Showing posts with label spring2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spring2012. Show all posts

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Study Guide for Final -- EN 230 -- pt. 1

We may not be able to watch the 2008 production of The Good Soul of Szechuan, but the picture above is of Jane Horrocks' performance as Shui Ta.

The plays that will be on the objective final include the following:  Pygmalion (play & film), The Taming of the Shrew (performance only), Hedda Gabler, Trifles, The Good Person of Szechuan, Waiting for Godot, and The Metamorphoses (performance only). 

Let's start with The Taming of the Shrew.

Here is the Globe Theater's quick summary of The Taming of the Shrew:
The Summary of Taming of the Shrew
This drama is one of the great comedy plays by William Shakespeare. The play starts with the Induction where a trick is played by a nobleman on the drunkard Christopher Sly who arranges for an acting troupe to perform a play called The Taming of the Shrew...

The beautiful and gentle Bianca has no shortage of admirers (Lucentio, Gremio and Hortensio) but her father insists that she will not marry until her shrewish sister, Katharina, is betrothed. Bianca's suitors persuade fortune-seeker Petruchio to court her. The suitors pay for any costs involved and there is also the goal of Katharina's dowry. Petruchio marries Katharina and he carries Katharina off to his country house with his servant Grumio. Petruchio intends to browbeat Katharina into submission and he denies her food, sleep and her new clothes, whilst continuously singing her praises. Katharina is tamed. They return to Padua where Lucentio has won Bianca. At a banquet they wager on who has the most obedient wife. Each wife is issued with commands but only Katharina obeys and promptly lectures everyone on the importance of wifely submission.

Here is the trailer for the movie version of The Taming of the Shrew:

You may watch more of this movie here:

To compare, here are links to stage versions:

This link is more informative:

 

Let's move on to Pygmalion (play and film).

We'll start with what's on Multiply:

Here is a link to the 1938 film starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller:
Do you think that this play from 1913 is still worth staging today?   




Next up is Hedda Gabler.  Earlier this year I saw a production of Ibsen's play, but until I write up my review, the picture above and this entry will have to do:

This entry has various links to versions of this play:


We watched several scenes from the 1981 Yorkshire Television production starring Diana Rigg.


The end is more compelling:

Below are links to the 1970s version with Glenda Jackson and Patrick Stewart.







Stage actor Janet Suzman played Hedda to Ian McKellan's Tesman:






More recently, there has been the Broadway production starring Mary Louise Parker.


and  the University of Washington's production of Hedda:


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Thursday, April 19, 2012

Final Prompts for EN 230 -- Spring 2012


Below are the prompts for your take home part of the final.  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 Pygmalion and Trifles).  What do they tell us about modern and contemporary drama?  (Modern drama includes "Soul Gone Home," Trifles, Pygmalion, Hedda Gabler, The Good Person of Szechuan, Waiting for Godot, Death of a Salesman, and A Streetcar Named Desire.  Contemporary drama includes Fences, Angels in America, The Metamorphoses, and M. Butterfly.)  What do these plays have in common?  How are they distinct from other, earlier plays such as The Taming of the Shrew or other plays by Shakespeare?  Or from the newer plays I showed or referred to?  Consider performance as well as the text of plays.  If you are revising your midterm, be sure to include two plays from the second half of the semester.

Below are links to some plays that may be postmodern:

First is Charles Mee's bobrauschenbergamerica:

Next is Suzan-Lori Parks' The America Play:

Finally, we have a scene from Tarell McCraney's Brother/Sister Plays, the ones that I consider more enjoyable to read.

And here are aspects of the postmodern:


Question #2:

What does performance add to the plays that we've read?  How does performance limit these plays?  How does poor or critically panned performance (like Mary Louise Parker's Hedda Gabler) affect 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?   Which of our plays are still worth performing?  Why?  Why not?  (Consider venues as well.)

Here are some articles from the Guardian's theater blog:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/mar/16/noises-off-theatre-faithful-texts

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

Question #3:

How is American modern and contemporary drama similar to European modern drama like Hedda Gabler, Pygmalion, Waiting for Godot, or The Good Person of Szechuan?  How is it different?  Which themes, characters, plot, language, and setting seem to be particularly American?  Which stagings seem to be particularly American?  Why?  What do European plays add to the mix?  Consider plays like M. Butterfly, Waiting for Godot, or The Good Person of Szechuan that are more cosmopolitan.

Question #4:

How are women represented in modern drama?  Although The Taming of the Shrew is not modern, feel free to bring in what you noticed while watching the performance at MC.  Consider the work of female directors as well as actors and playwrights.  Here are some interesting articles from the Guardian's theater blog on women playwrights:
How might a female playwright work with characters like Hedda Gabler, Linda Loman, Blanche duBois, Stella Kowalski, and so on?
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Saturday, March 10, 2012

Study Guide for Midterm -- pt. 1 -- EN 230 -- Spring 2012

The following plays are on our midterm:

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949)
August Wilson's Fences (1983...Broadway Premiere in 1987)
Langston Hughes' Soul Gone Home (1937)
Tony Kushner's Angels in America (The Millenium Approaches) (1993)
David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly (1988)
Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

Let's start with a link to the Multiply entry with reviews of DoaS:

These videos may also be useful:

And if you need to jog your memory of the 1985 version starring Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich:

How does this historical background help you understand Death of a Salesman a little better?



What do you make of the 1983 production in Beijing?



Ooh...the picture below is of the original set of DoaS!
On to Fences!

How I wish that there were a full-length film version of Fences!  Or more clips!

This blogger from California has seen several different versions of Fences:

In the meantime, these are the clips that we watched.  First is the comparison between the 1987 production and the one from 2010:


We didn't see this clip, but I thought that you'd like to see how Denzel Washington and Viola Davis handled the scene that followed:


Here Troy is "fighting Death":

And this is the montage of the 2010 production:

The slideshow of Jacksonville State University's production is here:


See this link for the video from Kenny Leon's production at Boston's Huntington Theater Company:

Are you interested in set design?



Finally, here is the video from the Portland Stage Company:

A picture from this production is below:
Also below is a picture from Boston's Huntington Theater's recent production.
Below are two more Multiply entries on Fences:



And I forgot to link the entry on Langston Hughes, the author of "Soul Gone Home":

Below is a picture of Harlem's 125th street in 1935:


Here is a picture of the house where Langston Hughes lived from 1947 on:

Want to look inside?

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Thursday, March 8, 2012

Reviews of Angels in America (film & play)

 I've wanted to do a blog with links to reviews of Angels for a while.  I think that it will help you answer question #2 on the subjective midterm.

First, let's start with reviews of the HBO production that we saw.

This review focuses on the second half of Angels:

How might an author at an LBTQ site view this production?

Frank Rich of the NY Times reviews the production here:

Queer critic and novelist Dale Peck is more critical:

Let's look at some reviews of theatrical productions:

We'll start with the Broadway revival from 2010:


What was it like to view the original productions?


What is it like to view other productions in the US?

This blog from Chicago is too interesting to pass up:

Is this play performed outside the US?

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Saturday, February 11, 2012

Local Theater -- Red

My husband and I have also been attending performances of contemporary drama.  Last weekend we saw Red at Arena Stage, another impressive venue.  This venue, however, is quite 21st century.

Red's subject matter is also quite modern and fits into our course nicely.  The play is about modern artist Mark Rothko.

You may prefer to see his distinctive paintings in color.

The play is set in the late 1950s when Rothko was completing a commission to paint murals for The Four Seasons, a very expensive restaurant in NYC.  Rothko's style of painting was also being challenged by the work of artists such as Andy Warhol.  In the play itself, Rothko and his assistant, Ken, a young artist, battle over art and its meaning.  I wonder how this play would work as drama read in a class like EN 230.  However, visual and aural elements that may be difficult to convey on the page are so important to this play in particular.  (It is set in Rothko's studio, a capacious loft with much equipment and many paintings in progress.)  Also, as my brother-in-law pointed out to me, this play would be difficult to stage in many settings and requires a venue and company like Arena Stage or its equivalent.  For more information, see this article from The NY Times:


The scene below is from Arena Stage.


Even the paint that Rothko and Ken throw around the stage requires technical know-how.  After all, oil paint is very permanent.  Yet, in one scene, Ken cleans it up very quickly.

For reviews of Red at Arena Stage, see the following links:



Links to reviews of other productions are below:





For information about Rothko, see the links below:




And what did happen to the murals that Rothko was supposed to paint for the Four Seasons:



To finish, here are links to videos and articles about what it is like to perform in Red.




The scene below is from Boston's Speakeasy Theater:

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Langston Hughes, The Playwright

 You may know Langston Hughes (1902-1967) as a poet, the author of "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "I, Too, Sing of America," and "Theme for English B."  These poems are quite famous.  (Below is a link to Hughes reading "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," a poem that he wrote when he was seventeen!)


You may also know Hughes from your freshman composition class.  Many teachers assign Hughes' "Salvation," a piece from his autobiography, The Big Sea.


However, Hughes was also a playwright, and "Soul Gone Home" (1937) was one of his many efforts in this genre.  Here is a link to an article about a recent performance of this play:


I'm surprised that there haven't been other revivals, but here is a review of an opera based on Hughes' play.


Ah, here is a review of a performance of the play at Purdue's Black Cultural Center:


A picture of this 2002 performance is below:


Hughes wrote a number of other plays and librettos for operas, and during the later part of his career, he became increasingly successful.  Staging his plays could be frustrating, and he often had to fight for them.  In 1930, he collaborated with Zora Neale Hurston on a play, Mule Bone, but their partnership fell apart.  Ultimately, she claimed that the finished play was hers and hers alone.  As a result, the theater company that had been planning on performing the play decided not to do so, and the play would not be staged until 1991, long after its authors' deaths.


 A review of this play is below:


Written in 1930 and performed on Broadway in 1935, Mulatto was Hughes' first play.  


Hughes' Black Nativity (first performed 1961) is probably his most famous play.  You may even be able to see it next Christmas in DC!




This online exhibit at the University of Kansas gives an overview of Hughes' career as playwright and songwriter:


For more of an overview of Hughes' career, see these links:


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