Christopher Gabro - 12 Angry Jurors

This past week I attended Theater CNU’s production of “12 Angry Jurors,” which the show is originally entitled “12 Angry Men,” but since the mixing of genders has occurred since the origination of the play—so has the title.  The changing of the title is already a sign that signifies how the text has been changed over time and how the storyteller thinks it will have signified affect on its audience.  But I digress on my semiotic analysis of the change in title.

                                                                                      

Going of our discussion of the spoken word and the image, the play is battlefield where these two forces meet.  The play allows the actor to take words and inflect and project them in ways that make the audience understand the characters and the story and also inform the audience how to feel about the characters and the story.  Moreover, the theater has the power to conform the stage to its needs.  Theater has evolved a tad since Harrison’s analysis and contemporary theater adjusts the stage settings to the work and to the actor’s ability to manifest the stage into the environment of the story.  This show also used uncanny lighting affects when certain actors were speaking to convey an emotion.  For instance, when a hot-tempered juror with racist tendencies had his monologue the cyclorama, the white panel that drops behind the set and absorbs light, was manipulated red to invoke a feeling in the audience.  When the open-minded juror spoke vouching innocence for the purported felon, the “cyc” was a deep blue.  Theater is no longer the story telling of a single individual that separated from the chorus.  No, theater has no become the collective work of actors, stage hands, artist, lighting and sound coordinators.  Does this change in theater show a progression within the art form or is it a way of prolonging its existence?