Tuesday, October 17

Watching: For Tuesday, find the production of the 1943 Oklahoma on YouTube, and as you watch, try to think about Now vs. Then. We talked a bit about this in class, but there is much more to see and explore than we did on Thursday. As I suggested to you at our Thursday session, this is a terrific production, and it is a production that reproduces as closely as possible the production as it was played in 1943 when it first opened. This makes it worth watching not just for the music (superb!) and the story line, but also for something of the state of American culture as it was some 80 years ago (!). Think as you watch about how today's acting companies might bring Oklahoma up to date in a culture much changed from 1943. I see difference particularly in the character of Judd and the ways both Curly and Laury interact with him, but in other roles as well. There is a lot of hyperbolic humor, some moments more humorous than other moments as other moments ask about when the hyperbolic humor of 1943 may now feel less funny than mocking.

So write about what seems to you to have survived the 80 years of American culture that has been growing and changing, and with that in mind, imagine what you might want to rethink, or, if necessary, even add or drop out altogether. Be sure to explain your thinking! And be sure you explain the changes your analysis offers.

Thursday, October 19

Writing: We watched An Inspector Calls on Wednesday; on Monday I want us to focus on the functions of the play. So go to the Blackboard page and read (or re-read if you have already read through the Theatre as Action entry) about the things that plays very often do.

We could say of The Piano Movers that its primary function is The Personal Function because it at least seems to be just a comedic piece of craziness. I suggested, however, that what happens in the film can be seen as something more than just comedy: it also could be thought of in philosophical terms. No, I don't mean that Laurel and Hardy are philosopers, but once you have thought about Sisyphus and the history of the 20th Century, it's not hard to see how much like the Theater of the Absurd that that comedy is. So yes, to the Personal Function, but yes, too, at least in some degree, to the Teaching and/or the Forum function as well.

The same question of function comes up in the Bald Soprano, where much of it is a set of running jokes, but an informed audience can feel as well that it's not just a bunch of jokes but a commentary about the absurdity and deceptiveness of the ways many (most?) of us carry out at least some of our lives. One can reject that function, seeing the play as just a dopey comedy, but a whole lot of more serious people want to think of it as a commentary on humanity that most of us naively choose to ignore.

But for Thursday I'd like you to write about the functions we might attribute to An Inspector Calls. I sent you a couple of links to short films about the play; read them and think about the functions the play is imagined to have by a great number of people. Do you agree with the functions you are seeing explained in the links I have sent you to?

Here are the links if you didn't get them in your email:

The Cast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBt2DAyZRnA&t=130s

 

Top Grade Analysis of Eva Smith in An Inspector Calls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOykPYiSwYY

 

Another further explanation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7-H3ByjMZI

See you on Monday....

Thursday, October 12

We will be watching two or three spots of the play in class; you won't have a writing assignment for tomorrow. I'll explain why tomorrow....

If you want to watch the play first, it is on YouTube here

 

Tuesday, October 10

Watching/Reading: The Bald Soprano and The Music Box (both are on YouTube).

Writing: Here is a short essay as a preface to watching the Theatre of the Absurd in the two films I ask you to watch. Your task is to locate a ten to twenty minute part of The Bald Soprano and write about it as it models a kind of crazy madness that makes some kind of sense in a world where "order" can't be fully trusted.

Watch The Piano Movers and Laurel and Hardy--it's there to parallel in its art something that echos much of The Bald Soprano, though its chaos, functioning like a its on little war, is..... (finish the sentence....)

Sisyphus and the Theater of the Absurd

There is a mythic story from the classical world about Sisyphus, the King of Ephyra. He was a proud man, and made the mistake of offending Hades, the God of the Underworld. As a punishment for Sisyphus’ offenses, Hades made Sisyphus roll a huge boulder up a steep hill in Tartarus, when the boulder would escape him and run all the way back down the hill, forcing Sisyphus to descend the hill and roll it up again in an endless cycle.

This myth has long been seen by many as an image of human life: a painful, endless effort without meaning.

A French author named Albert Camus rewrote this myth during World War II as a metaphor for what the human race had been doing through much of the length of the 20th Century—pointlessly struggling up a hill over and over again, always returning to the bottom, accompanied by unspeakable pain and death. And as one might guess, this meaningless existence seemed true not just to Camus himself but to many others as well. The book was published in 1943, just two years before the second World War finally ended.

Camus’ description of human life seemed to many to capture a sense of the chaotic and deadly existence human beings seemed to have been living, all of which forced the question: what WAS humanity’s fate? For centuries we acted as if governed by some form of reason, but by 1945 much of humanity had convinced itself that all our notions of order and freedom, seemed to have collapsed into chaotic cruelty.

Now, almost 80 years later, we may no longer be attracted to a Sisyphean description of our lives; certainly there have been no more World Wars, even if there have still been plenty of wars. But to take a step back, what we see in the Theater of the Absurd of the 1950’s and 1960’s is a twenty year-long exploration that starts with the meaninglessness of how human lives might be lived in peace, giving us time to figure out a new world order that could seem closer to a rational or livable engage-ability than the World Wars of the 20 th Century had seemed to have forced upon us.

People will have different ways of thinking of what kinds of progress humanity has made or still needs to make; but I, at least, hope we can manage humanity’s future as an affirmation of life, while looking back as well to Twelfth Night’s comic vision of a community renewing itself in spite of all of the challenges along the way.

Wednesday, October 5

Reading (Watching!): Twelfth Night, Original Conditions, Acts, 4,5

Writing: Read and view Act 5 of the Original Conditions production carefully--it is an unusual "Act" because it is really only ONE scene! Indeed, if you just read it, you may not find that it even makes sense. A Director has some work to do to figure out how to make this Act work.

Describe what you think is the most clever/effective example of a successful blocking in this very busy and complicated Act.