By Yasmina Reza Translated by March 22-April 15, 2012 Christopher Hampton 1

Home , God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza

A Study Guide presented by San Jose Repertory Theatre For more information, contact Karen Altree Piemme, Director of Outreach [email protected] or 408.367.7291

BY YASMINA REZA TRANSLATED BY MARCH 22-APRIL 15, 2012 CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON 1

Table of Contents SYNOPSIS

Synopsis...... 1

About the Playwright……...….2 A COMEDY ABOUT MANNERS, WITHOUT MANNERS Yasmina Reza Interview….....3-5 This sharp-edged comedy takes us on a rollercoaster ride to Anger Management……...... 6-7 twisted depths and hilarious contradictions when "grown-ups" Spartacus……………...…….8-9 are called upon to tidy up children’s messes. Two sets of par- Drug Recalls....………….….....10 ents try to put their best foot forward to deal with the after- Pharmaceutical Lawsuits...11-13 math of a playground altercation between their sons. But any

Clafoutis…………………...... 14 attempt at having a civilized conversation quickly devolves in-

Overparenting…………...15-19 to a hysterical night of name calling, 9nger-pointing and

Discussion Questions….....20-21 throwing things. The men gang up on the women, the women gang up on the men, and what begins as a calm, rational de- Further Research……...….….22 bate among adults becomes a journey into the heart of human chaos and savage instinct.

“Never underestimate the pleasure of watching really good actors behaving terribly.” -New York Times

About the Playwright Yasmina Reza was born in 1959 to parents who were both of Jewish origin — her father Works by Yasmina Reza Iranian, her mother Hungarian. At the beginning of her career, Reza acted in Plays several new plays as well as in plays by both Molière and Marivaux. • Conversations après un enterrement (Conversations After a Burial ), 1987 In 1987 she wrote Conversations after a Buri- al, which won the Molière Award (the • La Traversée de l’hiver French equivalent of the Laurence Olivier (Winter Crossing ), 1989

Award or the Tony Award) for Best Author. • ‘ART’ 1994 Following this, she translated Kafka's The Metamorphosis for Roman Polanski and was • L’Homme du hasard nominated for a Molière Award for Best (The Unexpected Man ), 1995 Translation. • Trois versions de la vie (Life X 3 ), 2000 Her second play, Winter Crossing , won the • Une pièce espagnole (A Spanish Play ), 2004 1990 Molière Award for Best Fringe Produc- tion, and her next play The Unexpected Man , • Le Dieu du Carnage (God of Carnage ), 2006 enjoyed successful productions in England, France, Scandinavia, Germany and New York. Novels In 1995, 'Art' premiered in Paris and went on to win the Molière Award for Best Author. Since then it has been produced worldwide and translated and per- • Hammerklavier ,1997 formed in over 30 languages. The London production, produced by David • Une désolation (Desolation ), 1999 Pugh and Dafydd Rogers, received the 1996–97 Laurence Olivier Award and Evening Standard Award. It also won the Tony Award for Best Play. Life X 3 has • Adam Haberberg , 2003 also been produced in Europe, North America and Australia. Screenwriting credits include See You Tomorrow , starring Jeanne Moreau and directed by Re- • Nulle part , 2005 za's then-partner Didier Martiny. • Dans la luge d'Arthur Schopenhauer (On In September 1997, her 9rst novel, Hammerklavier , was published and another Arthur Schopenhauer's Sledge ), 2005 work of 9ction, Une Désolation , was published in 2001. Her 2007 work L'Aube le • L'Aube le soir ou la nuit , 2007 Soir ou la Nuit (Dawn Evening or Night ), written after a year of following the campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy caused a sensation in France. Screenplays On 24 November 2007 her play Le Dieu du Carnage (God of Carnage ), directed by Jürgen Gosch and performed 9rst in Zürich, received the Viennese Nestroy- • Jusqu'à la nuit , ( Till Night ) 1983 (she also Theatreprize for the best German-language performance of the season. It acted in this) opened in London in March 2008, directed by Matthew Warchus in a translation by Christopher Hampton starring Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet • Le pique-nique de Lulu Kreutz (Lulu Kreutz's McTeer and Ken Stott. It was produced once again by David Pugh and Dafydd picnic ), 2000 Rogers. The London production won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New • Carnage , 2011 Comedy, which Hampton accepted on her behalf. Hampton told the audience that Reza would be thrilled by the win. The play premiered on Broadway with an opening night cast of James Gandol9ni, JeN Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden, and Hope Davis. God of Carnage won Best Play at the 2009 Tony Awards. It has since been turned into a 9lm entitled, simply, Carnage , which was directed by Roman Polanski (having been adapted by Reza and Polanski) and starred Jodi Foster, Kate Winslet, Christopher Waltz and John C. Reilly. 2

Interview with the Playwright

Yasmina Reza: 'There's no point in comic and uncomfortable consequences. writing theatre if it's not accessible' In London, where the play had its premiere in 2008 (following a translation by Reza's long-time collaborator, Christopher Hampton), it was a Yasmina Reza's 2008 play God of Carnage was a critical and commercial success. In the Guardian , Michael Billington worldwide hit. Here she talks about working with hailed Reza as "a born satirist"; others proclaimed themselves director Roman Polanski on the 9lm adaptation and "delighted by her incisive observation" and "shrewd humour". It the year she spent with Nicolas Sarkozy scooped an Olivier for best new play and when God of Carnage trans- By Elizabeth Day ferred to Broadway in 2009, it won a Tony and became the third- The Observer, Saturday 21 January 2012 longest-running production of the decade.

The Polanski 7lm, called simply Carnage , is remarkably faithful to the In late 2005, playwright Yasmina Reza was approached by a German original. Despite the setting having been transferred from Paris to theatre director who wanted to commission a new work from her. "I Brooklyn, much of the dialogue remains and the bulk of the action said, 'No, I'm tired, I've got too much on; I don't want to do it,'" Reza takes place within four, claustrophobic apartment walls. says, sitting in the corner of a darkened hotel bar in her native Paris. She gives a dismissive 6ap of her hand, as if reliving the refusal. But "I realised everything transposed immediately from Paris to Brooklyn," then, something happened to change her mind. says Reza, who adapted the screenplay with Polanski. "We wrote it in French 7rst but he wanted to do it with English actors because he was "There was a little incident in the life of my son," she says, re7lling her more at ease with that. So he translated it." cup of herbal tea from an Oriental-style teapot as she talks. "He was then about 13 or 14 and his friend was in a 7ght with another friend; It is the 7rst time 52-year-old Reza has given permission for one of her they exchanged blows and my son's friend had his tooth broken. A few plays to be adapted for the big screen. Art , the play she wrote in 1994 days later, I met with the mother of this boy in the street. I asked her and for which she is best known, has been translated into more than 30 how her son was, if he was better, because I knew they'd had to do languages, grossed almost £200m worldwide and won the theatre something to the tooth – they'd had to operate or something. And she world's triple crown: the French Molière award, the British Olivier said, 'Can you imagine? The parents [of the other boy in the 7ght] award and, in a 7rst for a non-English-language piece, the American didn't even call me.'" Tony award. Reza looks at me steadily, brown eyes unblinking, as if to underline the Four more sell-out plays have followed, including Life x 3 . Audiences gravity of the situation. But then her mouth twitches at the corner and 6ocked to theatres on both sides of the Channel. In France, a country in she breaks out into a wide grin. which commercial success in the arts is frequently equated with creative failure, Reza none the less became a star. The daily newspaper "It was suddenly, click! I thought, 'This is an incredible theme.'" She Libération once compared the media circus surrounding the production almost bounces on her chair at the memory, her hair swishing as of one of her plays to the release of the latest Harry Potter. though mirroring her enthusiasm. "So I asked the Germans if it was still possible to do a play and they said, 'It's possible, but you have to She says she has been "inundated" by requests from 7lm-makers who do it by April.'" want to adapt her work, all of which she had refused until now. So why say yes this time? Reza then wrote the entire thing in three months. "No method," she says blithely. "I just wrote it." "Polanski," she replies without hesitation. "I adore him." It is not the 7rst time the two of them have joined forces – Reza translated Polan- The resulting work was Le Dieu du carnage (God of Carnage ), one of the ski's stage version of Kafka's Metamorphosis in the late 1980s at his most popular and acclaimed plays of the last 10 years, which has seen request – but I wonder if she had any scruples about working with him several theatrical productions and has now been made into a 7lm either time. "Scruples?" she asks, apparently mysti7ed. Yes, did she feel directed by Roman Polanski, starring Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, uncomfortable about the fact that Polanski is wanted in the States on John C Reilly and Jodie Foster as warring, middle-class couples who six criminal counts, including the rape of a 13-year-old girl (as a result meet to discuss their children's playground 7ght. of which, Carnage had to be 7lmed in Paris)? "No, I had no scruples," Reza's play charts the course of this super7cially civilised get-together, Reza replies. "It went very well writing with him… we are identical. which soon degenerates into an evening of mutual dislike and name- We don't discuss 'the meaning'; we discuss the instinct." calling. By the end of the encounter, their acid dialogue has burned It is a strangely amoral response from the woman who once reportedly through the veneer of smug, bourgeois respectability, with alternately said: "Theatre is a mirror, a sharp re6ection of society. The greatest 3

Interview with the Playwright playwrights are moralists." And it is true that in her plays, pre- Partly, Reza attributes her no-nonsense attitude to having ini- tension, hypocrisy and emotional carelessness are skewered tially trained as an actress. She studied at the renowned Jacques with devastating accuracy. In God of Carnage , the character who Lecoq school in Paris before turning professional for several provides much of the comic fodder is Alain, the cynical lawyer years. She wrote her 7rst play, Conversations After a Burial , in who spends much of his time on the phone defending the disas- 1987 in her late 20s "because I was always writing anyway. I trous side-eMects of a drug marketed by a dodgy pharmaceutical knew I was good at it" and has since written seven plays, 7ve company. novels and one work of non-7ction. In Life x 3 (written in 2000), Reza presented three versions of the Her experience on stage, she says, "informed my work enor- same point-scoring dinner party, again laying bare the falseness mously". Her American translator, David Ives, has said in the of social nicety and the savagery that lies beneath its surface. It past: "Half the reason her plays get done is because actors want is possible that her background – Reza was raised in France by to do them… there's a crackling surface there for a performer." her Russian-Iranian engineer father, who died several years ago, She consciously makes things easy for the crew also. Her plays and Hungarian violinist mother – gives her a unique perspec- are all set within a single set, contain no more than four people tive. Although Reza says she "feels French" and is 6uent in her and never include suggestions for a character's appearance or country's socio-cultural subtleties, her perspective remains that biography. "Because even if you say to an actor, 'This character of an acute and wryly interested observer. was beaten up as a child', what can they do apart from say, 'OK' Does she still consider herself a moralist? She smiles. "There are and then just get on with it?" Reza says. "It serves them nothing. all these university theses that say I'm a moralist. I don't know if Writing is a lot more organic than that. It's not at all intellectu- I am or not. Perhaps…" She lets the thought hang, taking al." another sip of her tea. By now, she is talking in a rapid stream of French and her bobbed In fact, she positively eschews the notion that she sets out to hair – which I'm realising is a helpful barometer of her internal write plays with "big ideas". "You know, critics in general al- mood – is getting increasingly animated, springing up this way ways have a tendency to give a sociological dimension to my and that, so that Reza has to brush it out of her face. She stops work. For me, I'm thrilled they say that, but it's not that that herself, then laughs at her own intensity. "Well, for me, at least." animates me. What motivates me most is writing about people It is a curious thing, this laughter of hers because, according to who are well brought up and yet, underneath that veneer, they almost every interview with Reza I have ever read, she is meant break down. Their nerves break down. It's when you hold your- to be po-faced and pretentious, a woman quick to take oMence, self well until you just can't any more, until your instinct takes who is snippy and defensive in her responses. "Laughter," she over. It's physiological." said in one such interview in 2001, "is very dangerous." It is for this reason, she says, that she never seeks to explain or And yet the petite woman sitting in front of me is all smiles, deconstruct her characters' backgrounds for the audience. "I'm lightness and enthusiastic hand gestures. She seems to be the not interested in what they were like as children, in psychoanal- very opposite of theatrical pretension. When I describe her plays ysis, because writing is totally instinctive. I work like a painter. If as accessible, she seizes on this and agrees. "Yes, de7nitely. I a painter is doing a portrait of someone, he's not interested in love this de7nition. I am OK with that. Complex ideas but made their childhood; he paints what he sees. There's no explanation accessible. There's no point in writing theatre if it isn't accessi- because it doesn't mean anything." ble, because no one will see it. The greatest playwrights such as The majority of her work, she explains, starts not with the desire Shakespeare or Molière – to whom, by the way, I am not com- to tackle an overarching social theme but with a single spark – paring myself – they were also accessible." such as the incident with her son's friend – that illuminates The quote about laughter being dangerous was, she says, taken something bigger. This has led to criticism that her plays are out of context. And it seems self-evident that anyone who banal and middle of the road; that they're dependent on the makes a character throw up on stage over a priceless Kokoschka interpretation of great actors for their success. But it has also catalogue in the middle of a supposedly civilised discussion brought her immense popularity; there is, among a handful of between adults (as Annette does in God of Carnage ) must have a critics, the somewhat snobbish belief that her plays are for sense of humour. people who don't normally like going to the theatre. "In Art , there is a phrase about 'culture that I vomit over'. In God

Interview with the Playwright of Carnage , I put it literally: she vomits on a pile of art books." Reza grins, apparently Unsurprisingly, given that her observations pulled no punches, she is no longer in enjoying the idea tremendously. contact with the president. "I didn't have the desire to create a link with him. When the book was done, it was evident to me we could never see each other again. Ours At no point does she scowl like the grande dame she is meant to be. She only allows was not at all a friendly relationship. It was codi7ed: I always had my notebook be- me to pay the drinks bill after checking I will be reimbursed. When I comment on her cause for a writer, to be seen to have a cosy relationship with power is a bad thing. If watch, she takes it oM to show it to me. She chats easily about her two children with tomorrow he was not president, I'd gladly have dinner with him." 7lm director Didier Martiny – a 23-year-old daughter, Alta, who is a criminal lawyer, and her son, Nathan, 19, who wants to be a singer. She could not be more charming. I'm sure Sarkozy will be relieved to hear that. Perhaps age has mellowed her. Perhaps it is that we are doing the interview in French Still, one imagines that Reza, herself the child of immigrants, must have some views so she feels more comfortable expressing herself. Perhaps she's just having a good on Sarkozy's approach to integration. In April last year, the president banned the day. Whatever the reason, there is no sign of the spiky harridan I had been expecting. wearing of the burqa in public places and later declared that he believed multicultur- How, I wonder, has this idea of Reza gained credence? alism had "failed". At 7rst, true to form, Reza refuses to comment on this but when I "I know!" she says, her limpid eyes widening in mock-horror. "I'm so frightened of the push her, she acknowledges that her parents, despite being foreigners, raised her English. There was one article written that said something like, 'I hated her before; I with "the absolute idea that we must love France" and insisted she speak perfect hate her even more now I've met her.' I have been the recipient of some very disa- French. greeable personal attacks and I don't understand why." "I have a real sadness when I see the children of immigrants, the young people in the suburbs who were born in France but who don't speak the language at all well. They As a woman operating in the male-dominated world of theatre, she has never en- are choosing to marginalise themselves. This way of speaking in the suburbs is half- countered obvious sexism but "in the 7rst interviews I did, I was young. I didn't know Arab, half-French and I don't understand it. It's a way of marking yourself out. any better and I used to take out my lipstick and put it on and I think that wasn't good at all. It was seen as too feminine… perhaps they didn't take me seriously". "It's not about keeping your accent – my mother still has her accent, she still gets 'le' and 'la' confused and it's charming – but it's the people who were born in France, Her success, too, one imagines, must stick in the craw of those who believe their who went to school here. My parents always said the only way to integrate was to writers should be penniless artists living in romantic garrets, grateful for any small speak the language perfectly. It's a politeness, a way of thanking the country that sliver of attention they receive. "Perhaps, but I've never played that game. I don't welcomes you, to become a vehicle for its language." consider myself a celebrity or an intellectual. I'm a writer and that's not the same… I don't want to have an opinion on current aMairs, on politics and, in a way, that's bad And maybe it is this self-confessed respect for language, this delight in its nuance and for me because if you take the position of an intellectual, it gives you authority. But – capacity for obfuscation, that gives Reza her ear for dialogue. Which makes it all the too bad – I don't want to do it. I have pretension enough to think that writing should more interesting that her success relies, in large part, on her translators – playwright have its own authority." Christopher Hampton, who won an Oscar in 1989 for his adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons She says she is wary of becoming "a spokesman" for her characters. "We ask writers to , has translated most of Reza's plays for the British stage. Did she 7nd it diP- have a vision of the world, to take positions. I don't like to do that because I want to cult to trust him? be able to write characters who have diMerent takes on life and for them to be con- "Oh, but I don't trust him at all!" she says, joking. "No, I adore him, he's a great friend, vincing." but I'm not blindly trusting. I remember the 7rst time we met, he had translated Art Her avowedly apolitical stance makes it all the more bizarre that, in 2006, Reza chose into English and I called him up and said, 'I received your 7rst draft.' He said, 'What do to shadow the then French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy for a year leading you mean, my 7rst draft? It's the play. It's the translation. It's not a draft.' I said, 'Yes it up to his election in May 2007. The book she wrote about this experience – L'aube, le is. There's work to be done.' soir ou la nuit (Dawn, Dusk or Night ) – described Sarkozy as a pint-sized egoist driven "Up to that point, Christopher had only ever translated dead people. This was the 7rst by "a childlike search for approbation". In one chapter, Reza describes the future time he'd had someone alive, on the phone to him. We reworked and reworked it and president grabbing a copy of Le Figaro "visibly gripped" by an item on the front page. I know I was annoying him and he was saying to people, 'She's giving me such a hard It was not the news story about Iran or the French election that had captured his time and she barely speaks English!'" There is a pause. Then she adds: "Now my Eng- attention, but an advertisement for a luxury watch. "That's a nice Rolex," Sarkozy lish is much better." said. Her eyes are twinkling as she says this, but she's deadly serious. There's a core of steel What does Reza make of his time in oPce? "Nothing in particular," she answers, with underneath her vivacious exterior; a determination that belies her easy manner. As almost wilful opacity. "The book was not at all political. It was an observation of a she 7nishes her tea and gives me one last, precise little smile, it seems that Reza, like man, a movement… I can have an opinion about the way he runs the country but it her characters, has aspects of herself she would prefer to remain concealed. is no more interesting than that of anyone else, of a normal citizen."

Anger Management

We all get angry from time to time. Who doesn’t? And like Veronica, Michael, Alan and Annette, sometimes we just need to let things out. Well, maybe not quite like Veronica, Michael, Alan and Annette…

Instead of lashing out at others, it helps to practice a variety of anger management techniques. The next time you’re feeling particularly snarky, perhaps you could:

• Take a Time Out The same technique parents use with children is useful for adults as well. Basically, count to ten before you SAY anything, DO anything or THROW anything.

• Adjust Your Expectations Sometimes our anger and frustration comes from others who do not live up to our expectations. If you 9nd that you are consistently upset by the actions and responses of others, perhaps you should adjust your expectations. Maybe then you will 9nd that you aren’t disappointed with others quite as frequently.

• Reduce Your Alcohol Intake It should come as no surprise that mixing alcohol and anger is bad news. Alcohol tends to exacerbate our negative reactions, reduce our inhibitions and cause us to lash out at others. What’s more, it impairs our memory, so not only does alcohol make us likely to say or do things we regret, but in many cases we won’t remember exactly what we did — we’ll just wake up the next morning with that overarching feeling of shame and regret.

• Improve Your Communication Skills Anger and frustration often arises from things you feel but do not say (or things you believe others are thinking/feeling, but not saying). Rather than holding everything inside and waiting for it to explode once you’ve amassed enough hard feelings that you can’t contain them anymore, address the things that bother you as they arise, in a calm, rational manner, so that each issue can be resolved in turn. It’s far better than sitting on a powder keg.

• Exercise Go for a run (or a walk), swim, shoot some hoops, hit something (like a tennis ball, not a person). Engaging in these kinds of activities works oN some of your pent-up energy and leaves you signi9cantly more relaxed. When you’re more relaxed, you’re less likely to get riled up by petty frustrations. Plus, exercise is good for you! So, it’s a good idea to plan it into your regular routine.

• Move Forward, Don’t Live in the Past Once an issue has been resolved, let it go. Often when we get into an argument with someone we care about, we bring up something that has happened in the past (whether or not it had already been resolved). It’s hard work dragging all of that baggage along with us! So, don’t. Let it go, and give yourself (and others) a chance to move forward.

• Listen to Music Music can calm and soothe us. So, if you’re feeling frustrated or angry, put on some tunes that turn your mood around (this would not be the time to listen to your “angry” playlist — as that will just churn up those negative feelings even more).

Anger Management

• Try Yoga or Meditation If you can carve out a little time in your day to breathe and stretch, or sit and breathe, it returns you to your center and you’re far less likely to Sy oN the handle when confronted by an unexpected frustration.

• Creative Visualization Because we life in a fast-paced, urban environment, sometimes the pace of our daily lives contributes to our being quick to anger. When you 9nd your frustration level building, visualize a babbling brook, a 9eld of wildSowers, a sandy beach or a blue sky with puNy clouds Soating by. Just taking yourself out of your over-stimulating environment (even if only in your imagination) will often put you in a better mood and make it easier to handle life’s stresses.

• Make a Joke Humor can often diNuse angry feelings in tense situations. Just make sure that your joke is going to make the situation better, not worse. So, humor that is at another person’s expense is probably not the best idea. But a light-hearted joke that gets everyone genuinely laughing can help let oN steam.

• Phone a Friend Friends are there for us when we need them. And sometimes what we need for them to do is listen. If you’re feeling frustrated, it can help to talk to a trusted friend (who is outside of the situation that is creating the frustration) and bend their ear a bit. True friends will usually have you feeling better in no time.

• Seek Professional Help Sometimes, despite your best eNorts, you might continue to have diTculty managing your anger. If this is the case for you, there are plenty of professionals who are out there with expertise in this area. You can engage one of them for professional advice or training on how to handle your feelings more appro- priately.

Spartacus

Spartacus (c. 109–71 BC) was a real person, though very little is known about his life prior to his involvement in a slave uprising against the Roman Empire during the Third Servile War. Sources are notoriously conSicting about the life of Spartacus, though most seem to agree he was Thracian by birth. Historians agree that at some point he faced enslavement and eventually trained at a gladiator school. He and other gladiators escaped and Sed from their captivity; eventually, the group chose Spartacus as one of their leaders (along with Crixus and Oenamus).

At 9rst, the Roman Empire did not take the slave revolt particularly seriously. They sent an army led by Clodius Glaber after Spartacus and his men, who had taken refuge on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Rather than viewing the slave uprising as being “worthy” of their normal legions, Rome sent what basically equates to an untested militia to face the gladiators. Not surprisingly, these men’s training proved inadequate to counter the skill of gladiators trained to 9 ght to the death. Rome next sent another group led by Publius Varinius to defeat the slaves. They, too, were defeated. At this point many historians believe Spartacus wished to lead his men to the Alps, a long distance from the center of the Roman Empire, where he believed they could start new lives out of Rome’s reach.

However, some members of the group wanted to continue pillaging local cities and march on Rome itself. Some historians believe that at this point Crixus broke with Spartacus over the goals of the uprising and struck out on his own.

In 72 BCE the Roman Senate decided that the group of rebellious slaves needed more attention than had previously been paid. They sent four Roman legions to deal with the situation created by the rebellion. The legions, led by Lu- cius Gellius and Gnaeus Lentulus surrounded and dispatched more than two thirds of Crixus’ group. Spartacus’ group, however, had continued to grow, reaching an estimated 70,000 slaves.

They faced oN with legions from Rome on three separate occasions and won. However, for some reason, probably forever de9nitively unknown to historians, Spartacus chose not to lead his men to the Alps, but instead turned back to present-day Italy. Historians conjecture that perhaps some of Spartacus’ men would not have continued with him without a path that allowed further pillaging and raiding. Perhaps Spartacus believed the slaves could reasonably take Rome after so many victories. Some historians believe the group headed toward Rome numbered between 75,000-125,000 men, a considerable 9ghting force that perhaps led Spartacus to grow overcon9dent; the number of rebellious slaves certainly had Roman citizens very nervous. Particularly concern- ing to the Roman senate and citizens was the lack of strong military leadership in Rome itself: most of the most revered leaders of the day were dealing with uprisings in other parts of the Empire and not able to face Spartacus and his hoard.

However, Marcus Crassus, a man made very wealthy by real estate deals, agreed to oversee all military actions against Spartacus. He had served under the Roman general Sulla, who was well-respected and thus the populace believed his experience would serve Rome well during the crisis that Spartacus and his men had created. The story goes that after the 9rst defeat of a group of soldiers led by Mummius, Crassus was so angry that soldiers had broken rank and Sed that he ordered one in every ten men from the group to be executed in front of their fellow soldiers to discourage disobedience. Spartacus and his men managed several other victories, but eventually found themselves trapped between legions led by Crassus and Lucullus

Spartacus

(another Roman military leader) with additional legions on their way led by Pompey (also another Roman military leader). Spartacus had no choice but to lead his men into one 9nal battle, in which the Roman legions decimated the entire slave army. Some historical accounts tell of 6,000 captured men who Crassus ordered cruci9ed along the road that led from Capua to Rome. The exact fate of Spartacus is unknown, though most reports indicate he per- ished on the battle9eld. The life of Spartacus ended with the slave revolt, but his legend has lived on throughout the ages; he is often celebrated as a folk hero in numerous cultures for the way in which he stood up to the Roman Empire.

Famous Depictions of Spartacus

Spartacus (Novel by Howard Fast) The novel Spartacus is a historical novel self-published by the American author Howard Fast in 1951. It tells the basic story of the life and death of Spartacus. The central themes of the book deal with the human right to freedom and rebellion as a means of escaping oppressive systems (focusing on the fact that stripping indi- viduals of rights leaves them in the position of having nothing to lose). Fast wrote the novel as a reaction to a three month prison sentence he received in 1950 for being found in contempt of Congress for refusing to name names during the McCarthy Era. The 9rst edition of the book was self-published by the author and included a forward indicating that he hoped one day in the future he would be able to give the names of the people who had helped make the book a reality, but at present he would not because he feared it would subject them to danger of re- prisal.

Spartacus (1960 Film) Spartacus is a 1960 9 lm starring Kirk Douglas as the titular character based on the novel of the same name by Howard Fast. Directed by Stanley Kubrick (who replaced original director Anthony Mann after the 9rst week of 9 ming), the 9 lm won four Oscars and starred Laurence Olivier as Crassus as well as Peter Usti- nov (as Lentulus Batiatus), John Gavin (as Julius Caesar), Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, John Ireland, Herbert Lom, Woody Strode, Tony Curtis, John Dall and Charles McGraw. The 9 lm is partially legendary because of Dalton Trumbo’s work on the screenplay. Because of his blacklisting he had been unable to write under his own name for many years when Kirk Douglas insisted that he receive credit for the work he had done on the script, helping to break his blacklisting. The 9lm is also well-known in popular culture as the source of the line, “I am Spartacus,” uttered by many of Spartacus’ men at the end of the movie as a show of solidarity and to prevent Spartacus from revealing his identity to his captors. He goes unidenti9ed and is cruci9ed namelessly alongside many of the men he fought beside.

Drug Recalls

A drug recall occurs after the Food and Drug Administration receives numerous adverse reaction reports from physicians in regards to a particular drug, or after the manufacturer realizes that there was a de9ciency in their manu- facturing process. To put it simply, a drug recall removes the aNected prescription or over-the-counter drug from the market. Generally, a recall must be warranted by the high likelihood that the drug will cause extremely serious injury or death. While all drug recalls are not to be taken lightly, the FDA classi9es them as Category I, II or III.

Category I: The use of, or exposure to, the recalled drug is most likely capable of causing a serious health issue or even death to the consumer.

Category II: The use of, or exposure to, the recalled drug is not likely to cause a serious health issue. At most, it may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences.

Category III: The use of, or exposure to, the recalled drug is not likely to cause an adverse reaction.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for ensuring the safety and eTcacy of a variety of products, including drugs, medical devices. and foods. The FDA provides important and timely clinical information about safety issues involving medical products, including prescription and over-the-counter drugs, biologics, medical devices, and special nutritional products, including medical foods and dietary supplements. The FDA issues and/or announces product safety alerts, recalls, withdrawals, and important labeling changes that may aNect the health of all Americans. The FDA recently announced its major initiative to more aggressively protect Americans.

The FDA expects companies to take full responsibility for product recalls, including follow-up checks to assure that recalls are successful. After a recall is completed, the FDA makes sure that the product is destroyed or suitably re- conditioned and investigates why the product was defective.

A SAFETY ALERT is a notice or warning issued in situations where a medical device or product may present an un- reasonable risk of substantial harm. In some cases, these situations are also considered recalls.

Between 1997 and 1998, approximately 20 million patients took at least one of several drugs subsequently with- drawn from the market, and since 1993, pharmaceutical drugs have been implicated in at least 1,000 deaths. The largest and most serious drugs recalls in recent years have been the diet drugs known as fen-phen used by over 6 million people, the cholesterol drug Baycol, and the diabetes drug Rezulin, each used by over 700,000 people. Ad- ditionally, a number of drugs still on the market have also received safety warnings or notices from the FDA- including, the anti-depressant Serzone, the arthritis drug Arava, the painkiller Vioxx, and the hormone replacement treat- ment pill called Prempro. In addition to prescription drugs, a number of popular herbal and dietary supplements, such as the ephedra based supplements, have been linked to serious health risks.

Pharmaceutical Lawsuits

A recent article from the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF), examined the trend of “pharmaceutical manufacturers becoming the target of plaintiN’s attorneys across the country.” They assert that one of the reasons the focus has moved to the pharmaceutical is based on tort reform. Since “state legislatures have begun to impose caps on the amount of damages a plaintiN can recover from a defendant, it has become more worthwhile for plaintiNs' attorneys to resort to a volume model—class action—in which they sue a single defendant on behalf of many plain- tiNs.” Bringing a class action “increases the attorneys' potential award exponentially by the number of plaintiNs that can be identi9ed.” The article then goes on to examine a few recent cases, and the way that pharmaceutical companies defended themselves, as well as the outcome.

Levine. In Wyeth v. Levine , 129 S. Ct. 1187 (2009), which was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last March, the case arose from Diana Levine who 9led suit against Wyeth alleging that Wyeth failed to adequately warn of the risk of directly injecting Wyeth's anti-nausea medication, Phenergan, into a patient's vein.

Wyeth's defense, federal preemption, rested on the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which provides that federal law is the supreme law of the land and supersedes state law where inconsistencies exist. Speci9cally, “Wyeth argued that it could not comply with both Vermont law (tort common law) and with federal law (regulations prom- ulgated by the Federal Drug Administration ("FDA")) with regard to the warnings contained in Phenergan's labeling.”

Contrary to Wyeth’s defense, “the Supreme Court held that there was no direct conSict between FDA regulations and Levine's state law claims because Wyeth could have strengthened its warnings without FDA approval.” As a result, Levine’s trial court verdict was aTrmed, and the hope for preemption defenses for drug companies was dealt a blow.

Learned Intermediary Another defense WSL describes it “the learned intermediary doctrine, which was 9rst clearly de9ned in the mid- 1960s.” See Sterling Drug v. Cornish , 370 F.2d 82 (10th Cir. 1966). According to WSL, “every state high court to have addressed application of the learned intermediary doctrine to prescription pharmaceutical products, with the ex- ception of West Virginia, has adopted it.” The article further explains that “this doctrine, as applied to prescription pharmaceutical products, provides that when a drug manufacturer owes any warnings, it must give them to a patient's healthcare provider rather than directly to the patient.” As the U.S. Fifth Circuit reasoned in Reyes v. Wyeth Labs ., 498 F.2d 1264, 1276:

“Prescription drugs are likely to be complex medicines, esoteric in formula and varied in eNect. As a medical expert, the prescribing physician can take into account the propensities of the drug, as well as the suscepti- bilities of his patient. His is the task of weighing the bene9ts of any medication against its potential dan- gers. The choice he makes is an informed one, an individualized medical judgment bottomed on a knowledge of both patient and palliative.”

In the courtroom, “the learned intermediary doctrine focuses solely on the warnings that the pharmaceutical manufacturer provides to the healthcare provider. The plaintiN must prove that the manufacturer owed a duty to warn, that the manufacturer breached that duty (i.e., the warning was inadequate), and that the breach caused of the plaintiN's injuries.” WSL notes that the duty to warn “is a purely legal issue which must be determined by the judge rather than a jury. A pharmaceutical manufacturer may establish that it owed no duty to warn in circumstances such as where the plaintiN's complained-of injury had never previously been reported.”

Pharmaceutical Lawsuits

In the case of manufacturer who does provide a warning, “the adequacy of that warning often becomes a question of fact for the jury,” unless, “the manufacturer's warning speci9cally addresses the plaintiN's complained-of injury, or if the physician was already familiar with the risk based on training or experience,” in which case a judge can determine the adequacy as a matter of law. Otherwise, jury’s are instructed to consider “the testimony of the plaintiN's and the manufacturer's labeling experts, as well as weigh factors such as whether the warning was prominent enough, whether it was placed in the appropriate location in the label, and whether it was clear enough for a prescriber to understand the risk involved.”

Causation The last factor to consider is that “the manufacturer cannot be found liable unless there was a causal connection between the inadequate warning given to the prescribing physician and the injury,” or causation. As a result, the prescribing physician’s testimony is critical because “a pharmaceutical manufacturer can negate causation by establishing that the prescribing physician received the product with the adequate labeling, “but he did not read it at any time prior to prescribing the product to the plaintiN.”

What is more likely to happen is that a prescribing physician was aware of the potential risks, and the jury then has to decide “whether the physician was aware of the speci9c risk of which the plaintiN complains at the time he prescribed the medication to the plaintiN.” Such an issue is “further bolstered by testimony from the prescriber that even if the warning had been worded diNerently, placed in a diNerent location in the labeling, or some other aspect of the warning had been diNerent, it would not have changed his decision to prescribe the medication.”

“In Ebel v. Eli Lilly and Co ., the family of a man who committed suicide sued Lilly, claiming that ingestion of Zyprexa, a pharmaceutical agent manufactured by Lilly, caused the decedent to commit suicide. 321 F. App'x 350, 2009 WL 837325 (5th Cir. 2009).” Before the case reached trial, Eli Lilly 9led a motion for summary judgment, requesting that the court dismiss the case based on the learned intermediary doctrine.

The motion for summary judgment was granted—the case was dismissed—for lack of causation because the “physician who prescribed Zyprexa to the decedent had testi9ed that he was aware of some association between the class of medica- tions of which Zyprexa is a member and suicide.”

Another case important for drug company defense is Ackermann v. Wyeth Pharms ., 526 F.3d 203 (5th Cir. 2008), in which “the court noted that the so-called "read and heed presumption" does not apply to cases involving a learned intermediary.” WSL explained that the "read and heed" presumption is a rebuttable presumption, typically applied to product manufacturers, which provides that had adequate warnings been provided, the plaintiN would have heeded them.” In other words, if the warning or labels are adequate and correct, the prescribing

Pharmaceutical Lawsuits

physician would have made the correct decision to prescribe based on his or her knowledge of the patient. As a result, “the inapplicability of this doctrine to learned intermediary cases is a signi9cant factor in reducing the pharmaceutical manufacturer's burden in a warnings case.”

Additionally, in Bodie v. Purdue Pharma Co. , 236 F. App'x 511, 2007 WL 1577964, the 11 th Circuit held that a pharmaceutical manufacturer was not responsible for plaintiN's injuries because prescribing physician testi9ed that he was aware of the potential for the side eNect from which the plaintiN complained and that he had chosen to prescribe the product independent of the warnings.” Also, in Latiolais v. Merck & Co. , 302 F. App'x 756, 2008 WL 5157705, the 9 th Circuit held that the manufacturer “was not liable for failure to warn where the prescribing physician testi- 9ed that the product labeling did not play a role in his decision to prescribe the product to the plaintiN.”

Conclusion Ultimately, WSL recommended that for “pharmaceutical manufacturers it may be more cost eNective and may result in a better outcome to rely on the learned intermediary doctrine, in battling failure-to-warn claims.” Consequently, such defenses are crucial for drug companies in preserving their integrity to advance sci- ence and medicine and to bring patients and physicians more options and better treatments to make people healthier. Since “every prescription medication has associated risks, a prescribing physician must weigh those risks as well as the potential bene9ts to his patient.” These cases highlight the importance of prescribing physicians to decide whether the potential bene9ts outweigh the risks every time they prescribe a medication. The problem is, that overwhelmingly, the only way for physicians to gain valuable risk and bene9t information about the drugs they prescribe is through journal articles and CME programs that are often funded by industry related to the products they prescribe—simply because there is no other source of funding. What happens then, when a physician says he learned about the risks and bene9ts from an industry funded program in court? The media and attorneys will say he or she has a conSict of interest. It seems like prescribing physicians will either get sued by patients or screwed by everyone else.

Clafoutis

A clafoutis is a French dessert that is somewhere between a cake and a custard. It is just 9rm enough to slice easily, as cakes are, but it is based heavily in milk and egg, and has a lovely custard Savor and texture to it. The vanilla- scented batter is a great backdrop to all kinds of fruit. The pear clafoutis tastes like a cross between a custard and a fruit-9lled dutch baby pancake. It has a distinctly custardy Savor, but holds together almost like a cake because there is a fair amount of Sour in the custard mixture. Overall, the dessert is actually quite light because the body of the custard is broken up by tender pieces of pear.

You could also make this for a fancy-ish brunch if you don’t want to save the recipe just for dessert. It can be served warm or cold. Pear Clafoutis 4 barely-ripe pears, bartlett or d’anjou 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar 1/2 cup all purpose Sour 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 1 cup milk (low fat is 9ne) 3 large eggs 1 tsp vanilla extract 1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 425F and lightly grease a 10-inch round baking/tart dish.

Peel pears. Slice in half and remove cores and stems. Slice crosswise every 1/8 inch and fan around a 10 inch round baking dish, stem ends facing into the center. If your pears are large, you might only use 6 halves around the outside of the pan. If this is the case, add one of the remaining pear halves to the center of the dish (as pictured above). Sprinkle pears with approx. 1 tbsp sugar.

In a food processor, blend Sour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, salt, eggs, milk, vanilla and nutmeg until smooth, about 15 seconds. Pour mixture on top of pears and sprinkle again with remaining sugar.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425F. Turn oven down to 350F and bake an additional 25-30 minutes, until clafoutis is golden brown and a tester (sharp knife) inserted into the center comes out clean.

Serve warm, at room temperature or chilled. Serves 8. Note: The clafoutis will fall a little bit as it cools, so don’t be surprised!

Overparenting The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting TIME Magazine By Nancy Gibbs Friday, Nov. 20, 2009 The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding de9ciency," hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice 9eld — "helicopter parents," teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove- knob covers and "Kinderkords" (also known as leashes; they allow "three full feet of freedom for both you and your child") and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don't come prepad- ded). The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check 9rst. Schools auctioned oN the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building — a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking.

We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools oNer Mandarin, since it's never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over; college deans described freshmen as "crispies," who arrived at college already burned out, and "teacups," who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress.

This is what parenting had come to look like at the dawn of the 21st century — just one more extravagance, the Bubble Wrap waiting to burst.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. And so there is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads. The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they'll Sy higher. We're often the ones who hold them down.

A backlash against overparenting had been building for years, but now it reSects a new reality. Since the onset of the Great Re- cession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids' extracurricular activities. They downsized, down- shifted and simpli9ed because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had aNected people's relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they'd gotten worse. "This is one of those moments when everything is on the table, up for grabs," says Carl Honoré, whose book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting is a gospel of the slow-parenting movement. He likens the sudden awareness to the feeling you get when you wake up after a long night carous- ing, the lights go on, and you realize you're a mess. "That horrible moment of self-recognition is where we are culturally. I wanted parents to realize they are not alone in thinking this is insanity, and show there's another way."

How We Got Here Overparenting had been around long before Douglas MacArthur's mom Pinky moved with him to West Point in 1899 and took 15

Overparenting an apartment near the campus, supposedly so she could watch him with a telescope to be sure he was studying. But in the 1990s something dramatic happened, and the needle went way past the red line. From peace and prosperity, there arose fear and anxiety; crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label "Remove Child Before Folding." Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to '97, and homework more than doubled. Bookstores oNered Brain Foods for Kids: Over 100 Recipes to Boost Your Child's Intelligence . The state of Georgia sent every newborn home with the CD Build Your Baby's Brain Through the Power of Music , after researchers claimed to have discovered that listening to Mozart could temporarily help raise IQ scores by as many as 9 points. By the time the frenzy had reached its peak, colleges were in- stalling "Hi, Mom!" webcams in common areas, and employers like Ernst & Young were creating "parent packs" for recruits to give Mom and Dad, since they were involved in negotiating salary and bene9ts.

Once obsessing about kids' safety and success became the norm, a kind of orthodoxy took hold, and heaven help the heretics — the ones who were brave enough to let their kids venture outside without Secret Service protection. Just ask Lenore Skena- zy, who to this day, when you Google "America's Worst Mom," 9lls the 9rst few pages of results — all because one day last year she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. A newspaper column she wrote about it somehow ignited a global 9restorm over what constitutes reasonable risk. She had reporters calling from China, Israel, Australia, Malta. ("Malta! An island!" she marvels. "Who's stalking the kids there? Pirates?") Skenazy decided to 9ght back, arguing that we have lost our ability to assess risk. By worrying about the wrong things, we do actual damage to our children, raising them to be anxious and unadventurous or, as she puts it, "hothouse, mama-tied, danger-hallucinating joy extinguishers."

Skenazy, a Yale-educated mom who with her husband is raising two boys in New York City, had ingested all the same messages as the rest of us. Her sons' school once held a pre-9eld-trip assembly explaining exactly how close to a hospital the children would be at all times. She confesses to being "at least part Sikorsky," hiring a football coach for a son's birthday and handing out mouth guards as party favors. But when the Today show had her on the air to discuss her subway decision, interviewer Ann Curry turned to the camera and asked, "Is she an enlightened mom or a really bad one?"

From that day and the food 9ght that followed, she launched her Free Range Kids blog, which eventually turned into her own Dangerous Book for Parents: Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry . There is no rational reason, she argues, that a generation of parents who grew up walking alone to school, riding mass transit, trick-or- treating, teeter-tottering and selling Girl Scout cookies door to door should be forbidding their kids to do the same. But somehow, she says, "10 is the new 2. We're infantilizing our kids into incompetence." She celebrates seat belts and car seats and bike helmets and all the rational advances in child safety. It's the irrational responses that make her crazy, like when Dear Abby endorses the idea, as she did in August, that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them. That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing. Once the kids make it home safe and sound, you can delete the picture and take a new one the next morning.

That advice may seem perfectly sensible to parents bombarded by heartbreaking news stories about missing little girls and the predator next door. But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine Su, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with "How can you let him go to the store alone?," she suggests countering with "How can you let him visit your relatives?" (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) "I'm not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn't be 16

Overparenting prepared," she says. "But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources." Besides, she says with a smile, "a 100%-safe world is not only impossible. It's nowhere you'd want to be."

Dispatches from the Front Lines Eleven parents are sitting in a circle in an airy, glass-walled living room in south Austin, Texas, eating organic, gluten-free, non- dairy coconut ice cream. This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. "Our whole culture," says Contey, 38, "is geared around 'Is your kid making the benchmarks?' There's this fear of 'Is my kid's head the right size?' People think there's some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren't living up to and that it's hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that."

The parents seem relieved to hear it. Matt, a textbook editor, reports that he and his wife quit a book club because it caused too much stress on book-club nights, and stopped fussing about how the house looks, which brings nods all around the room: let go of perfectionism in all its tyranny. Margaret, a publishing executive, tells her own near-miss story of how she stepped back from the brink of insanity. On her son's fourth birthday, she says, "I'm like 'Oh, my God, he's eligible for Suzuki!' I literally got on the phone and called 12 Suzuki teachers," she says, before realizing the nightmare she was creating for herself and her child. Shutting down your inner helicopter isn't easy. "This is not a shift in perspective that occurs overnight," Matt admits after class. "And it's not every day that I consciously sit down and ask myself hard questions about how I want family life to be slower or better."

Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind. Fear of physical danger is at least subject to rational argument; fear of failure is harder to hose down. What could be more natural than worrying that your child might be trampled by the great, scary, globally competitive world into which she will one day be launched? It is this fear that inspires parents to demand homework in preschool, produce the snazzy bilingual campaign video for the third- grader's race for class rep, continue to provide the morning wake-up call long after he's headed oN to college.

Some of the hovering is driven by memory and demography. This generation of parents, born after 1964, waited longer to mar- ry and had fewer children. Families are among the smallest in history, which means our genetic eggs are in fewer baskets and we guard them all the more zealously. Helicopter parents can be found across all income levels, all races and ethnicities, says Patricia Somers of the University of Texas at Austin, who spent more than a year studying the species at the college level. "There are even helicopter grandparents," she notes, who turn up with their elementary-school grandchildren for college-information sessions aimed at juniors and seniors.

Nor is this phenomenon limited to ZIP codes where every Volvo wagon just has to have a University of Chicago sticker on it. "I'm having exactly the same conversations with coaches, teachers, parents, counselors, whether I'm in Wichita or northern Canada or South America," says Honoré. His own revelation came while listening to the feedback about his son in kin- dergarten. It was 9ne, but nothing stellar — until he got to the art room and the teacher began raving about how creative his son was, pointing out his sketches that she'd displayed as models for other students. Then, Honoré recalls, "she dropped the G-bomb: 'He's a gifted artist,' she told us, and it was one of those moments when you don't hear anything else. I just saw the word gifted in neon with my son's name ..." So he hurried home and Googled the names of art tutors and eagerly told his son all about the special person who would help him draw even better. "He looks at me like I'm from outer space," Honoré says. "'I just wanna draw,' he tells me. 'Why do grownups have to take over everything?' "

"That was a searing epiphany," Honoré concludes. "I didn't like what I saw." He now writes

Overparenting and lectures about the many fruits of slowing down, citing research that suggests the brain in its relaxed state is more creative, makes more nuanced connections and is ripe for eureka moments. "With children," he argues, "they need that space not to be entertained or distracted. What boredom does is take away the noise ... and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction. It's a useful trampoline for children to learn how to get by."

Other studies reinforce the importance of play as an essential protein in a child's emotional diet; were it not, argue some scien- tists, it would not have persisted across species and millenniums, perhaps as a way to practice for adulthood, to build leadership, sociability, Sexibility, resilience — even as a means of literally shaping the brain and its pathways. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psy- chiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play — who has a treehouse above his oTce — recalls in a recent book how managers at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noticed the younger engineers lacked problem-solving skills, though they had top grades and test scores. Realizing the older engineers had more play experience as kids — they'd taken apart clocks, built stereos, made models — JPL eventually incorporated questions about job applicants' play backgrounds into interviews. "If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being" in life, Brown has argued, "play is as fundamen- tal as any other aspect.'' The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that the decrease in free playtime could carry health risks: "For some children, this hurried lifestyle is a source of stress and anxiety and may even contribute to depression." Not to men- tion the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation of kids who never just go out and play.

Remember, Mistakes Are Good Many educators have been searching for ways to tell parents when to back oN. It's a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents' engagement in a child's education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes. Given a choice, teachers say, overinvolved parents are preferable to invisible ones. The challenge is helping parents know when they are crossing a line.

Every teacher can tell the story of a student who needed to fail in order to be reassured that the world wouldn't come to an end. Yet teachers now face a climate in which parents ghostwrite students' homework, airbrush their lab reports — then lobby like a K Street hired gun for their child to be assigned to certain classes. Principal Karen Faucher instituted a "no rescue" policy at Belinder Elementary in Prairie Village, Kans., when she noticed the front-oTce table covered each day with forgotten lunch boxes and notebooks, all brought in by parents. The tipping point was the day a mom rushed in with a necklace meant to com- plete her daughter's coordinated out9t. "I'm lucky — I deal with intelligent parents here," Faucher says. "But you saw very intelligent parents doing very stupid things. It was almost like a virus. The parents knew that was not what they intended to do, but they couldn't help themselves." A guidance counselor at a Washington prep school urges parents to 9nd a mentor of a certain disposition. "Make friends with parents," she advises, "who don't think their kids are perfect." Or with parents who are willing to exert some peer pressure of their own: when schools debate whether to drop recess to free up more test-prep time, parents need to let a school know if they think that's a trade-oN worth making.

A certain amount of hovering is understandable when it comes to young children, but many educators are concerned when it persists through middle school and high school. Some teachers talk of "Stealth Fighter Parents," who no longer hover constantly but can be counted on for a surgical strike just when the high school musical is being cast or the starting lineup chosen. And sen- ior year is the witching hour: "I think for a lot of parents, college admissions is like their grade report on how they did as a parent," observes Madeleine Rhyneer, dean of students at Willamette University in Oregon. Many colleges have had to invent a "director of parent programs" to run regional groups so moms and dads can meet fellow college parents or attend special classes where they can learn all the school cheers. The Ithaca College website oNers a checklist of advice: "Visit (but not too often)"; "Communicate (but not too often)"; "Don't worry (too much)"; "Expect change"; "Trust them."

Teresa Meyer, a former PTA president at Hickman High in Columbia, Mo., has just sent 18

Overparenting the youngest of her three daughters to college. "They made it very clear: You are not invited to the registration part where they're requesting classes. That's their job." She's come to appreciate the please-back-oN vibe she's encountered. "I hope that we're getting away from the helicopter parenting," Meyer says. "Our philosophy is 'Give 'em the morals, give 'em the right start, but you've got to let them go.' They deserve to live their own lives."

What You Can Do Among the most powerful weapons in the war against the helicopter brigade is the explosion of websites where parents can con9de, confess and aTrm their sense that lowering expectations is not the same as letting your children down. So you gave up trying to keep your 2-year-old from eating the dog's food? You banged your son's head on the doorway while giving him a piggyback ride? Your daughter hates school and is so scared of failure she won't even try to ride a bike? "I just want to throw in the towel and give up on her," one mom posts on Truuconfessions.com. "This is NOT what I thought I was signing up for." Honestbaby.com sells baby T-shirts that say "I'll walk when I'm good and ready." Given how many books and websites drove a generation of parents mad with anxiety, a certain balance is restored to the universe when it becomes conventional for people to brag about what bad parents they are.

The revolutionary leaders are careful about oNering too much advice. Parents have gotten plenty of that, and one of the goals of this new movement is to give parents permission to disagree or at least follow diNerent roads. "People feel there's somehow a secret formula for parenting, and if we just read enough books and spend enough money and drive ourselves hard enough, we'll 9nd it, and all will be O.K.," Honoré observes. "Can you think of anything more sinister, since every child is so diNerent, every family is diNerent? Parents need to block out the sound and fury from the media and other parents, 9nd that formula that 9ts your family best."

Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting , teaches seminars on how to peel back the layers of cultural pressure that weigh down families. He and his coaches will even go into your home, weed out your kids' stuN, sort out their schedule, turn oN the screens and help your family 9nd space you didn't know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul. But any parent can do it just as well. "We need to quit bombarding them with choices way before their ability to handle them," Payne says. The average child has 150 toys. "When you cut the toys and clothes back ... the kids really like it." He aims for a cut of roughly 75%: he tosses out the broken toys and gives away the outgrown ones and the busy, noisy, blinking ones that do the playing for you. Pare down to the classics that leave the most to the child's imagination and create a kind of toy library kids can visit and swap from. Then build breaks of calm into their schedule so they can actually enjoy the toys.

Finally, there is the gift of humility, which parents need to oNer one another. We can fuss and fret and shuttle and shelter, but in the end, what we do may not matter as much as we think. Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt analyzed a Department of Education study tracking the progress of kids through 9fth grade and found that things like how much parents read to their kids, how much TV kids watch and whether Mom works make little diNerence. "Frequent museum visits would seem to be no more productive than trips to the grocery store," they argued in USA Today . "By the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children."

If you embrace this rather humbling reality, it will be easier to follow the advice D.H. Law- rence oNered back in 1918: "How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Se- cond rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning."

Of course, that was easy for him to say. He had no kids.

Pre-Show Discussion Questions

1. “Helicopter Parents” are those who hover over their children, and intervene in every aspect of their children’s lives down to the most minute detail. Do you think parents should be highly involved in their children’s lives, moder- ately involved, or do you think they should let children learn on their own, without too much intervention? What, do you think, are the bene9ts of a parent being highly involved in their children’s lives? What are the draw- backs/problems associated with too much involvement?

2. The men in the play refer to Spartacus as a role model for being a man. (John Wayne is another example they give of a male role model.) These are references from a generation (or more) ago. What role models do you think exist today to provide boys with guidance or models for manhood? How are they similar to the role models from past generations? How are they diNerent?

3. In playwright Yasmina Reza’s writing, she reveals the thin veneer of civility that exists among people, and posits that, just below the surface, we are all much more savage than reveal in polite society. How true do you think this is? How much (or how little) does it take to get people to reveal the (potentially ugly) truth of what they’re really thinking and how they behave when they’re not worried about minding their manners?

4. The character of Alan is an attorney who is representing his client — a major pharmaceutical manufacturer — when there is evidence to support the fact that one of their drugs poses major negative side eNects (that the company knew about). To what degree do you think the professions of parents play a part in how that parent is viewed by their children? How much do you think our children learn about ethics from the professional decisions we make?

WRITE & DISCUSS 5. One of the arenas in which parents go the most overboard when reacting to their children’s activities is at sporting events. Why do you think a sporting event (among children) brings out the worst in adults? How can alterca- tions among adults at their kids’ games be prevented? What is the best way to handle irate parents when such occasions arise?

Post-Show Discussion Questions

1. The parents in God of Carnage choose to handle the altercation between their children “like civilized adults.” How would such an event be handled in your household? Would the parents meet to discuss the incident? Would the children be expected to handle the issue on their own? How much (or how little) would the parents intervene in order to bring about a resolution?

2. In the play, Alan is constantly on his cell phone. To what degree do you feel this escalates the tension in the play? How much, do you imagine, his con- stant connectedness to his electronic device(s) aNects the relationships and harmony within his own home? Do you know someone who is constantly on their phone and is distracted by it when they should be paying attention to their interactions with other people who are there with them? How does it aNect their relationships?

3. Throughout the course of the play, allegiances shift such that sometimes the couples are siding with one another against the other couple, sometimes the women are siding with one another against the men (and vice versa), and sometimes it’s diTcult to tell who is siding with whom. Why do you think the characters switch sides so often? How do you think it contributes to the escalation of the play?

4. Veronica accuses Annette of being a phony. Which character(s) do you 9nd to be the most genuine in God of Carnage? Is there a point at which some or all of the characters stop being phony and react in ways that are more true to their thoughts/feelings/ideals? How does this change the action of the play?

5. Veronica and Michael invite Annette and Alan over to resolve their children’s dispute. Early on, after there has been some discussion, Annette and Alan feel they have done what they came to do and are ready to leave but, clearly, Veronica and Michael don’t feel that anything has been resolved at that

WRITE & DISCUSS point. What do you think Veronica and Michael were hoping the outcome of this meeting would be?

6. A great deal is left unresolved at the end of this play. What do you think happens after the play is over? Between the couples? Between the spous- es? Between the kids?

Further Research Yasmina Reza Drug Recalls http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/jan/22/yasmina-reza- http://www.fda.gov/drugs/drugsafety/DrugRecalls/default.htm interview-carnage-polanski http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/ http://www.drugrecalls.com/ people/r/yasmina_reza/index.html www.imdb.com/name/nm0722078/ www. drug alert.org/ http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre- http://www.huTngtonpost.com/2010/12/12/the-10-worst- dance/features/yasmina-reza-please-stop-laughing-at-me- drug-recalls_n_795499.html

795570.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/12/carn Spartacus age-yasmina-reza-roman-polanski.html www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/ spartacus .html www.facebook.com/pages/ Yasmina -Reza /106092156088801 www.ancienthistory.about.com/cs/slavesandslavery/a/spartac www.broadwayworld.com/people/ Yasmina _Reza / us .htm

www.livius.org/so-st/ spartacus /spartacus .html Overparenting www. spartacus .schoolnet.co.uk/ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1940697,0 www.imdb.com/title/tt1442449/ 0.html http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/11/17/081 117crbo_books_acocella http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/the_age_of_overpar enting/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6620793/ns/health- childrens_health/t/overparenting/#.T4MuBNnFz1U http://www.oregonlive.com/news- network/index.ssf/2012/02/are_americans_overparenting.html

Anger Management http://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control.aspx www.mayoclinic.com/health/ anger -management /MH00102 http://www.yelp.com/search?9nd_desc=anger+management& 9nd_loc=San+Jose%2C+CA http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anger_management_contr ol_tips_techniques.htm http://www.angermgmt.com/