Gem of the Ocean

I decided to go see Gem of the Ocean last night. I had never seen a theater production at Lehigh before and my best friend is a student artist in the costume shop and had mentioned the play to me and I thought it would be really interesting to see especially since this is something that she puts so much time and effort into. The experience for me wasn’t that of when you typically go to the theater, which I personally liked. I didn’t get all fancy or anything like that, I came straight from the library and was able to buy a ticket right at the door and go in and escape the fact that I have two tests coming up next week.

I really didn’t know what to expect from this experience. When I walked into the theater and sat down I noticed that the stage didn’t look like the ones I’ve seen on Broadway. First off there was no curtain. And there was no off stage area. I later learned that this is called a thrust stage, which helped me connect the dots as to why there was no set change at all – something I had never experienced in the theater before. I had never really experienced a play like this before at all, from the stage to the story line to the acting. The story took place in one room in one woman’s home, there were no other set locations or traveling it all took place in one spot. The acting was nothing short of phenomenal but also different that what I had seen before. For starters the cast was no more than 10 people. I was shocked that such a small cast could give such a big performance. Another thing that stuck out to me was that a lot of the actor’s lines seemed to be an exchange of monologues.

However all of this ‘skew from the norm’ for me was a really refreshing and awesome experience. It was cool for me to kind of step out of what I’m used to and experience something else that is different in my opinion. I really enjoyed the play and I think the cast and the set and everything overall was incredible.