Six Characters in Search for an Author

In both The Zoo Story and Six Characters in Search for an Author the question of reality comes into play.  In The Zoo Story, Jerry and Peter engaged to what seems to be a very normal conversation between two strangers. Jerry starts to manipulate the conversation and alters Peter’s sense of reality. Jerry changes Peter’s perception tremendously. By the end of the play, Peter is starting to take ownership of a park bench and starts defending himself against Jerry. The fight turns physical and Jerry starts to defend himself. This leads to Jerry accidently stabbing himself to death. Once Peter sees what he has done, reality hits Peter and he runs off.

In Six Characters in Search of an Author, the characters struggle to grasp reality. For people, reality is often an illusion and can be altered. For characters, they have to create a sense of reality. The lines between reality and acting often blur together in this play. For example, the conflict between the Father and Stepdaughter seems to cross the lines of just acting and enters reality. The aspect of time also plays an important role in reality in this play. Characters have an ever-lasting reality, where human’s reality is constantly changing. The Father gets into a conflict with the Manager trying to understand his identity and purpose. Characters have to create reality to an audience, but they are not actually real. This play blends the perception of reality in acting.

Back Of The Throat

In the play, Back of the Throat, the central theme is don’t judge a book by its cover.  During the time after 9/11, it was easy for people to be consumes with prejudices against Arab-Americans because people felt unsafe. People feared Arab-Americans because they assumed they would all be linked to 9/11. This play exemplifies the judgments people made against this certain group during a time of great vulnerability in the United States. It is easy for people to judge those who you cannot understand and have a very different culture from the norm. But in this play, these judgments and prejudices harm another person and went against the law. Khaled was a citizen of the United States and should be treated equally as any other person.

            The author wanted to highlight that not every Arab-American was apart of the horrible events of 9/11. The play showed how easy it is to make people look guilty and come to assumptions based on no real evidence. The police were not going to accept the fact that Khaled was innocent. They treated him unfairly based on there own prejudice against immigrants. Khaled was a writer and his research on topics made the police jump to conclusions. If Khaled were not Arab-American, would the police jump to those same conclusions? 

           

Blog #5 Waiting for Lefty

What makes Waiting for Lefty such an extraordinary play is the way the play takes a political stand against unfair working condition in the 1930s. The plays “agit-prop” theatre style allows the play to be performed anywhere and reach a large audience. To make the play more current, the political issue could be about immigration.

Since the play has several different scenes about how unfair wages and working condition affected different groups of people at the time, I think the same can be done with the issue of immigration. One act could be about immigrants trying to receive access into the United States. Another scene could be about a child of an illegal immigrant currently living in the United States. There could also be a scene about an illegal immigrant trying to find work and supporting their family. Another one could be about a legal immigrant trying to find work and the prejudice against him.

I feel that this political issue could influence a lot of people’s opinions and make an impact like Waiting for Lefty. To make the play more modern and to reach a bigger audience, it will have to hit the viral market. The play could be posted online and pay a fee to view the play. Then the proceeds could go to helping the cause. By putting it online you are making the play more not only hit the United States, but other countries that can relate and might have similar issues.

Blog #3: Buried Child and 'night Mother

In Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, Shepard portrays the decline of the traditional American dream. The play is centered around a farm family that has been struck with dark circumstances. The first-born is seeking power within the family, the second son is mentally ill, the third son is handicapped, and the fourth son died a mysterious death. All the family members have their way with dealing with grief. Halie has turned to religion, Dodge has turned to alcohol, Bradley has turned to power, and Tilden has become mental. When Vince, Tilden’s son, comes to visit, the entire house is shaken by the news. “Your whole life’s up there hanging up on the wall. Somebody who looks just like you. Somebody who looks just like you used to look.” Dodge’s family used to be the American dream, but slowly started to decline. The mother, Halie, had an affair with her son, the farm stop producing crops, and everyone had to deal with grief of a lost family member.

In Marsh Norman’s ‘night Mother, the play portrays a young women and her mother arguing about death. This play deals with the social issue of suicide, not only trying to understand the side of the suicidal person, but the family member as well. Jessie has had a hard life. She is epileptic and nothing makes her happy. “And I can’t do anything either, about my life, to change it, make it better, make me feel better about it. Like it better, make it work. But I can stop it.”  She looks forward to nothing except taking care of her mother every day. Jessie informs her mother that she is going to kill herself. Her mother, in panic, does everything she can think of to stop Jessie. The play ends with Jessie committing suicide. 

Glass Menagerie by Williams

            In Glass Menagerie, Williams goes beyond just an original drama script. Williams wrote his play to be sculpted and to have more “plastic” elements. His play includes moving soundtrack music, several slide projections, and a variation in mood lighting. The purpose of these elements are to create a more vivid and clear image for the audience. In class, we discussed the music and slide projections and how they enhanced the play.

           

            Williams dissolves and fades the lighting in the play to create a certain feeling for the audience. The lighting in the play drifts away from the realistic. Since the play is a memory, Williams keeps the stage dim to give the allusion of a distant thought. Spotlights are used to emphasis focus on a particular actor. For example in Scene 3, Tom and Amanda are having an argument. During this argument, William has the light focused on Laura’s figure. Even though Laura has no role in scene, Williams is trying to remind the audience that Laura still plays a part in the argument. Laura figure appears again in Scene 7, when Laura falls in before dinner with Jim, Tom and Amanda. Laura just lies on the sofa as dinner takes place, once again not having a role in the scene. This lighting creates a certain expression for the audience. It could be showing that she is more aloof from the average person. The lighting could also be seen as angelic or innocent. Lighting can be interpreted in many different ways and thus creates the essence of every viewer to sculpt their own play.

Trifles vs. "A Jury of Her Peers"

The drama Trifles and the short story “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell are very similar in nature. They both have very similar plots and story lines, but how they are interpreted is much different. There is much more that goes into a drama than just reading the text. A drama is meant to be performed. The body language and facial expressions that are put into the character when performed, add a lot to the meaning behind the text. Dramas give the reader more freedom to imagine how the characters should act. Besides the stage directions that are denoted, the readers are left to come up with the details about the character on their own. Trifles is also much more direct and to the point. The flow of this drama is often interrupted by stage directions. This can make the drama much harder to read. Unlike Trifles, “A Jury of Her Peers” is much easier to read because it flows like a story. The reader is not left to imagine the characters or piece details together. This does not allow the reader to be creative with the story. “A Jury of Her Peers” is told in the point of view of Mrs. Hale, making the short story more bias to her opinions. But even with this bias, the short story elaborates more on the background of the characters and what the characters are thinking and feeling. The reader gets more insight to the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Hale, the relationship between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, and more details about the kitchen. I like the drama better, because it allows people to think creatively and use their imagination.