Prompt Eleven: Water by the Spoonful

I'm a tad late with this prompt, so you have a bit of leeway in posting your response.

So here's the challenge: I'm asking you to read (and possibly write a paper on) the second play of a trilogy without having read either the first or the third part. Water by the Spoonful continues a story begun in Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue (a very different kind of play, more like a piece of documentary theatre). The third part of the trilogy, The Happiest Song Always Plays Last, premiered last April in the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

Nevertheless, Water is meant to stand on its own.

As you'll see, though, it's a complicated play. Hudes (the playwright) establishes a number of separate worlds on stage. There are also several seemingly separate story-lines playing out at once.

During a few moments in the play, particularly in the second part, these separate realities and story-lines do more than just co-exist in the same play. They begin to interact. They share the space, crisscrossing each other and even (maybe) interacting with each other in some odd, magic-of-theatre way.

For this prompt, I want you to select one scene--or really a moment from a scene--where you see realities interacting. Briefly summarize what's going on in this scene. Then give me a script-based explanation for why Hudes has these particular realities intersecting at this particular moment in the plot in this particular way. What's going on there? And remember, I'm asking for a script-based explanation--no fair explaining things away by gesturing toward the audience ("This gives the audience something to think about/look at/compare and contrast"). Focus on how this intersectional choice operates in terms of the play's unifying principle or central motifs.

JF

Prompt Ten: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

Take that, Romeo and Juliet! 

So--imagine you're on the publicity team for a theatre's upcoming production of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. You're in charge of coming up with some ideas for a poster for the play. The director wants some suggestions for what kind of images/styles/color schemes might be best for selling this play, and she also wants a quote from the script that captures a sense of what this play is like.

For this post, then, suggest what kind of imagery, colors, and/or styles might be on a poster (or a series of posters), and recommend three quotes from different parts of the play that might serve as catchphrases for the production.

Here's the catch: the director wants you to think beyond the standard go-to images or quotes used for this play, so she's imposed a few restrictions. First, your images should not include hearts or daggers. Second, you may not use any of the quotes on this page of quotes. Look beyond these obvious quotes/images. Come up with something more interesting.

JF

Prompt Nine: House of Trials

We're taking a huuuge step back in time for this one: The House of Trials (in Spanish: Los empeños de una casa) by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (known generally as Sor Juana). Sor Juana (Sister Juana) was a nun living in what is now Mexico, aka colonial Spain. Of mixed native and Spanish ancestry, Sor Juana escaped poverty (and probable marriage) by joining a convent, where she was able to pursue her passion for learning and writing. Read about her here (or just Google her; she's really quite well known).

On the quiz, for extra credit, I'll ask you to share a fact about her that you picked up.

For this post, however, consider this: by now in this class we've come across some plays that seem to depart from familiar formula structures and conventions. Judith has ancient characters speaking in cockney slang. Love! Valour! Compassion! features an odd, non-linear mix of theatricality and naturalism. Eurydice is a kind of extended experiment in playing with theatre; it's hardly interested in realistic conventions at all.

Keep these styles in mind as you read House of Trials, which was written centuries before well-made plays became the norm. That said, House of Trials does adhere to a kind of play popular in seventeenth-century Spain, the comedia (originally the comedia nueva). Don't let the name fool you; although House of Trials is meant to be funny, comedia means play, not only comedy. The comedia is a very flexible form in terms of genre. It can be farcical, romantic, historical, mythical, religious, tragic--or some combination of all of them. But it does have some basic dramaturgical conventions, a set of norms for what plays should be like.

For example, well-made plays varied quite a bit, but all of them feature scenarios of dramatic irony where some characters have a secret known to the audience. Well-made plays also observed fourth-wall conventions, created self-contained worlds, used lots of props, preferred dialogue that resembled everyday language, etc. All of these are dramaturgical conventions of well-made plays.

For this post, I want you to identify and explain what you think might be two or three conventions for Spanish Golden Age comedias that you can find in House of Trials. That is, if you had only this play to judge what comedias were like, what might you conclude about comedia conventions? I'm not concerned here with whether or not you're "right" (we'll go over that in class); I'm just looking for you to think carefully about theatrical conventions beyond those you're familiar with.

I'll give you one: you'll notice that House of Trials begins with a couple of pretty long monologues that lay out the backstory. You might then conclude that comedias like to tell rather than show their exposition. As it turns out, this is accurate.  Spanish Golden Age comedias often (though not always) begin with long monologues that relate the backstory. It's just how they did things, and actors were supposed to be skillful enough to make the monologues riveting (remember, we talk about going to watch plays; Spanish audiences back then went to listen to plays).

So--aside from the long exposition at the start--what might you say are some of the conventions of Spanish Golden Age comedias?

Prompt Nine: Eurydice

...And we've left the realism station, folks. Wave bye-bye to naturalistic conventions for a bit.

We begin this unit with a play both classical and postmodern. It's classical because it retells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice (you can familiarize yourself with the basics here). The play is postmodern, however, in that it is more a riff on the story than a faithful retelling. In a similar way that Howard Barker uses a Biblical tale to get at certain present-day themes in Judith, Ruhl is using the myth to create a reflection on love, loss, and relationships.

For this blog post, I want you to imagine that you're part of a team charged with making the publicity poster for this play. Someone else is handling the graphic design elements. Your job is to come up with a signature quote--some brief phrase or line from the play that captures the entire mood/character of the piece. (The quote could even be--though this isn't a requirement--the germ of a Unifying Principle.)

The challenge: your publicity team is working several months before rehearsals for the show begin. You aren't 100% sure just what this director will do with the play, what "take" the director will use as the core (UP) of the production.

Your job, then: come up with at least two very different but equally viable quotes from this play, each of which could encapsulate or suggest a distinctive "take" on a production. The rest of your team will create a poster design based on each of your quotes. The director will choose which one best suits her vision.

For each quote you choose, explain where the quote comes from, why you chose it, and what a production based on that quote would be like. (If you wish, you may also speculate on what kind of imagery the poster for the quote might include.)

Contact me and/or Jenny if you have questions or concerns.

Best,

JF

Prompt Eight: Love! Valour! Compassion!

And now for something completely different. We're several steps beyond 1934's Children's Hour with 1994's Love! Valour! Compassion!  In fact, you might even say we're in a whole different worldview, one where thoughts about capital-T Truths and consistent methods for representing that Truth are much changed. 

Suppose a historian centuries in the future reads The Glass of Water and The Children's Hour and concludes (rightly) that these plays emerge from and point to a worldview that affirms bright dividing lines between reality and fantasy, truth and illusion. Furthermore, these plays--by their very structure--seem to reflect a preference for order, cause-and-effect advancement, climactic (obligatory) scenes, and definite conclusions.

Suppose that this future historian then looks at Love! Valour! Compassion! Looking only at the structure and dramaturgical choices in the play, what conclusions about the worldview of the play's culture (USA 1994) might our historian draw? What is this culture's view of capital-T Truth and whether/how artists represent that Truth? What assumptions about theatre and drama seem to be inherent in this play that make it different than well-made plays and their offshoots? What is this play doing that's different from other plays we've read?

JF

Prompt Seven: The Children's Hour

Lillian Hellman represents one of many mainstream US playwrights who have capitalized (in a good way) on the basic well-made play format Scribe originated nearly 100 years before Hellman's Children's Hour.

My question: what do you see as some of the most significant departures from the well-made play form in this play? Identify them, explain how they're departures from well-made play norms, and persuade us that they're especially significant dramaturgical choices.

On a whole other level--and as an optional Question To Consider: while this play once held a solid place in the American literary canon of Great Plays, some feminist and LGBTQ critics have begun to see this as a problematic play for its attitudes toward same-sex female sexuality. To be sure, one can say the play is harder on those who would rush to judgment about lesbian people. It's also true that Hellman is merely reflecting the majority views of her culture.

At the same time, the "tragic lesbian"--a character who loves other women and tragically dies (usually of suicide)--is a well-worn trope in much 20th and 21st-century literature and theatre. It suggests that lesbian love is essentially some kind of incurable, tragic sickness that dooms the sufferer to isolation and an early grave. See, especially, the 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness. There's even a play that parodies that trope by a troupe called the Five Lesbian Brothers: Brave Smiles: Another Lesbian Tragedy.

The question, then: especially as we are increasingly aware of how homophobic attitudes may be contributing to suicides among LGBTQ people, is The Children's Hour a play that ought to be done today? Why or why not? Can you think of other plays that are technically good but that we probably don't or shouldn't produce today?

See you Wednesday,

JF

Prompt Six: Glass of Water

On Wednesday, we talked about how in the well-made play all the dramaturgical parts fit together tightly.

For the most part, this is the case in The Glass of Water--except for two small moments. Two moments of the version of the script you're reading are not in Scribe's original but are instead slight changes by the translator.

Use your own dramaturgical spidey sense. See if you can identify a moment or small element of this script that doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the play. State your answer and persuade readers why the moments you located don't seem to fit.

The point here is for you to guess and defend on your own. No fair looking up "the right answer" in a book/Google/article!

JF