This week in Int. 95, our guest speaker was Irwin Appel, the
Director of the Bachelor of Fine Arts Training (BFA). He made his life story sound really
interesting. Mr. Appel said his main
goal in life was to “act, play guitar, and meet women.” However with the advice of his mother, “ a
good actor is a smart actor”, Mr. Appel attended Princeton and then went on to
Julliard in New York City. He then talked all about his adventures in the city
and how much he loved traveling to do what he loved, acting. It all sounded
great, but then reality struck and he realized that he no longer wanted to be
out on the road, but instead settle down and teach others what he had learned
about acting.
In an attempt to settle somewhere,
Mr. Appel interviewed for UCSB and actually got the job. Fourteen years later, he still loves his job. He told us that his class, Naked Shakes, is
putting on a production of Macbeth. I
recently saw the play and I must say, it was amazing. Mr. Appel is a very talented director and his
once piece of advice that I found most useful was to take a class that you
would normally not even think of taking because in the end it may end up being
the best class you ever took.
My Int. section visited the
Education Abroad center and there I found out that my dreams of visiting Spain
and Australia can come true. The
students that gave us the presentation about the program were well informed and
had first hand experiences about their travels.
I learned that any major could study abroad which is really
exciting. I would really love the opportunity to go abroad
because I want to see all the different cultures of this world.
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair,”
said the three witches of Macbeth in their scary high-pitched voices. Friday’s performance of Macbeth by UCSB’s Naked Shakes was riveting! The original play by Shakespeare was always one of my favorites because I love the whole dramatic storyline.The actors were perfect; they brought the
right amount of emotion to the play and made it as authentic as could be. I found the use of a drum to be really
interesting. The drum was subtle sometimes, which was perfect for some scenes,
but then it was intense when it needed to be.
Another unique thing was the costumes in the play. For the most part, all the actors had the
same black outfit, but some, who were the main characters, had subtle changes
to it. The only props used throughout the play was the gold crown the king wore and the swords of the army. There was no set on stage;
instead, the actors would use their “swords”, these long wooden sticks, to form
tables, thrones, and forests. There was
this scene in the play where the king needed to be sitting on a throne so
instead of having a chair to sit on, the other actors formed a throne using
only their bodies. I thought that was
beyond cool because the amount of strength needed to do this must have been a
lot, so I give them props for that. I really
enjoyed the play so I give the cast, crew, and director major applause for all
their hard work.
