Midterm Prompts -- EN 230 -- Spring 2012

Above is a picture of a 2004 production of M. Butterfly.  It was staged at the David Henry Hwang Theater!

Below are the prompts for your take home part of the midterm.  Please choose one prompt and use the questions to create an essay with an introduction, thesis statement, body paragraphs, and conclusion.  This essay may be from two to five pages.

Question #1:

Consider the plays that we've read and seen so far this semester (including "Soul Gone Home" and A Streetcar Named Desire).  What do they tell us about modern and contemporary drama?  (Modern drama includes "Soul Gone Home," Death of a Salesman, and A Streetcar Named Desire.  Contemporary drama includes Fences, Angels in America, and M. Butterfly.)  What do these plays have in common?  How are they distinct from other, earlier plays such as Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare's plays, or Ibsen's plays?  (Note that Ibsen *is* modern.  Also, the modern era ends in 1970.)  Consider performance as well as the text of plays.

BTW, here are some scenes from a 1970s production of The Country Wife, a comedy of the Restoration era (after Shakespeare and before Ibsen):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI8z9eiQ1Y8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hah-HprxzPA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROI9FhR6URI&feature=related

Question #2:

What does performance add to the plays that we've read?  How does performance limit these plays?  How have watching the various clips helped you understand our plays?  Discuss the differences between film/TV and stage versions, and feel free to consider versions we did not see in class.  Can a play still be worth reading if it is never performed?  Why?  Why not?  Consider the argument made in the following 2007 essay from the City Paper:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/34341/test-case-scenarios

Consider the differences between drama (play text) and theater (performance).

Question #3:

 Discuss the family dynamics that you see in two to three of the plays that you've read and seen.  All of the playwrights we have read so far are men.  How might a female playwright view these families that we see on stage?  How might a director of today reinterpret these families?

Feel free to bring in the insights Justin Emeka and Avery Brooks give us in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqXkNA3vQDY

Question #4:

In the first part of the semester we are examining American drama, both modern and contemporary.  Which trends seem to be emerging?  What appears to be distinctly American about our plays?  Consider that some plays depict what one might call the ethnic American experience.  Also, M. Butterfly is *not* set in the US although its author is (Asian-)American.  Feel free to discuss differences between regions, classes, and time periods.  You may also want to refer to Justin Emeka and Avery Brooks' discussion of their production of Death of a Salesman at Oberlin College.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC4UUhUZRX8&feature=related

Here is a trailer from their production:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPnEFZJafjE&feature=related