"Supercell" World Premier:
Thursday Sept. 21, 7:15 pm, Kogod Theater, The Clarice:
The organizer of the events was Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. They provided the stage for the actors to come and present their play to us. The play was “Slowdanger: Supercell.” This series is part of a trilogy named “Empathy Machine.” The date of the play was Thursday, September 21, 2023, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. The funny thing about this was that I didn’t actually read the summary in the pamphlet that they gave us at the beginning, so at the beginning of the play, when one of the actors was talking, I was expecting a horror-ish play. However, I got quickly lost. But in the end, I found out that the story was actually about Climate Change and the effects that climate change has on society. The play’s purpose(at least what I believe) was to highlight how crazily climate change can affect the planet, but at the same time, in a way, it brings awe to the people living through it. As for the people who are living in the moment and seeing how rapidly the world is changing, it is also a time for society to look back at themselves and see who they really are and how much they’ve changed.
Personally, I found the play really interesting once I looked back at what actually happened after understanding what was happening during the play. This leads me to find the play rather convincing because, through statistics and personal experience, it is extremely clear that climate change is impacting our earth in not a good way. This past summer was disgustingly hot, and the last winter was just a slightly colder fall. In our CPSG class, we went through at least ten slides showing us the effects that climate change has had on us, starting from hundreds of years ago. I cannot think of any information that can prove any of the “points” that were made in the play. I do not know too much regarding climate change, so I haven’t learned much to go ahead a prove anything wrong unless it's something blatant, like saying global change isn’t a problem, since it's clearly a problem that needs to be addressed immediately. As time goes on, the climate change problem will only get worse, and if we do nothing to prevent it from getting worse, at a certain point, we will be able to do nothing and only stare in awe at the future effects that climate change will have on the planet. At that point, humanity will go through so many emotions, something that the play depicted really well. However, something that I wish had been done to clearly express and convey the purpose of the play was the usage of more words. In the beginning, the actor did speak, but it sounded like he had a grudge(extreme grudge) against someone, not climate change. With this, I subconsciously had this thought in my head, and when the play went on, I got more and more lost, only understanding the purpose of the play at the end. However, I can also see why they did not want to use words since it would be more impactful to physically convey what they want rather than verbally since the physical conveying can invoke more emotions, something they were able to do remarkably well. Looking back at the play, I do not think that the play actually used any logical fallacies. Regarding the critical thinking aspect, I can’t really say that they failed to “critically think” since this was done in the form of a play, but one way they could have clearly depicted the aspect of critical thinking is with the usage of words. Since the majority of the play was done through just dancing and physical gestures, it evoked a feeling that many of the things they were doing were from the heart and their true desires rather than what their brain was telling them to do. By using and adding more words throughout the play, the aspect of critical thinking could have become more evident. Overall, I really enjoyed my experience and am happy with having signed up for the play. The actors were fantastic, and the cameras and technology used were really innovative. If there was another event like this, I’d for sure sign up.