My Comments!

1) Laine Korn--The Drowsy Chaperone
2) Yvette Bourgeois--Three Viewings 
3) Morgan Prestenbach--Fires in the Mirror
4) Sara Stevens--Next to Normal
5) Austin Thompson--On the Verge

It's been a great class, you guys.  Have a nice summer!

With much, much, much, some love,

Jordan Campbell

Show and Tell Post 3--Clybourne Park

Clybourne Park was written by Bruce Norris.  It premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on February 21, 2010, where it was directed by Pam MacKinnon.  It premiered on the West End at the Royal Court Theatre in August 2010 (with Martin Freeman as Karl and Steve).  Finally, it premiered on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on April 19, 2012.  The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and the Theatre World Award, and it was nominated for many others.  You can find the play here, or you can wait until September, when Swine Palace will be staging the play.

Clybourne Park is an unofficial sequel to the 1959 Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, which was about the black Younger family attempting to move into the all-white neighborhood Clybourne Park.  The first act of Clybourne Park takes place during the events of A Raisin in the Sun, but from the perspective of the white family who is selling their house.  The characters are Russ and Bev, who are attempting to sell their house while grieving over the death of their son, Francine and Albert, Russ and Bev’s black housekeeper and her black husband, Jim, the clergyman, and Karl and Betsy, the neighbor and his deaf wife.   In the second act, all of the actors change characters, as the events of the play take place in the same house in 2009.  Over those fifty years, Clybourne Park has become an all-black neighborhood, the black characters represent a neighborhood organization, and the white couple is seeking to buy the house.  After lengthy discussions of housing codes, the conversation eventually turns to racism, to which both parties respond poorly.  At the very end of the play, a nearby worker finds an old trunk with some of Russ and Bev’s stuff, including their son’s suicide note.  We are transported back to 1959, and Bev catches her son, Kenneth, late at night. One of the very last lines of the play is “I really believe things are about to change for the better. I firmly believe that.”

An interesting dramaturgical choice to me is Bruce Norris’ insistence on staging very irrelevant dialogue.  In the first act, this decision manifests itself as many, many pages of dialogue about the correct and incorrect capitals of various foreign countries.  In the second act, the majority of the early dialogue is about indecipherable housing code regulations.  The version of this play that I read was 210 pages long, so that’s a really, really long time to spend on irrelevant stuff in a supposedly important play.  If I had to guess what precisely it means, I would think that it shows a connection from 1959 to 2009 that is consistent throughout the play, and the connection is ignorance.  In 1959, the owners of the house cannot name the capitals of foreign countries, showing their international ignorance.  In 2009, they don’t know the housing code regulations of their own neighborhood, perhaps showing domestic ignorance.

The structure of this play is one that utterly confounds me.  Since the story is told in 1959 and in 2009, the only consistent character in the entire play is the house.  It’s very hard to find a consistent plotline to follow here—essentially, Clybourne Park is two very, very similar plays that occur fifty years apart.  The choice of structure is probably the most interesting dramaturgical choice to me, as it goes against all history of a dramatic journey.  To set the second scene in 2009 with entirely new characters is a bold choice compared to setting it after the Younger deal went through in 1959; in that case, we would be able to see a really clear story with consistent characters.  However, as the play is, the overarching plot is that of the house and the neighborhood.  This play is more like Three Viewings than anything else.

Prompt 14--The Drowsy Chaperone

I think that the main distinction between the fictional Drowsy Chaperone musical and the frame of the Man around it is largely based in ambiguity.  In the musical-within-the-play, there is not much ambiguity—we know that the good guys are going to get married because the play is a comedy, and, of course, they do get married, along with everyone else.  By the end of the play, there really are not any questions to answer—Robert marries Janet, Tottendale marries the Underling, Aldolpho marries the drowsy chaperone, and Fieldzig marries Kitty.  However, within the frame story, nothing is so clear.  We know the Man’s opinions on theatre, as expressed in the very beginning, and we certainly know his opinions about The Drowsy Chaperone.  We don’t know anything else about him, even at the end of the play.  What does it mean when he is “flown into the flies”?  What does that say about his character?

Duration is also treated much differently between the frame story and the Drowsy Chaperone musical.  In the musical, there is a lot of time spent on some pretty silly stuff—take, for instance, the extended tap breaks in many songs and the sheer length of time spent on the utterly meaningless “Toledo Surprise.”  There’s also the spit-take scene, which, if it weren’t for the Man’s kind insistence that we skip through that scene, we would presumably have to watch it for much longer in the actual Drowsy Chaperone.  In the frame story, the duration is spent almost exclusively on the Man expressing his opinions on musical theatre and The Drowsy Chaperone.  Also, I find it pretty interesting that the song “Message from a Nightingale” only exists within the frame, actually, and does not exist in the fictional Drowsy Chaperone musical, so that would be one example of that frivolous, silly scene actually taking space in the frame, not in the musical itself.

Prompt 13--Three Viewings

My first thought when I read this prompt was Margaret-Mary Walsh, as she showed up to all of the funerals.  While she wasn’t necessarily a detail that anyone else missed, she was certainly the one who stuck out to me.  However, in researching just how she is presented in each scene, I came across another name—Nettie James.  She is spotlighted in Tell-Tale, as Emil notes that “Nettie James died yesterday.  She was 103… Terrible woman.  The Herald Star made up a headline for her obituary that read ‘Nettie James FINALLY dies.’ ”  However, I entirely missed that she was also the grandmother of Mac in The Thief of Tears.  Looking back, I apparently didn’t read that monologue very well at all—thus why I did so poorly on the questions from The Thief of Tears on the test.  Anyway, the realization that everyone thought of her as a terrible, terrible person definitely colors my perception of what I read in the second monologue.  However, as far as I can tell, Nettie James is not in Thirteen Things About Ed Carpolotti, which is rather disappointing.  Thus, this reference essentially only exists to give us a preconceived notion of a woman from Tell-Tale that we will later learn much more about in The Thief of Tears. 

A more abstract motif running through these monologues is the idea of a character not being who they appear to be.  In Tell-Tale, Emil waits until the very end of his monologue to mention that he has a wife after telling a very long story about his creepy crush.  Mac in The Thief of Tears begins her monologue with the line “I’ve been stealing jewelry off corpses for years.  Grandma’ll be a fuckin’ cinch,” which is possibly the most villainous line to ever begin a piece of literature; however, she counteracts this by acting very sentimentally throughout her monologue.  The same thing happens in Ed Carpolloti, but from a different perspective—instead of the narrator appearing to be something different to the audience, we learn that Ed Carpolotti appeared different to the narrator than he really was.

Prompt #12--On the Verge

For my series of posters, I would want to emphasize both the time travel aspect and the expansive vocabulary of the main characters.  Essentially, it would be two posters, with the first being a shot of an egg-beater in an upside-down umbrella in the woods and the second poster being a Norman Rockwell-esque painting from the outside of a 50s gas station/diner with Nicky’s Peligrosa Paradise Bar and Grill in neon lights in the background.  However, both of these pictures would be overlaid with various esoteric words that may or may not be in the script, emphasizing the intense vocabulary used by the ladies.  From a far distance, and, to most people, from a short distance, it would look like faded, jumbled, random letters in the background, as the words would be in tiny font, all capital letters, with no spaces, so it would look something like  “ISTHMUSEMBARCADEROPEREGRINATIONSINCONGNITAPROFORMACUPPACLAIRVOYANTTRUCULENTVERTIGINOUSPUNJIORINOCOHABERDASHERYRECALCITRANTSILURIANHIPPOPOTAMIIMUCILAGENOUSPROVENANCECIRCUMGLOBULARLYMILIEUUBIQUITOUSCALLIGRAPHYSERAGLIO.”  The effect I am going for is similar to one of the posters for Darren Aronofsky’s Pi. These words would be more faded in the second poster, and the words themselves would become slightly smaller and more obvious, reflecting the lack of reliance on a large vocabulary in the second act.  The words overlaying the pictures are not meant to draw focus away from the pictures, but to add texture to them.

The pictures themselves on the posters are to emphasize the time travel and intense change of scenery between the two acts.  The juxtaposition of the Victorian-era umbrella and the modern eggbeater hints at this, as well, and the effect of both being dropped in the middle of the woods creates a rather mysterious effect.  The second poster simply reflects the locations of the second act—the gas station/diner (which just happens to be a perfect cultural emblem for the American 1950s) where the ladies meet Gus and Nicky’s bar.

Prompt #11--Fires in the Mirror

Fires in the Mirror must be performed the way that it is written, with all scenes intact, as opposed to cutting out the first half of the play that is not strictly about the Crown Heights riots.  The play is structured so that Crown Heights is not mentioned or belabored for a very long time, and this is intentional, because the play is about identity more than it is the Crown Heights riots.  For one, we can see this in the title—the play is called “Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities,” not “The Crown Heights Riots: Themes and Identities.” Anna Deveare Smith contextualizes the Crown Heights riots within the larger scope of identity, and she flavors it with the natural effects that come from her playing every single part.

The very first section of the play, with the Ntozake Shange, Lubavitcher woman, and George C. Wolfe monologues, it titled “Identity.”  Similarly, the next section is titled “Mirrors.”  Of these, only the anonymous Lubavitcher woman’s monologue is even cursorily about the Crown Heights riots.  I’m not saying this to give fodder to the belief that these monologues should be cut; I’m saying that anyone who thinks that way should reconsider the text as a whole, and not just the source material from which Anna Deveare Smith worked.  Essentially, just look at the duration of time that the script spends between the two subjects—about half of the script is explicitly about the Crown Heights riots (which, by that point, are already contextualized in the frame of identity, especially with Anna Deveare Smith’s unique style), and the other half is explicitly about identity.  The two are essentially inextricable, and it would be a loss and an insult to the rest of the script to perform only one half or the other.

Blog Checkpoint #2 Comments

1. Dora Pereli's Detroit

2. Austin Thompson's Buried Child

3. Zac Thriffiley's Buried Child

4. Corey Vincent's Show and Tell

5. Yvette Bourgeois' Detroit

6. Sara Stevens' Detroit

Show and Tell Post #2--The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot was written in 2005 and first performed off-Broadway at The Public Theatre, where it was directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, with a cast that included Eric Bogosian as Satan and Sam Rockwell as Judas Iscariot.  It was also performed at the West End at the Almeida Theatre, and it is a part of Theatre Baton Rouge’s Turner-Fischer City Series in 2013.  You can find the play at http://solomon.nadr.alexanderstreet.com.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/cgi-bin/asp/philo/navigate.pl?nadr.1442.

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is about a modernized trial to determine whether or not Judas Iscariot was guilty of betraying Jesus Christ and whether or not Judas should be sent to heaven or hell.  The play dramatizes many events of the betrayal in the form of flashbacks and testimonies, but it also includes many tangentially-related historical figures such as Mother Teresa and Sigmund Freud.  The play begins with Judas’ mother stating that if her son goes to hell, then there is no God.  The trial begins, and the prosecution calls Judas’ mother (who defends Judas’ character), Mother Teresa (who said that Judas didn’t listen to God), Satan (who claims not to have coerced Judas), and Caiaphas the Elder (who claims that Judas approached him about betraying Jesus).  The defense calls Simon the Zealot (who says Judas did it for God), Sigmund Freud (who claims Judas was insane), and Pontius Pilate (whom the defense attorney berates for sending Jesus to death).  In the final scenes, Judas complains that Jesus should have made him better, and Jesus responds asking for Judas’ love.  The end of the play is a monologue of a man named Butch Honeywell praying to Judas.

One of the most interesting choices that Guirgis makes in building this play is that he does not include Judas Iscariot in many scenes.  This is not a play that chronologically retells the story of the betrayal of Jesus; the play simply is not about that singular relationship between Jesus and Judas.  It is more about commentary on those events.  The characters who have the most lines are not Jesus, Judas, or Satan—they are the fictional lawyers, Fabiana Aziza Cunningham and Yusef el-Fayoumy.  This helps to distinguish the play as a wacky Stephen Adly Guirgis play that just happens to be about religious themes.  I think the use of many characters onstage talking about one singular character who rarely appears reinforces a theme regarding the judgment and absolution of a guilty person by the community around him.  This play is less about whether or not what Judas was verifiable wrong, but more about what the community around him thinks about the situation.  Anyone with a vague understanding of the Bible would know that Jesus would forgive Judas for anything, so there is not much to say about that story.  This ensemble play is primarily about the community—it could perhaps be titled Some Relevant People’s Thoughts on the Last Days of Judas Iscariot.

On the other hand, the choice that I entirely disagree with was Guirgis’ decision to give some of the angels and religious character stereotypical urban black dialect.  Saint Monica is perhaps the worst offender, with lines like “Saint Augustine—he stopped bangin’ whores and sippin’ on some wine, and he became learn-ed, so fucking learn-ed that he’s known as one of the Fathers of the Church, and you look that shit up!”  Honestly, everyone but Jesus has this modernized dialect to some extent; I feel like Stephen Adly Guirgis doesn’t know how to write outside of the “New York voice.”  Even if I don’t understand why he treats so many religious characters with that modern voice, it does make sense that he separates Jesus from them by leaving Jesus the way that everyone would expect him to be played.   

Prompt #10--Detroit

As Zac Thriffiley pointed out in class (much more eloquently than I would have), the city of Detroit has had a very strong connotation with social and economic collapse in the last few years.  The title certainly would not make any sense to an audience that saw the play before Detroit’s collapse.  Given the modern housing situation in first ring suburbs and the presence of the new neighbors, Sharon and Kenny, I would say that the point of Detroit is somewhere between dashed expectations and unstoppable deterioration. 

Throughout the 20^th century, Detroit has been a highly successful and important city, often noted as the automobile center of the world.   However, Detroit took the economic collapse especially hard, and any hopes of continued financial success were ruined.  In Detroit, Ben and Mary have high hopes for their new neighbors, and when it turns out that they are just drug-addled squatters, the effects are pretty devastating. 

The decline of Detroit was something that most people could not help to fix.  The options for many people would be to get out of town (as the majority did), as the deterioration of the city was inevitable.  Onstage, this is shown by the houses falling apart.  Also, Ben and Mary are helpless to stop the drug-fueled descent of Kenny and Sharon.  Really, the only thing that Ben and Mary did wrong was befriend these drug addicts and stick with them; I would say that this strongly parallels people not wanting to leave Detroit because they think that their fortunes would turn around.  These people were hurt the most.

Also, as I stated in class, it’s actually fairly similar to the title of David Mamet’s Oleanna.   No, the play is not set in New Norway, Pennsylvania, and Detroit is not necessarily set in Detroit.  That’s not the point.

Prompt #9--A Spoonful of Water

The first instance of the storylines merging in this play is when Elliot and Yaz get on the rehab forum and talk to Orangutan because they are trying to sell Odessa’s computer.  Elliot fakes being Haikumom, which Orangutan sees through very quickly.  Then, Orangutan suggests that Elliot become a part of a pain medication addiction forum, which offends Elliot greatly and lets him know that Odessa has been public with Elliot’s addiction.  This scene does a couple of interesting things that are necessary plotwise.  First, it reveals Elliot’s addiction, which had been unmentioned thus far in the play.  Secondly, it aggravates Elliot into hating his mother even more.  The fact that Orangutan almost immediately notices that Elliot is not actually Haikumom seems to fit into the recurring theme of emotional presence over physical presence; that is, the play stages the forum members as speaking to each other directly because they are emotionally available for each other despite the physical distance between them, whereas Elliot and Odessa are rarely onstage conversing with each other because neither of them are emotionally available for the other, despite how physically near each other they are for the majority of the play.  Also, the poor maternal relationship between Elliot and Odessa is pretty similar to Orangutan’s nonexistent relationship with her birth mother.  From the beginning of the play, Orangutan and Elliot have traveled a very far distance to receive some kind of closure from their birth mother; however, by the end of the play, neither of them would succeed.  

Prompt #8--Buried Child

I should start by saying that I generally see Buried Child as a theatrically realistic play—like most everything by Sam Shepard, there are copious details in the stage descriptions regarding little set decorations that help place the scenes in a world that is consistent.  Buried Child is stylistically very similar to Fool for Love, which also lends itself to kitchen-sink realism, but includes the ghostly, fantastical Old Man.  However, the world of Buried Child is NOT logically consistent, even if the set disguises itself as such.  The primary problem I run into when reading the play is the subject of family bloodline.  The play never really resolves the tension between whether or not Vince is actually Tilden’s child, and, if so, what relationship he has to the buried child.  For some reason, no one ever brings up Vince’s birth, and Tilden only acknowledges the birth of his murdered child.  If the play is trying to be remotely true to real life (or even just simple logic!), then something has to give, especially since we actually see the remains of the dead and buried child at the end of the play.  Because of this, I would describe Buried Child as realistic on the surface level, but illogical on a deeper, nonrealistic level.  Similarly, there is the unexplained growth of unplanted crops in the back yard.  While it is not unfeasible for corn to grow very high in the back yard, and it is not entirely impossible for there to be some way that the corn was planted, the occurrence of the excess growth of corn, as it is explained in the play, it utterly illogical and unrealistic. 

Prompt #7--Noises Off

A running motif throughout Noises Off (especially the ends of the acts) would be the curtain lines.  The curtain lines exist on different levels that affect each other throughout the course of the play.  For instance, the curtain line to the first act of the metadramatical farce Nothing On is “When all around is strife and uncertainty, there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned plate of sardines!”  Nothing On is essentially designed as a typical older farce, which would very often have curtain lines to bookend a scene. The Nothing On curtain line seems to underscore the action of Noises Off in every act; after all, every time the players perform Nothing On, there is nothing but strife and uncertainty.  There is also the curtain line of the first two acts of Noises Off, in which the director, Lloyd, says “And curtain!”, which is as metatheatrical of a curtain line as there can be.  The final line of the play, however, is a combination of the curtain line of Nothing On and the curtain line of Nothing Off, as the Burglar Selsdon misspeaks his line to say “When all around is strife and uncertainty, there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned plate of curtain!” 

            I actually think this line is a great start to understanding the play.  Essentially, the plot of each act is that, no matter what craziness befalls the actors onstage or behind the stage, it will all be over if they finish the act.  The curtain is what saves them, especially in act 3.  The rest of all three acts is pure chaos—truly, it is nothing but strife and uncertainty until the final moments of each act when the curtain comes in.  Specifically, I think that the final moment of the play, in which all actors bring down the curtain as an ensemble, shows the unified cast finally achieving a victory.   Even if the production was terrible and hectic, at least it is over as soon as the curtain hits the stage.

Prompt #6--The Glass of Water

I would say that Bolingbroke has the most time onstage, and his aspirations seem to be much higher and nobler than anyone else’s.  While the audience can undoubtedly respect Anne’s desires to be a free queen and Abigail and Masham’s desires to wed, I believe that Bolingbroke’s complicated plot to shut down the Duchess’ needless and destructive war is the most important thread of the story.  Unfortunately, it is also pretty difficult to follow—it was always very easy for me to see where any of the lovers were coming from, even the Duchess.  However, I still don’t really understand the intricacies of Bolingbroke’s plot, and I’m sure I didn’t while I was reading the play.  Of course, the audience would note that Bolingbroke is scheming throughout the entire play and that he always seems to be a few steps ahead of the Duchess, so even if he cannot be played as a true protagonist, he would probably at least look like the scheming mastermind—and, let’s face it, in a well-made play, the character who plots and gossips the most is the most important character.

Ultimately, though, I can see how it wouldn’t be too productive to think of this play in terms of a singular protagonist.  After all, the audience certainly doesn’t see anything from one character’s perspective.  While there is one distinct villain to dislike, the rest of the cast is almost an ensemble, and forcing Bolingbroke to be the main character is a bit of an unnecessary stretch.  After all, this is a play about the relationships and secrets shared by many people, not about one person, specifically.

Show and Tell Post #1

About a week ago, I read Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters, written in 2011 and first performed Off Off Broadway by the Flea Theatre on November 4, 2011.  Interestingly enough, the play opened yesterday at the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre as a part of its “Garage Rep Season.”  Qui Nguyen himself is a Vietnamese-American playwright perhaps most famous for his early collaboration, Vampire Cowboy Trilogy, with Robert Ross Parker, with whom he founded the Vampire Cowboy Theatre Company.   One can buy She Kills Monsters from amazon.com or from samuelfrench.com. 

She Kills Monsters is the story of Agnes Evans, a twenty-something-year-old teacher who wants to learn more about her deceased teenage sister, Tilly, who died in a horrific car crash along with the rest of Agnes’ family.  Agnes finds Tilly’s Dungeons and Dragons adventure module and looks to play with Tilly’s former dungeon master.  The scenes alternate between the highly fantastical world of Tilly’s adventure, which include DnD-ized versions of Tilly’s friends, and the real world, where Agnes actually meets these people.  In the DnD world, Agnes and the party must team up to defeat three evil bosses and the dragon, Tiamat; the three bosses are comprised of the villains of Tilly’s life, such as the bully cheerleaders and Agnes’ boyfriend.  Through the game, Agnes learns that Tilly was a lesbian who had a crush on the real-life basis for one of the party members, Lilly, who did not know how to accept Tilly’s affections.  Eventually, Agnes slays the Tiamat, and the play ends with the narration that Agnes, her boyfriend, and Tilly’s old DnD friends would continue to have adventures every week, but they would never forget Tilly. 

My favorite dramaturgical choice for this script is that Tilly’s sexual orientation is not referenced until page 36 of the 70-page script.  It may come across as a sort of “suddenly, here’s the moral!” addition, but the script is built this way for a reason.  It lulls the reader into thinking that the play is just a silly comedic fantasy, but halfway through the play, two evil succubi (cheerleaders) call Agnes’ dead sister a dyke, which is obviously quite shocking to her.  This structure actually mimics the experience of DnD nerds; the fun, awesome fantasy world is an escape from a cold, mean reality that does not understand.  She Kills Monsters is not aiming to be just Lord of the Rings-style DnD-session escapism; it treads the line between reality and fantasy to show both.  This structure of harsh bits of reality covered by a blanket of silliness is actually used early on in the play, as well, which opens with a Cate Blanchett-esque narrator making nerd jokes who cursorily adds “And so the Gods answered her wish by smiting down every single one of her loved ones in a single car crash.  But this isn’t the story of that tragedy.”

In that same vein, I like that Qui Nguyen did not write this story about the car crash or Tilly’s death.  In the play, there is not even a mention of Tilly’s and Agnes’ parents or whoever else would be one of her loved ones in the car crash.  Despite this, the play is very much about the Evans sisters and their relationship before Tilly’s death, so the action of the play is not just an isolated incident of unrelated fantasy.  I think the play does itself a favor by not bogging itself down in the details of the tragedy, though.

Prompt 5--Hornby

In Maria Irene Fornes’ The Conduct of Life, the progression of the rape scenes is pretty important.  Scenes three, five, and seven are all scenes in the warehouse with Orlando and poor Nena, but rape does not happen in every scene.  First, to start the progression, Orlando brutally rapes Nena in scene three, waking the audience up to that terrible atrocity.  It is terrifying, and many audience members would probably walk out or sit through it in hopes that it would be the last of such scenes.  Then, the tension comes back in scene five, but Orlando does not rape Nena; instead, nothing really happens, and the audience is probably pretty confused.  Many audience members would take it as a sign that Orlando is getting better and just does not want to rape her.  However, in scene seven, Orlando rapes Nena again, and the audience has to sit through another terrible rape scene, just after getting their hopes up that Orlando would stop.  It puts the audience in the mindset of Nena because, though they do not know what will happen any time Orlando enters the warehouse, they should prepare for the absolute worst. 

In the Lab Theatre’s production of Dutchman last semester, Lula’s apple was a recurring motif.  Obviously, the image of a woman eating an apple is a clear biblical allusion by itself in symbolist literature, showing Lula as a trouble-making, seductive creature, but its use in the play added other elements to it, as well.  For instance, in the beginning of the play, Lula is eating an apple and offers it to Clay, which he graciously accepts, foreshadowing his seduction and downfall.  When Clay has eaten the apple, he places the core on his book on the ground, showing that this seduction is hindering his ability to think.  At the beginning of scene two, Lula feeds Clay slices of an apple by cutting them off with her knife, showing Clay’s naïveté and full acceptance of what Lula feeds him, as well as foreshadowing Lula’s future use of the knife—stabbing Clay to his death.  In the script, this was not very specific—Lula enters with the apples, and they eat them together, which is a strong gesture in itself; however, I do not think that reading a motif has the same effect as seeing it produced onstage.  I think the visualization of the motif is substantially more important than seeing a word repeated many times in a paper script.

Prompt 4--How I Learned to Drive

           The Greek chorus produces an effect of isolationism on the two main characters.  Essentially, we are looking at a world that is inhabited by only two “vivid” characters—Li’l Bit and Uncle Peck—and the ensemble of family members and various extras that live in their world.  This forces us to think about the entire play in regards to Li’l Bit’s and Peck’s relationship, as opposed to the other characters, who are only tangentially relevant.  This story could be retold with Aunt Mary as a major character, and it is almost offensive that her story is only told in one monologue.  It is interesting that the three chorus members play highly individualized roles, however; if this play were produced in Athens 2500 years ago, the many bodies of the chorus would represent the masses in general, and we would probably only see the one public opinion from it—“Eww.  Gross. Stop it.” 

            I don’t really understand why the whole show is presented as a driver’s ed course.  Yes, the play is tangentially about how Li’l Bit learned how to drive, and the play is titled How I Learned to Drive, but that does not seem like enough to warrant that specific presentational choice.  I think it takes away from the seriousness of the situation, which I suppose may be the point.   Really, though, which is more offensive—portraying child rape as a horrid, graphic, despicably violent act, or to downplay it and make it palatable to the audience? Obviously, I would much rather see How I Learned to Drive staged than The Conduct of Life because I would love to live in a world where child rape isn’t horribly violent and terrifying or, preferably, just doesn’t exist.  Still, doesn’t it seem immoral to portray Uncle Peck as a good man and Li’l Bit’s childhood as a gimmicky “well, this is what my childhood was like, just like everyone else”?  I think so.  I think it is immoral to portray violence in any way that isn’t horrifying (except for comedic purposes, of course; don’t you dare tell me that this play is treating child rape comically).

Prompt 3--The Conduct of Life

The dramaturgical choices in The Conduct of Life that stand out to me tend to be the ones in the stage directions.  Fornes describes the rape scenes using the phrase “pushes his pelvis against her” many times, which has an unsettling effect on me, personally.  It makes the reader consider the biology of the situation, which makes it much more difficult to avoid the horrifying aspect of it all.   It makes me wonder if Fornes found the phrase “he rapes her” to be too unbearable, or perhaps too crass, but if this is the case, then it is at odds with the fact that she is writing a play where rape happens twice onstage.  In fact, this topic is actually a bit too disgusting for me to consider at the moment, so I am going to change the subject.

At the beginning of Scene 1, Orlando is doing jumping-jacks; Fornes describes it as “he continues doing jumping-jacks as long as the actor can endure it.”   From a production standpoint, this sounds terribly boring for anyone watching or working on the play—after all, how many jumping-jacks can a healthy man perform before he can no longer “endure it”? It does create an interesting effect on the character (actor, really) and the audience’s perception of him, though.  After all, the play is largely about Orlando’s physicality and aggression, and Fornes decides that the first thing the audience will see onstage is Orlando extensively working out.  From the actor’s perspective, he is guaranteed to be exhausted when his first monologue comes up, which accentuates the weariness and resolve in his words.  Orlando is so tired that he cannot bear it, but he still has the strong resolve of wanting to succeed, receive his promotion, and not be addicted to sex.  For that one scene, we might just believe him.

Prompt 2--"Trifles"

My first instinct is to say that Trifles would be much less effective if produced minimally.  While the dialogue is obviously very important to the meaning of the play, it would not be as effective if none of the props or set dressing were included.  The point of Trifles is that all of this meaningless feminine junk onstage that the men carelessly pass by actually holds the key to Mrs. Wright’s motive, if one were to look closely enough.  Therefore, I would think that the best way to produce Trifles would be to clutter the stage with such trifles to prove the point further—perhaps this would imply to the audience that all of the other, non-referenced props could also help tell the story of what actually happened.  If I were the props master or set designer, I would create the story of what actually happened between the Wrights in my own head, then I would set the scene accordingly, so that an observant audience member actually could dissect it if he wanted to. 

On the other hand, one could produce an ironic production in which the trifles are dismissed, and the actresses are interacting with and referring to nothing physical onstage.  I’m not sure what effect this would produce—perhaps it would be from the point of view from the male characters, who do not notice any of that important evidence.  It is as if the trifles did not exist.  Alternatively, it could call to attention the idea that a woman’s success is measured by her husband’s, and now that her husband is dead and she is in prison, men see her as having nothing in her life.  Also, since her primary job in life was to take care of the home and make it comfortable to anyone living within, all of her life’s work has disappeared now that no one is living there anymore.

Prompt 1-- "Overtones"

First, Gerstenberg states in the opening stage directions that “Harriet never sees Hetty, never talks to her but rather thinks aloud looking into space. Hetty, however, looks at Harriet, talks intently and shadows her continually. The same is true of Margaret and Maggie.”  This actually creates some interesting questions about what is actually happening in a world where Hetty and Maggie are not corporeal creatures.  After all, the opening scene is just Hetty and Harriet speaking to each other; would an observer who could not see Hetty just see Harriet’s responses? Would he see Harriet acting out both sides of the conversation? Is Harriet’s inner dialogue all in her head? If so, is she just staring vacantly while her mind undergoes its schismatic crisis?  Perhaps none of this is relevant, as, for the purposes of this play, we do see Harriet and Hetty converse, but I still find it very interesting.  Also, Hetty and Maggie can converse to each other sometimes, which has really interesting implications—is their collective unconscious so powerful that they are essentially telepathic?  My interpretation is that Hetty and Maggie can hear each other when they want to be heard, like when the stage directions say “(to Hetty)” or “(to Maggie),” but they cannot hear each other when it is unspecified, as the characters are just speaking their basic thoughts, such as “I’m so hungry.”  I am not certain, but I believe that this rule fills many on the exceptions of whether or not the primitive selves can speak to each other.  This is entirely reliant on the playwright’s helpful stage directions noting to whom each line is spoken; this information is obviously not available to the audience, so it is up to the director and actors to make sure that these distinctions are clear.  Still, though, in my opinion, it is not very difficult to tell who is being spoken to in any moment; the rules of these characters’ existence seem pretty clear to me, and I do not think it would be too complicated to recreate it for an audience.

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