humans speaking in prose. While blank verse in the past was mostly used as the language of the ruling or wealthy class, in this play it is used as the language of those creatures closest to nature. Prose is used for the humans who are out of sync with nature.
The three-paneled periaktoi (the scenic device borrowed from the ancient Greeks) in this production are built upon wheeled bases, a difference from their construction in our last production, Toughing Slumaria (see below).
Examples from our former production:
The use of the chorus was revisited in Toughing Slumaria with the use of two distinct choruses: 1. The women being abused by their landlord were sometimes used in a chorus fashion to impose their own experiences on an ongoing action. 2. One to three narrators, acting like a chorus, were used to goad an actor in a scene like some “devil over the shoulder”, or used to comment about those aspects of the locale which play to the sense of smell, or used to help tie together the episodic nature of the play’s story.
In the production of Toughing Slumaria the three-paneled periaktoi were made of cloth and suspended like hanging lanterns from the ceiling pipes of the black-box theater.
