The following information is a summarization of my experience watching the play, "The Divine: A Play for Sarah Bernhardt." I will go over my Spacial experience, Social experience, Cultural and Intellectual experience, and Emotional experience.
The Spacial Experience
Entering the theater was not a very notable experience for me, because I had been there before. I sat in the middle of the theater. The row I ended up on was also an aisle with ample foot space; however, as soon as the lights dimmed, I discovered I was sitting on a walkway for the characters. Because of this, I was forced to reposition myself several times during the performance to avoid tripping the actors. The small size of the auditorium was nice, because the actors did not require microphones to project to the back of the theater.
The Social Experience
In a last minute decision, I saw the play with my friend, Cassidy. During the course of the play, we shared confused and amused expressions whenever something unusual happened during the show. Attending the performance with my friend made the play exponentially better, because I had somebody to discuss the quality of the script and the performance with during the intermission and after the play. I think the Social Experience pertains to the Good Life, because life is inevitably shaped by the people around you, and having somebody close to you enhances the experience from what it would otherwise be by adding an extra layer of emotions.
The Cultural and Intellectual Experience
The play tackled the issue of whether or not art should portray all of the ugly things in the world. Before entering the play, I understood that this issue has been largely overcome in recent years with the most successful works of art being ones that tackle social issues people are uncomfortable with. The play revealed a conservative religious aspect of Canadian culture I was unaware of. However, the play had little impact on my own life, because I already embrace the ideas put forward by the play, since I am an artist myself.
The Emotional Experience
The Divine: A Play for Sarah Bernhardt is the story of its own writing. The play tackles the abuse of workers in terrible conditions, the moral dilemma about performing plays that bring issues in the world to light, and the social issue of exposing priests raping their students to the public. It provides us the opportunity to come clean by forcing us to acknowledge that these issues actually happened and are still present in some form today.