First off, Dr. Fletcher's late with this prompt, so you have until Sunday night at 9:00 PM to make an initial response posting here. Read the play for Friday's class, but don't stress about posting tonight (Thursday night).
So: this play. On one level, there's nothing so extreme as suicide, murder, or necrophilia here to shock you. It's a quieter piece. On another level, though, this script's dramaturgy is more complicated than is 'Night, Mother or even Judith. For both of those plays, I asked you to come up with a Major Dramatic Question that could work in the plot. That's a complicated assignment for either of those two pieces, but I think it's even more complicated with 4000 Miles. There's no really obvious objective or mission (kill myself? stop her from killing herself? kill him? become a national hero?). Instead the script has a kind of slice-of-life feel to it, as if we're dipping into random moments from an odd period in Leo's and Vera's lives.
Here's the thing, though: slice-of-life scripts are never truly random. The element of choice--why does Amy Herzog put these parts of the story in the plot and not others?--is vital here. Were you to produce this play, you'd need to come up with some kind of pattern, question, or principle to make sense of why this script stages the scenes it does.
I'm tempted, then, to ask you once again to come up with a Major Dramatic Question for this script. You can do that if you feel so moved, but I'd like you to post instead about a motif you notice in this play. What's a repeated line, image, or pattern that you see recurring throughout the play? What keeps happening? Could this motif work as an explanatory pattern for understanding this play? Does the motif recur statically, just repeating the same way? Or does the motif shift slightly as the play progresses? Better--does the effect or significance of the motif change as the play progresses?
Post when you can, but do be ready to discuss this play tomorrow (Friday, 9/20) in class.
Best,
JF
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