Last Friday’s play Wuthering Heights was an interesting rendition of the traditional novel, and was directed and adapted for the stage by the director Kirsten Brandt. Some of the different aspects that she incorporated were the use of the stage and placement of her characters, as well as the differences that she mentioned beforehand that supposedly enhanced the overall understanding of the play.
It was pretty interesting to see a play being done in a workshop, and Brandt’s use of spatial arrangement was a key component through the play. Keeping all of the characters near each other and having the actors and actresses echo what the “on-stage” characters were saying improved the overall understand of how gothic Emily Brontë’s novel was, and one of the more memorable moments was when everybody sighed upon a death. On the continuation of spatial arrangement, some characters even went into the audience seating and yelled to obtain a better effect on the chaos that erupted towards the middle and end of the novel: they would yell during arguments to the people on stage.
Another interesting concept presented beforehand was that the play was not necessarily going to be linear, and that Brandt was also going to incorporate different works of Emily and Charlotte Brontë. Poems and other stories actually enhanced the Victorian feeling of Wuthering Heights because it gave the audience an enhanced feeling of the gothic. Charlotte and Emily Brontë were both excellent writers, and melding their work by using Charlotte Brontë’s work to augment the play was especially useful when moving through scenes or time in the play. As many different gothic elements were presented, the feeling of the ghostly presence wasn’t fully present; instead, the play had more of an ominous feel when the ghost should have been more present. The student actors did an amazing job in their portrayal, and Brandt’s directing and spatial arrangement made Wuthering Heights a successful San José State play.
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