Phyllis Gorfain Fall 2000

The goals of the exam will be for students:

• To compare a number of scripts with attention to performance choices.
• To address basic theoretical issues about the differences in interpretation when reading a script, doing a performance, and seeing a performance.
• To design their own answers in ways that allow them creativity and individual direction.
• To exchange interpretations and ideas in small groups that will promote fresh thinking, controversy, or collective learning.
• To review the work of the semester in a new learning mode with emphasis on oral expression, a developed argument, synthesis, comparison, and exchange.

Preparation

Prepare three out of five of these questions with notes for discussion (notes will be turned in). Be ready to talk about each question for several minutes and be able to cite specific examples, with page numbers or act and scene specified, from the texts of the plays you choose. Add a fourth question of your own devising. Like these questions, your question should pose a problem or state a topic that requires some synthesis of something that interests you in at least three plays. You will be expected to lead a brief discussion based on your question (which should be a surprise for your classmates). Bring to the exam enough copies of your question so each of your partners and the instructor can read your question in order to discuss it with you. At the exam, students will discuss the pop questions of their partners, and at least two of the questions below. Students (within the same group or other groupings) are welcome to work together but each person's notes are their own work and will be turned in for part of their grade.

In preparing your answers, make sure that, at some point, (in your own question or in the questions you choose to answer) you review and are ready to discuss all eight plays studied this semester. You will want to be ready to discuss the pop questions your classmates pose so review all the scripts.

Given questions below, or your classmates' questions, you might want to see at least one video for the scripts for which there are videos. The library has several videos for Macbeth, if you want to review some of those; AV also has two versions of Raisin in the Sun; a video of The House of Yes is possible to borrow from an Oberlin student, about whom I sent you information earlier. I can get his name again for you if you want to borrow his video (let me know). Viewing a second or third video is purely optional, but do make sure you have seen at least one video for one of scripts.

Questions

1. Male Anxiety and Identification in American and non-American settings.

Discuss anxieties about masculinity expressed in five of the plays, choosing at least one outside an American setting. Consider how various men compensate for, or deal with their feelings of not quite measuring up to some social or cultural standard they have set for themselves, or have others set for them. Have specific passages (at least one per play) ready to discuss in terms of a theme and performance choices that make a difference in how the theme is expressed dramatically.

 

2. Comparing scripts and performances.

Discuss four scripts in relation to either a live performance (on stage or in class) or to a movie or TV production. Note a similar pattern of change that recurs, and note the types of differences (not just a specific difference between a script and a performance choice in a single play, but classes of differences) between scripts, live performance, and film or video. For example: you could consider scene changes; you then might discuss how blackouts or lighting changes work on stage compared to scene changes in movies. You might discuss how gaze works differently in the theatre and on film. You could examine how using outdoor scenes works differently in film and on stage. Analyze the effects of the differences in the methods, conventions and aesthetics between different types of live productions or films.

 

3. Memory, Dream, Imagination, Fantasy

Several of the plays explore the workings of memory, recalling or living out dreams, fantasies, or embodiments of imagination. These plays include Richard III, Macbeth, The House of Yes, Lucia Mad, True West, and Krapp's Last Tape. Discuss how any three of these plays use different types of performance and staging to depict and probe the nature and processes of memory, imagination, and representation.

 

4. Issues of Casting in Performance

The African Company Present Richard III centrally confronts the question of who has the right to perform certain roles in certain works. Aside from rights to play parts, other questions may arise about casting. Cultural associations with body appearance (ideas about weight, skin color, eye shape, etc.) &emdash; may or may not have huge thematic or semantic (interpretative) effects. Discuss three plays in regards to casting choices. You may discuss when casting choices (on film, stage, or in class) did make a significant difference in your interpretation. Alternatively cite choices that could potentially have been significant (say, the use of a woman for a male role in True West; or an African-American actor for Banquo, for example) but which did not, however, significantly impact your interpretation of the character.

 

5. Mothers and responsibility

In several of the plays we have encountered significant issues of mothers who tolerate or do not tolerate their children's problematic behavior. We have also seen women who show the problems regarding motherhood (their lack of children, or their discomfort with reproduction). Discuss at least three different styles of maternal response in the plays, and link the ways the theme of maternity is linked to performance choices.