Final Reflection

       As I sat down in our circle for one last time on Wednesday, I began to realize how much I truly learned from this class. Coming into the class, to be completely honest, I wasn't expecting much and just wanted to get a GER out of the way. I am so grateful to be sitting here today and be able to say that I have gained so much more from this class than I thought I could have. Classical Asian Theaters has opened my eyes to an entire new rich culture I had no idea about and forced me to reevaluate my conception of what art is and more importantly, to reevaluate the art of cultural expression.
       I have been participating in theatre since I was in high school. With this said, I have always had an extremely narrow mind as to what theatre is meant to be and the correct and incorrect ways of depicting it. With that said, as the semester began to progress, I understood more and more about how truly wrong I was in my understanding. The dance forms of ancient India, the culture rich parades of Indonesia, and the spiritual and symbolist driven forms of Japan all opened my eyes to a complete new realm of theatre. I am able to say that my perceptions are no longer restricted to "realism." I have come to be able to appreciate all new forms what they do for the people who participate in them. When I began to redefine what theatre was; a form of cultural expression, a depiction of human life (and ALL parts of human life), I was better able to come to terms with these different forms. They are in their very essence theatre because they are expressions of culture, reflected all different areas of human life, whether real life, or one's connection with a spiritual world. In turn, these practices bring people together and enhance, expand, and enlighten the community, just as theatre does for Western socieities.
        Therefore, I came to realize that although we have been focusing on the inherent differences of theatre between the West and the East, I couldn't help to conclude by stressing the similarities we have with one another. Although the forms are extremely different, no matter where in the world you experience them, they all reflect human life and in the end bring people together to express their values and belief systems. In essence, theatre is a reflection of the culture itself. We all go through pain, happiness, doubts, occurrences with spirituality and God, and attempts at characturizing who we are, amongst other things. The West and the East, at least in art expression, are no different from one another. I believe this should be a ground in which we can advance our understanding of one another and establish the common bonds that unite us under human experience. The manifestations of such experience may be culturally independent, but that human experience itself is perhaps the deepest universal trait that connects all of us.